Ecology Center Climate Equity Pilot Fund Executive Summary: Community Engagement

Overview

With a $100,000 grant from the City of Berkeley Climate Equity Pilot Fund, the Ecology Center collaborated with community-based organizations and ambassadors over three years (September 2022 – August 2025) to uplift the voices of low-income, Black, Indigenous, Latinx/Hispanic, people of color, and other historically marginalized residents to identify climate change equity and resilience needs and priorities.

Activities

Key activities included:

• Conducted 57 meetings with 18 organizations to convene a Climate Equity Collaborative and recruit Community Ambassadors (see Partner List below)
• Hosted six Climate Equity Collaborative convenings
• Engaged three Community Ambassadors to connect community members to project resources and support project implementation and evaluation
• Distributed 128 resilience measures to 99 households such as Clipper cards, induction hobs and other electric cooking appliances, air filters, smart power strips, and portable battery packs
• Implemented 12 educational workshops for 169 attendees with partner organizations on topics such as climate change equity, resilience, pollution and air quality, and induction cooking

Deliverables

Key deliverables included the development of the following documents and resources (see Final Report Appendices) for program partners, which may serve as templates for other equitable community engagement efforts:

• Project Tracking Plan (Appendix A)
• Collaborative Members’ Menu (Appendix B)
• Resilience Measure Brochure (Appendix C)
• Memorandum of Understanding for Community Partners (MOU) (Appendix D)
• Community Member Resilience Measure Application (Appendix E)
• Community Ambassador Application (Appendix F)
• Community Ambassador Work Agreement (Appendix G)
• Principles of Community Engagement (Appendix K)

 

Key Lessons Learned

• Meet with community organizations one-on-one. One-on-one meetings with community organizations proved more effective than Collaborative convenings as a means to develop relationships, gather input, and partner on educational activities and resilience measure distribution. While Collaborative convenings can help strengthen community networks among community-based organizations (CBOs), limited capacity and high turnover among CBO staff led to low and inconsistent turnout.
• Partnership building takes time. It took significant relationship buildingthroughout multiple meetings before CBOs could enter into Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the Ecology Center to distribute resilience measures and/or co-host educational programming.
• Partner with community organizations that serve the target population. Partnering with community organizations that serve the target population (i.e., low-income Black, Indigenous, Latinx/Hispanic, people of color, and other marginalized identities) avoided intrusive income qualification vetting with individual residents and saved time for the project implementer.
• Distribute resilience measures through community partners. Distributing resilience measures through CBOs at partner events was far more effective and less time-consuming than working with individual residents through Community Ambassadors. It was very time and labor intensive to identify individual resident needs, purchase and distribute measures, and track expenditures.
• Let community members define their priorities. Consultants, city staff or CBO project implementers should not assume what community members want or need. The pilot demonstrated the importance of community expertise in their own lived experiences.
• There is a strong community interest in climate resilience, and additional funding is needed. The pilot demonstrated a clear interest in climate resilience among those communities that face disproportionate impacts of climate change. This interest stems from a variety of reasons: financial concerns, access to work, health benefits, risk reductions for family members and children, and improved indoor air quality for their household. The pilot also identifies a clear need for continued, long-term investment in climate resilience within communities that face marginalization – multiple program participants indicated that more resources and resilience measures were needed.
• Match expectations with funding. As with most new community-serving projects, the pilot encountered multiple issues that significantly complicated its trajectory. While there was sufficient funding to provide the resilience measures to community members, the pilot underestimated the time and labor required to purchase and distribute those resources. Additionally, the relationship building with community partners that preceded any resilience measure distribution was slow going.

 

Partner Community Organization List

1. Bay Area Hispano Institute for Advancement (BAHIA)
2. Berkeley Food Network
3. Berkeley Youth Alternatives*
4. Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) – Office of Family Engagement*
5. City of Berkeley Office of Emergency Services*
6. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
7. Green the Church*
8. Healthy Black Families*
9. Hip Hop For Change*
10. La Peña Cultural Center
11. Moving South Berkeley Forward*
12. Multicultural Institute*
13. Northern California Land Trust*
14. Satellite Affordable Housing Associates (SAHA) Affordable Housing
15. Youth Spirit Artworks*
16. The Center for Food Faith and Justice
17. UC Berkeley Student Environmental Resource Center*
18. Waterside Workshops*

(*Attended at least one Climate Equity Collaborative Convening)