Greenleaf Advisors and Greenleaf Communities congratulate Blacks in Green (BIG) + Partners for being selected by the US EPA to serve as an Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC) in Region 5. This is a historic win for frontline and community-based organizations, honoring their on-the-ground leadership and expertise. The coalition will bring $10M in technical assistance and resources to environmental justice communities across the upper Midwest, including underserved urban, rural, and tribal communities. Services include training and capacity-building assistance for grant applications and management, guidance on community engagement, meeting facilitation, and improving accessibility and communication for EJ communities.
BIG leads 1 of 2 Region 5 TCTACs
“From the frontline we do more than dream a life beyond the whole-system problem common to communities of color everywhere. Every day we rise and work to weave hard won, fragmented solutions into whole cloth. These solutions - unique and revolutionary in their approach and process - aim to “flip the script” of business as usual, and allow Black, Brown and Indigenous people to lead in all matters essential to thriving communities,” said Naomi Davis, founder and CEO of Blacks in Green and creator of the Sustainable Square Mile system. “With our application we swung for the fence, and the fence was system change.”
BIG will serve as lead in the Region 5 EJ TCTAC Alliance, a collaboration with the following frontline, community-based and community serving organizations, building this program together, to provide “front-door access” for people and communities across the region seeking environmental and energy justice solutions.
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School of Public Health (SPH) - University of Illinois, Chicago
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Smart Energy Design Assistance Center (SEDAC) - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Read the BIG press release here.
Greenleaf assisted in coordinating the multi-disciplinary team of community-led and community-serving organizations, research institutions, and NGOs, which developed the application and model in a democratic, collaborative process with community-based organizations leading. Greenleaf will continue to provide coordination and management support to the team going forward.
Greenleaf Advisors is a consulting and transaction-services firm that helps enterprises and communities develop sustainably by bridging them to the resources and strategies they need to operate in a healthy way. We engage at the intersection of capital, business, science and policy to address the sustainable use of Earth’s natural resources—land, water, materials, energy, and climate.
Greenleaf Communities is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization advancing applied research for a healthy and sustainable world by recruiting and organizing multi-disciplinary teams of scientists and practitioners to investigate environmental influences on health and inform practices and the policies that support them.