July notes, and a new publication project.

This past week I had the opportunity to officially launch a new publication project as part of the Evanston Environmental Justice Coalition.

I'm pulling together a team of folks to publish the first edition of what we hope to be a biannual publication on the state of environmental equity in Evanston. Work will begin in September and the first edition released in December. (If you live in Evanston and are interested in helping, contact me).

I wrote about how this came to be in Can a biannual publication nudge continuous community listening? And what I really mean by community listening is the cycle of listening, learning and doing that is embedded in these three activities:

• How a group facilitates listening to the community members it serves.
• How a group helps community members make sense of what it is learning.
• How a group facilitates co-creating solutions with the community members it serves.

A periodic publication is a way for the Environmental Justice Coalition members to make sense of what they are learning. We pause to look around us, reflect on what is happening and what it means, and take a moment to make that meaning explicit and visible, in text and graphics.

But a publication's design - what questions it answers, what content it includes - might also nudge us to assess how well we are facilitating listening to the communities we serve and co-creating solutions that actually make progress in addressing environmental equity.

What are we hearing from the community? What actions are we taking, and what are the results? Where are there gaps and new opportunities to address? These are the guiding questions for the Coalition publication.

This past month I also wrote about two topics that will influence how this publication might play out.

In On listening, I note that by expanding how we think about community listening beyond just our efforts to create effective experiences in meetings, we shift the challenge from "how do we create the precious, cool moments?" to "how do we make sense of all the moments we already have?" Moments can include 1x1 outreach conversations, the interactions we have when delivering programs, and data we gather along the way.

All of this is in service of environmental equity. But what exactly does that entail, for us, in this specific community? In Environmental equity and climate resilience roadmap, I look across a lot of local work that is underway and try to synthesize it into a clear set of actions. Here's the list:

Build community connections and power.
Grow more trees, plants and food.
Nurture parks and open spaces.
Make transit options green, safe and accessible.
Invest in affordable, sustainable housing.
Eliminate man-made environmental hazards.
Reduce waste, increase reuse and sharing.
Design severe weather safeguards.

Keep in mind that each of these describe actions and outcomes that must be assessed in the context of equity. Are we moving forward across these items so that each neighborhood in our community has the same access to assets which move these forward?

As a learning guy, the best I might offer is to build some ways to continuously reflect on that challenge. Pause to look around us, reflect on what is happening and what it means, and take a moment to make that meaning explicit and visible.