Green Cities Sustainability Corps 2011

Green Cities Sustainability Corps
Program Overview

SCA’s Green Cities Corps program was developed to assist cities in the creation and implementation of climate action plans. This initiative is in support of the Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement developed to advance the execution of policies and actions to address climate change. Members of the Green Cities Corps engage in projects within the municipal and nonprofit sectors of Pittsburgh aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Pittsburgh’s Green Cities Corps members work with the Pittsburgh Climate Initiatives’ organizational partners to execute the recommendations in the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan, identifying and reporting the progress Pittsburgh has made toward its emissions reduction goal, and raising public awareness about Pittsburgh’s efforts to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.

SCA Green Cities’ goals are to:
• Place trained and experienced college graduates with local agencies looking to mitigate climate change through local actions,
• Develop and/or implement policies and actions which address sustainability, and
• Provide meaningful opportunities to its’ corps members while building the capacity of our partners.

Pittsburgh Climate Initiative
The Pittsburgh Climate Initiative works collaboratively in the Pittsburgh region to reduce greenhouse gases through measurable actions. PCI organizational partners participate in each sector of the climate action plan including: PCI Management, Municipal, Community, Business, and Higher Education. (www.pittsburghclimate.org)

April was a busy month at GTECH as the office moved to a new location on Hamilton Avenue between the Homewood and Larimer Neighborhoods. The new space is beautiful and required lots of packing, heavy lifting and organizing but it well worth the hard work. In moving forward with SPARC related projects, I completed the AutoCAD design for the Larimer Village Green which was approved by the Larimer Green Team on April 28th. The implementation of the design will begin in May and continue throughout the year. I continued work on the Troy Hill Vacant Land Assessment report and will submit to the Troy Hill Community Group in May. I assisted on a variety of land reclamation projects from tilling at Pennley Gardens, trash pickup in Perry Hilltop, site design for Manchester and finalizing budgets for the Regency Lot in Wilkinsburg.

The Black and Gold City Goes Green campaign made some big strides this month toward having a greater presence in the community. We’re now equipped with professional-looking handouts with the campaign actions for the year that we can give to anyone interested. I entered our first two monthly videos in a local film contest, where one made it to the final round (but didn’t win, sadly). I was invited to speak on a local podcast/radio show called Positively Pittsburgh Live. The theme of the night’s show was “The Greening of Pittsburgh” in honor of Earth Week; the Black and Gold City Goes Green was featured alongside some big environmental hitters like the Green Building Alliance, Ecko Green Technologies, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. This month we also made tabling appearances at the Pitt Student Symposium, 10,000 Villages, and PennFuture’s Global Warming Conference.

The Black and Gold City Goes Green campaign’s Youth Community Partners are finishing their semesters, so I’m helping to compile videos for each of the three groups involved in the program. One of the groups at the Kingsley Association studies compost piles and rain barrels; since composting is one of our yearly actions, the footage from this school will also be used for next month’s video.
We’re currently holding our breath for a promising grant that will enable us to plan a big blitz event this year. Next month’s blitz in Mount Washington is coming up fast, and with very few volunteers signed up so far, we’ve been doing some serious recruiting. Everything else for the event is falling into place nicely; we’ll see how it goes on May 7th!

This month, my main priority was getting the macro-sort process up and running. I started my first regular volunteer shift (1-3 on Thursdays) which has helped me make the macro-sort run as smoothly as possible and to ensure the volunteers are having an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Our back log of blue bag donations has been kept in check by my Thursday volunteer group which sorted 143 blue bags this month. Next month I will be taking on 5 more regular volunteer shifts to start reducing the significant donation back log. A new project from this month is the creation of a Global Links high school curriculum, which is still in the research phase. Some highlights of the month included volunteering at the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy’s Earth Day Extravaganza, attending our end of the school year Medical Supply Assistant party and tabling at Ten Thousand Villages Green Fair.

In April 2011, my time as an SCA Sustainability Fellow with the Allegheny County Sustainability Program has been lively and worthwhile. I perform a wide variety of tasks in support of efforts to implement measures that will result in a cleaner, more cost-efficient Allegheny County. In addition to such daily administrative tasks as scheduling meetings and delivering documents to County partners, I have also been engaged in numerous projects.

Under Sustainability Manager Jeaneen Zappa, I have continued to work with the County’s internal “green teams” to identify and support energy efficiency measures that are happening within each respective County department. As part of Allegheny County’s recycling efforts, I have drafted and designed a draft “intranet” resource page that is aimed at best assisting County employees with what can be recycled and where it can be recycled. I have proofread and edited numerous documents related to recycling efforts and green purchasing, and am still currently engaged with efforts to implement a more comprehensive and wide-spread recycling policy. I also performed project research, aided in the editing and drafting of internal recycling policies, and assisted the Coordinated Weatherization Campaign by writing a "white paper" report on the annual progress of the campaign. In addition to this work in the "primary" tasks, I also organized and hosted several meetings consisting of both internal and external stakeholders, business interests or employees. These activities range from coordinating projects with various partner organizations to writing and drafting newsletter articles, emails, or policies in support of advancing the County's sustainability goals. Lastly, I have been engaged with both Allegheny County and the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in a project to inventory and address CCAC's greenhouse gases and its carbon footprint. These activities, along with numerous other small projects and several dozen meetings, are among the many service items that I have performed in the month of April.

The month started out very excitingly with my first conference, Brownfields 2011, in Philadelphia. It was a fabulous networking opportunity and I felt like I got a great taste of what is going on in urban farming in many other cities across the country.
Work for Penn State revolved mostly around getting our name out there. That included three blogs, including an in depth look at PA Act 106 and how Penn State can help farmers/vendors through the process, tabling at an EnviroFair, and starting to plan for the Value Added Conference in July.

Work with PGE focused on designing the 2011 bumper sticker but was augmented by a day of building raw compost beds, and several highly successful events including Veggie 101 and Vacant Lot Remediation.
Work with the Food Policy Council really ramped up in preparation for inviting new steering committee members. Heather and I have been meeting with Leah, from PASA, and Berry, from the Co-op, to strategize for membership recruitment and to plan the next two PFPC meetings. Also, my research continued in regards to the symposium in the fall of regional food policy councils and I made contacts with a grad student at Tufts and joined the Food Policy Council listserv.

The SCA trainings for the month were very informative (body mechanics/bike maintenance/marketing/grant writing) and I was also able to participate in various volunteer activities outside of SCA. This include tree plantings and reusable water bottle distribution. In addition I attended several lectures/symposiums on sustainability and food systems to further my repertoire on those subjects.

In March, I began my fellowship with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (PPC) and really hit the ground running. My work varies greatly from one day to next, which has kept things interesting and engaging. The PPC hosts volunteer events of varying size, scope and aim in the 4 largest regional parks (Frick, Highland, Schenley and Riverview) and several smaller parks around the city. E-mails and phone calls from individuals and groups looking to volunteer are directed to me so that I can set up events based on their needs. This month, I coordinated 7 of these events where I planned and communicated with volunteers and crew leaders, secured tools, supplies, food and drink, managed sign-in and tracking, directed volunteers and actively participated in ecological restoration projects. For the Panther Hollow Extravaganza, the PPC’s largest volunteer event (which will hopefully exceed 300 volunteers), many of those tasks are being handled and organized by me.

I have also taken part in planning and facilitating the Urban EcoSteward (UES) program, by attending meetings, fielding inquiries and applications, helping to lead training sessions and updating paperwork. I am the point person for the High School UES program at Westinghouse which meets twice weekly, where I’m responsible for organizing and running meetings between the partners, adapting and presenting curriculum, creating schedules, analyzing and planning stewardship projects, leading sessions, tracking progress and ensuring overall success of the program. We are partnering with the Lighthouse afterschool program, which focuses on audiovisual art and service learning. This particular HUES group is an experimental combination of ecological stewardship, environmental education and artistic expression. In addition to the UES and HUES groups, I assist Marijke with aspects of the Elementary Habitat Explorer programs, and generally make myself useful where I can. I hope to continue this in the coming months as I better understand the operations of the Parks Conservancy and my place in the organization.

During the month of March, I had a ton going on – March at ELDI is hectic for an SCA Fellow, but rewarding! My two largest projects/events were the Negley Run Blvd. Clean-up and the Borland Garden Co-housing project’s Community Workshop.

The Negley Run Blvd. Clean-up was a 2nd annual event; the first of which I coordinated last year as well. There is an enormous amount of efforts that go into an event like this, and a great deal of partners that offer their resources. Although we did not get as many volunteers as last year, we believe that we cleaned-up an even larger area! It was another success and it was great to see community members and students work alongside each other for a second year in a row.

With a degree in landscape architecture, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to work on the Borland Garden Co-housing project: a community revitalization design project alongside stakeholders and Pashek Associates (a local landscape architecture firm). And although it took a lot of time and a lot of effort to prepare for this Community Workshop, it was well worth it.

This Workshop was created to engage the community members and foster ideas around the revitalization of vacant lot space in a particular area of East Liberty: Outside of a new co-operative. But this is no ordinary co-operative; this co-operative is a group of older individuals who want to age in place and share resources with one another. Instead of creating a new suburban development, they have chosen to take on a much more challenging, yet more sustainable, project: Converting a row of dilapidated town homes and revitalizing the vacant lot space around the homes into a public/private community garden. “Garden” is used liberally here, since this space will include many more elements than just a garden, including stormwater mitigation, permaculture practices, educational spaces, community gathering spaces, environmental art, micro habitats, and so on.

Many funders are involved in this project: The Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, the Sprout Fund, and the Heinz Youth Philanthropy Program. With the CDCP grant, we have been able to hire the expertise needed (Pashek Associates) to facilitate the design process/community meetings/workshops. Utilizing my education background and past experiences/talent, I have been able to play a huge part in the planning/design process alongside Pashek Associates. This Community Workshop allowed us to engage community members in the project and hear their ideas, concerns, thoughts, etc. The next steps are to host design charrettes with the co-housers and Pashek. This project will be pivotal in moving my career forward in community revitalization.

One of GASP's roles is to educate the public about ways to reduce air quality, to give updates about regulations and enforcement, and to offer solutions for mitigating air pollution (whether it be through political action, personal behavioral change, or a larger-scale community effort). Identifying, organizing, preparing for, presenting, and providing follow-up for educational presentations takes up a large amount of my time at the office. Of particular importance is finding a wider variety of people with whom we can network, i.e. low-income individuals, youth, the elderly, tourists, etc. It is also my responsibility to keep informed about the issues at hand and identify opportunities for others to get involved with serious issues concerning sources of air pollution and how they can help to mitigate these sources. A number of informational campaigns of interest are the wood smoke education campaign, the diesel/idling campaign, the Athletes United for Healthy Air campaign, and concern surrounding the Marcellus Shale issue in SW PA.