Sustainable Schoolyards

Sustainable Schoolyards create and maintain healthy and dynamic learning environments that demonstrate interconnectedness and a sense of place. .Friends of Smart Growth and Sustainable Communities is a diverse group of national organizations who have come together to create the Sustainable Schoolyards exhibit at the U.S. Botanical Garden and a website with fact sheets. The exhibit illustrates some of the outdoor classroom concepts, ecological teaching tools, and creative play ideas that can be added to almost any schoolyard in America.

Earth Partnership for Schools

The Earth Partnership Program is an outgrowth of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum's focus on ecological restoration as a way of establishing a positive relationship between people and the land. The program assists teachers in establishing restoration projects on school sites and provides the tools for building a curriculum that incorporates restoration into almost any subject area. It addresses a growing nature deficit disorder in children; enhances learning across the curriculum; strengthens school, family and community relationships and provides the tools for restoring the land and enhancing our relationship to it.

http://uwarboretum.org/eps

Kids Gardening

The National Gardening Association seeks to promote home, school, and community gardening as a means to renew and sustain the essential connections between people, plants, and the environment. Programs and initiatives highlight the opportunities for plant-based education in schools, communities, and backyards across the country. The Adopt a School Garden® program links schools (K-12) and youth gardens to supporting funds, materials, and technical assistance through corporate and individual donors. Through this program NGA hopes to attain its goal of achieving a garden in every school.

www.kidsgardening.com; http://assoc.garden.org/ag/asg/

Natural Learning Initiative

The purpose of the Natural Learning Initiative is to promote the importance of the natural environment in the daily experience of all children, through environmental design, action research, education, and dissemination of information. It helps communities create stimulating places for play, learning, and environmental education - environments that recognize human dependence on the natural world.

http://www.naturalearning.org

ENHANCING COMMUNITY THROUGH LOCALLY GROWN FOOD

Farm to School

Farm to School brings healthy food from local farms to school children nationwide. These programs connect schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers. This growing farm to school movement is supported by eight regional lead agencies that comprise the National Farm to School Network, which offers training and technical assistance, information services, networking, and support in policy and media and marketing activities.

www.farmtoschool.org

Local Harvest

Local Harvest maintains an organic and local food website. It provides a reliable nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources which helps people find products from family farms, local sources of sustainably grown food, and encourages them to establish direct contact with small farms in their local area.

www.localharvest.org

HARVEST NOW

The Jefferson Area Board on Aging (JABA), an area agency on aging, is working with area farmers and organizational consumer groups to create a model community food system which will: foster connections between consumers and local farmers, re-introduce healthy foods into the diets of the region’s residents, reduce the miles between farm and table, preserve farmland, develop arable urban land, and encourage business development in the local economy. JABA’s goal for the first year is to have its kitchen produce a meal each day that is at least 25% locally grown.

www.jabacares.org

WASHINGTON STATE LAW TO SUPPORT LOCAL FARMS

Washington State has passed legislation that increases the amount of Washington-grown food consumed through the state's schools, food banks and farmers’ markets. This bill will help keep local farms working and promote new awareness of how food choices affect health, communities, and the environment. A broad coalition of environmental, farming, school and public health interests worked together to push the effort through.

http://environmentalpriorities.org/local-farms/local-farms-healthy-kids

CULTIVATING COMMUNITY GARDENS

A new fact sheet from the Local Government Commission offers case studies, best management practices, resources and tools for policymakers to develop creative, cost-effective solutions that reduce barriers and facilitate the creation of community garden programs

http://www.lgc.org/freepub/land_use/factsheets/
communtiy_gardens/index.html

Green For All Campaign

Addressing the two critical issues of pollution and poverty with one solution, Green for All is dedicated to bringing “green collar” jobs to urban areas. Launched in late September at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, the initiative seeks to capitalize on the exploding green economy while ensuring that people from disadvantaged communities benefit. The goal is to secure job training for 250,000 workers in green jobs that will be difficult to outsource, such as retrofitting buildings to more energy efficient modes. www.greenforall.org;

A guide to “Green Collar Jobs in America’s Cities” is available, which outlines strategies for developing green-collar job initiatives and pathways out of poverty at the local level. http://www.greenforall.org/resources/
green-collar-jobs-in-america2019s-cities

Resources on Green Collar Jobs

A new section of the Community-Wealth website includes models, research resources, support organizations and more about Green Collar Jobs. Here you’ll find the latest on how to build an inclusive “green economy.”

http://www.community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/green/index.html

Green Community Building

Shelterforce's (Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Building) Summer 2008 issue profiles green community building with stories on Sustainable South Bronx, green building, and urban gardening.

http://www.community-wealth.org/_pdfs/news/recent-articles/07-08/article-shelterforce08.pdf

D.C. Greenworks

This group of nonprofit social enterprises trains and employs local "at-risk" youth. The Green Collar Job Training Program reaches out to the city’s low-income, ethnically diverse population to foster new job opportunities and training in the urban forestry, nursery, and landscaping industries. D.C. Greenworks’ Low-Impact Development program offers installation services of greenroofs and rain gardens.

http://www.dcgreenworks.org/index.html

Richmond, CA Solar Affordable Housing Project

The project encourages the use of solar energy throughout the city, helps low-income homeowners reduce their utility bills, and provides Richmond residents with professional skills on solar technology. Residential solar electric systems are installed free of charge for homeowners, including families, seniors and persons with disabilities. Installation teams are comprised of Youth Works construction trainees.

www.solarrichmond.org

Managing Neighborhood Change: A Framework for Sustainable and Equitable Revitalization

This publication offers CDCs, local officials, and other stakeholders, including

local institutional, business, and community leaders, a new way to look at how they can manage neighborhood change in order to bring about sustainable and equitable revitalization.

http://www.community-wealth.org/_pdfs/news/recent-articles/07-08/report-mallach08.pdf

Key Facts on Food Insecurity and Hunger among Latino Children

In 2006, 26% of Latino children were food insecure, meaning that they lacked nutritionally adequate and safe foods and had a limited or uncertain ability to acquire suitable foods in socially acceptable ways. This fact sheet shows that limited resources for food restrict Latino children’s ability to have a nutritionally adequate diet. As a result, food insecure Latino children face higher odds of developing difficulties in cognition, language, motor skills, behavior, learning, and socio-emotional skills.

http://www.nclr.org/content/publications/detail/52524/

COMMUNITY-ORIENTED APPROACH TO SCHOOLS

ICMA has a new guide which provides an understanding of the connections between school facility planning and local government management issues. It offers strategies and case examples for bringing planning efforts together to take a more community-oriented approach to schools and reach multiple goals – education, environmental, economic, social and fiscal.

http://icma.org/documents/SGNReport.pdf

COMMUNITY WEALTH TOOLBOX

As part of a Community-Wealth.org’s broader effort to encourage democratic, common asset, wealth building work, this toolbox brings together a range of practitioner-oriented materials to help communities cut across traditional divisions.

http://community-wealth.org/strategies/tools/index.html

INNOVATION NETWORK FOR COMMUNITIES

INC is a new national network, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, which seeks to spur community-wealth building. It identifies and works with partner organizations on the development and launch of scalable innovations that can transform a community’s economic and workforce development; land use policies; and education, transportation, energy and health care systems.

www.in4c.net

EIGHT LESSONS TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY IN PUBLIC PLACES

This fact sheet from the Project for Public Spaces offers key ideas and practical steps for organizations as they begin thinking about engaging a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic groups through their public spaces and programming.

http://www.pps.org/info/newsletter/november2007/
diversity_in_public_spaces

Coast Rebuilding Reports

Enterprise Community Partners produces periodic reports on what knowledge can be gained from the experience that is rebuilding the Gulf Coast region. These reports include information redevelopment, policy, and region sustainability.

For more information, visit: http://www.enterprisecommunity.org/programs/gulf_coast_rebuilding/

RESOURCES FOR BUILDING YOUTH AND FAMILY ASSETS

The Youth Education and Families (YEF) Institute helps low-income families build assets and increase economic stability through peer networking opportunities, access to national experts, and customized technical assistance, to name a few.

For more information visit: http://www.nlc.org/iyef

COMMUNITY-CAMPUS PARTNERSHIPS FOR HEALTH

A network of over 1,800 communities and campuses are collaborating to promote health through service-learning, community-based participatory research, broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. A major goal is to combine the knowledge, wisdom and experience in communities and in academic institutions to solve major health, social and economic challenges.

http://depts.washington.edu/ccph

NATIONAL COLLABORATION FOR YOUTH

Providing a united voice for youth advocates in America, this organization’s goal is to improve the conditions of young people and to help them reach their full potential. The affiliated National Youth Development Information Center is a one-stop website for youth workers and provides current news and a variety of tools to the youth development field.

www.nydic.org

STATE STRATEGIES TO REDUCE CHILD AND FAMILY POVERTY

This NGA issue brief outlines the long-term social and economic costs of poverty to children, families, communities and states – and highlights several policy and program options to reduce poverty among children and families.