[SPEAKER_05]: All right, let's get going. And this is recorded so folks can always go back and check out as well. But yes, so thank you for joining us today on the first event of the accelerating climate resilience speaker series. Today we will talk about building resilience hubs with three awesome superstars that have been working on this topic with the communities over the past years or up to recently. So before we get going, I just want to remind everyone of some logistics for Zoom. So please stay on mute. If you have any questions, please put it in the chat. Our team will collect your questions and when it's time we'll go over them and we'll kind of talk through with our panelists today. And want to remind everyone that we are recording this session so that folks who are missing it can look back and watch them later. If you feel uncomfortable being recorded, please feel free to just turn off your camera. Of course, continue to stay on mute as well. Thank you. All right, and just quickly, I want to share with you about this Accelerating Climate Resilience speaker series. It's a part of the MAPC Accelerating Climate Resilience grant program. This is generously funded by the Barr Foundation. And this particular webinar is in partnership with our Clean Energy clean energy, equity and clean energy webinar series as well. So I know Francelis will drop or someone will drop the link about that. So learn more about our webinars and programs through these webpage. for upcoming events as well. So this speaker series, we're designing this with the intention of convening expertise, experts and practitioners from across the country. Last year we actually had someone from Australia, so I feel like we could go, we could say international as well. who can come together and speak with us about the different practices and or work that they have been working on to help advance resilience in their communities in their region. And so in the past we've talked about sea level rise, effects of sea level rise on municipal budgets, We talk about racial justice and climate equity, building social resilience through art, as well as our youth champions, the current youth movement on climate and what we can learn from them. So we're going to have an exciting year this year. And to kick it off this year, we will start again, as I mentioned, with our conversation around resilience hubs. What is that like? you know, what it entails and what the engagement could look like. And here are our superstar speakers for today. I will just give them a quick introduction here and someone will drop in the chat a slightly longer short bio as well. So I'll stop sharing just to get everyone on screen. But first up is Penelope Fonielli. She's the Prevention and Outreach Manager for the City of Medford since 2015. And as the Prevention and Outreach Manager, Penelope works closely with all the local social service agency, city departments and health providers to ensure Medford's community members are accessing available services and that agencies collaborate easily. This work was proven super important and key during the COVID-19 pandemic when Penelope's role as the community-based organization liaison and department operations manager was critical. And in addition, Penelope oversees the funding to address health equity and the social vulnerabilities associated with the changing climate. So please welcome Penelope. And up next is Aubrey Germ. She's the Climate and Resilience Planner for the City of Baltimore in the Baltimore's Office of Sustainability. Her work involves developing, managing, and implementing a variety of hazard mitigation, climate adaptation, and community resilience plans and projects. Welcome, Aubrey. And last but not least is Abby Ramana. Abby is project director at Clean Energy States Alliance and Clean Energy Group. Abby specializes in equitable low-income solar policy. And at CEG, Abby supports the development of equitable solar and battery storage projects in underserved communities through the Resilient Power Project, which strives to provide resilient power technologies to the communities that need it most. So welcome Penelope, Aubrey, and Abby. Great. So with this, we are going to have more of a conversation. And I just want to emphasize that we understand that based on the registration and everyone that showed up here, thank you for showing up. But this is really just to give you a teaser of what these really awesome human being are doing in their communities to help cultivate and build resilience hubs. This is just the beginning of the conversation, and I hope you will continue thinking about this and support that in your own communities. And of course, any detail, any additional detail or questions you have for them, you know, they've offered to follow up after the this webinar as well. And MAPC will continue to work closely in partnership to really help building the resources to support this really important conversation. All right. So with that, okay. So with that, I would like to open the first question to Penelope and Aubrey. Can you share with us, so maybe start with Penelope, how does your community define Resilience Hub? And also kind of walk us through this process, the journey that you get to today and what are some of the successes to date and what are some key takeaway you learned from this work to date?
[Funaiole]: So, in Medford, we are really defining a resiliency hub is a trusted space where someone can go regularly, enjoy their community aspects, whatever they're interested in, and that there are social supports there as well that can be discreet, but that those social supports are connecting them to whatever it is that they need for themselves and their families. And then with that, When there's an emergency, this is the trusted place to go, that we have built this relationship with our community members, so that this is a reliable space where they can count on. What we found though is that we don't actually have that building right now. So, we said we can't wait until we find a magical building to solve this or to create this so we needed to change the way that we are understanding this concept, and we did that by reformatting to call this a resiliency hub network. Which we are calling Medford connects, and we're taking spaces like our library, we have a Medford family network which has been 2530 years of a true community space and learning place for families. Uh, are where the rec department, the office of prevention outreach does a lot of outreach obviously. So that's another space. So we're, we're making a network. Where you can rely on accessing that communication and really changing the concept from resiliency hub, physical location today. To resiliency. network communications network. So, in our process we're currently working to raise the capacity of all of these locations to communicate out what are their services, what is exciting about their spaces and how to draw folks in. And then we are also supporting those spaces by hiring a group of Medford connectors. So I will go in later detail of the journey that got us to here. But the idea being that these locations will have trusted, well, we don't know if they're trusted, right? They're going to build trust, but they're going to be a reliable place. If you invite someone in with translated language to a space, you need to come through with the ability to communicate when they arrive through that door. So the idea is that these Medford connectors will be able to support each of these locations in that diverse communication ability. So that is what we're currently doing right now. And I would just say the success has been the community support has been overwhelming from every angle, from our city council, our mayor's office, to the community members themselves. We've formed a Haitian task force. We've formed a Arabic task force and we're working to form task forces for our Brazilian Portuguese speaking community and for our Spanish speaking communities. So we're really trying to think about this in a comprehensive way and not just understand through climate change lens because what we need to do is we need to make We need to make this a whole thing and not always like this program meets this and this program does this. And it's like the idea of breaking down the silos, but we need to also do that with our understanding of the purpose of how we're engaging with our community. It's confusing to a community member to say, I'm only going to talk to you about this one, one thing. So in addition to all this, we created a multilingual resource line. So anybody can call, ask us a question in their language and we will respond. One of the questions was, And this was not in any other language, but it was in English. The person's new to Medford, they want a map of a walking tour. That seems like maybe that has nothing to do with climate change or has nothing to do with social services or whatever. What it has to do with is a sense of belonging to your community and that your community is responding to your need. So that's our approach currently. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great. Thank you, Penelope. Aubrey, I'll turn it over to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for tuning in. So in Baltimore, so I've been doing this work for about five years now, and I have since kind of grown our community resiliency program from five to 15, 17-ish organizations. We, our model is working with community-based nonprofits.
[John McLaughlin]: Did it snow in Hart again? No. Sorry about that, Aubrey.
[SPEAKER_02]: It must be snowing somewhere. But anyway, so we similarly are working with a network of community nonprofits that already exist and already have their own mission driven work that they're accomplishing daily. All of these sites, I would consider in the way kind of we define it as natural fit. partners, they are already doing incredible community based work. They are already working day to day with highly vulnerable populations that will become more vulnerable in various acute or you know, chronic crisis situations. And so they are already trusted partners, and that is something that is vetted by kind of the community input that we receive in the program by, you know, just lots of different partners and community members because their services kind of speak for themselves. People already are going there regularly. They're already seen as trusted locations. And the way we kind of think about it is these sites are meant to be hyper-local, so they're not meant to be like the end-all be-all for the whole city. And I will say, you know, that is exciting in the sense that, you know, the potential for growth is really strong, but also that means it, you know, each site isn't going to, I would say, like have a huge amount of coverage. It's meant to support the population nearby that is that knows that place and trust it. or whatever kind of clients or existing community base they already have. And the Resiliencia program helps to build capacity at these organizations and kind of overlay the resilience lens to the work that they're already doing. So these sites and these, especially the leaders of these organizations are already super well-versed in community outreach, in knowing what the community needs in different situations and identifying gaps in wrangling and pulling together resources, and these are the orgs that will be there. in any emergency, no matter what resources or supports they have, they will scrap together whatever they can to keep their doors open, to keep helping people, to keep feeding people and aiding people and whatever that looks like. And so finding these organizations, which are in every city and every community, kind of in the way that we're thinking about it is essential. And I want to acknowledge that you know, the resiliency of concept, as many of you are probably already aware, is like taking off across the country, which is really exciting, but every community is doing it differently. There's no one size fits all model for this work. So, you know, some communities are choosing to use city owned and operated buildings, or, you know, putting all the bells and whistles into one large resiliency hub that's kind of built from the ground up. In Baltimore, the need is so high that the way to get the most kind of impact and reach through this program is through this network of existing sites, and just kind of like dialing up or to like turning up the. the dial a little bit on what the work that they're kind of how they see their work and kind of help cultivate that resilience lens and that idea that you guys want to continue operating you have the willpower to continue operating and helping people in all sorts of situations. but in power outages, in major disasters, in even localized acute disasters where, you know, something happens and you can't do the work that you want to do. Well, there's additional resources that we can, the city can try to help provide so that it increases their confidence, their awareness, their ability to do the work that they want to do. help vulnerable community members and know that they're not doing it alone, that the city actively acknowledges that they help fill a lot of gaps every day and that especially in emergencies, they are trusted way more than any government site that is stood up. And so one of the things that we tend to do in terms of the definition of resilience that we work with is The nuance, which is not easy, but the nuance of working with each org to identify what being a resiliency hub means to them. So for some of them, it is, you know, really rising to the occasion in situations where food insecurity is really high. That feeding people and helping them know where their next meal is coming from and providing shelter in a warm space. is critical to their mission. For others, they specialize in outreach and in distribution of resources and in knowing who needs what and getting those resources to the most vulnerable individuals. So some really see themselves as critical distribution partners. Some see themselves as that go-to resource, that location that people know and trust. And there's kind of everywhere in between. And these orgs all do different things daily. So some will be able to rise to the occasion in a lot of situations. Some might only be able to rise to the occasion in certain ones. So it's acknowledging that they're each different, They each have different capacities, they each have different salaried staff and volunteer bases. And it's a really the whole point of this is like it's a two way communication program where you know it's it's at the core supposed to help build trust between the community and the city. help build that working relationship and that rapport and not be just like, you know, you guys are supposed to operate in isolation on your own, but it's really a hand in hand effort that is built over time. And as situations arise, and with kind of the goal of building out as many resources on, on site in our blue skies times and like more, you know, normal situations, we're trying to outfit each org with solar and battery backup power, energy efficiency upgrades to their buildings, high quality emergency preparedness supplies, emergency preparedness training and awareness building, community outreach materials, and kind of connections to grants and other funding opportunities that they themselves can get. I often write letters of support or help provide technical support on grant applications. So we try to also see it in this very holistic way where it's not just connections to resources to support in climate emergencies, but all scales. And I would love to talk later more about how the resiliency of program, you know, was really, really effective in the pandemic, which was not a typical, we were not like preparing the hub program to support in a pandemic, but the kind of definition and scope of the program has shifted. as these community orgs have adapted to meet the needs of their communities in different situations. So it's evolving. There's no like one definition, I would say, in all of this, but at the core is working with each org to better, you know, support and connect them to the resources that will enable them to scale up their work in the way they want to.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's fantastic. I think what I kind of one keyword I or term I take away and right away is that capacity building right like not just like, here's the here's the resource that the city, or like the you know our local governments providing, but at the same time it's like you know, building that trust and bridge for communications, but at the same time giving them that space so that they can build their own. And speaking of snow, it's super relatable, right? Like when you tell a New Englander that we're going to have three to five inches of snow, like I think everyone knows what to do, I think almost everyone do, right, like in terms of getting your salt, getting your milk and water and bread and ice cream and all that, right, like you know what, like what's your checklist look like, and we need to normalize that and extend that too to other extreme weather events, extreme heat, extreme storms, other things that are being amplified by the changing climate. And with that, the local communities, they know best. They have the champions, they know where to go to, who to talk to. And so equipping or empowering them with the resources and the conversations and the knowledge is super important. And you touched lightly on, you know, the solar and battery storage for some of the hubs that is kind of, you know, building that up. So I want to turn the conversation over to Abby a little bit to think about, or if you could share with us in terms of, you know, opportunities to incorporate energy resilience or to think about energy resilience and also carbon footprint reduction in a typical resilience hub or what you define as resilience hub in the communities you work with?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. I think energy resilience, well, one, I want to say I'm really glad Penelope and Aubrey both brought up the kind of holistic aspect of resilience hubs because we at Clean Energy Group, It's in our name. We obviously focus on energy resilience in particular, but we're very aware that that's only one aspect of what a successful resilience hub looks like. And really the energy side of things should be in support of what the organization is already doing. So the idea of energy resilience is, you know, the ability to keep kind of running normal or modified operations. when there is a power outage, whether that's because of severe weather or, you know, just some sort of grid malfunction. So having kind of resilient power resources, and we tend to look at that as solar and battery storage, but we have supported projects that include, you know, solar and battery and combined heat and power or a fuel cell or kind of other aspects of it. So it doesn't have to just be solar and battery storage, but that is kind of our bread and butter Um, and for us, energy resilience, um, it kind of supports two separate goals. So the first is, like I said, um, allowing the organization to maintain operations during a power outage, whether that's, you know, there's a severe weather event or another kind of climate related disaster or something else. And so, um, it should kind of allow them to have backup power for kind of, um, whatever services they want to offer. So if it's food services, then Maybe they can power a refrigerator or they have outlets where folks can go and charge their phones or, you know, we've supported fire stations in Puerto Rico where they needed, you know, their communications equipment to be operating so they could actually go to emergencies after Hurricane Maria, for example. And one of the things that we see as our huge benefit to solar and battery storage over fossil fuel based backup power so things like a diesel generator is when you aren't limited by the amount of diesel you have so that was actually again a huge issue for a lot of our Puerto Rico projects is You know, these are places that were running out of power didn't have power for months. So they ran out of diesel very quickly and you know it's for some places that are more remote, it was, you know, a multi day journey just to go and get diesel to fuel generators so. you're having fire stations that are just going without power because they didn't have diesel for their generators. So having the ability to have on-site generation is super important and it can actually give you pretty remarkable backup power if you have an adequately sized battery to where you can just Kind of have it last for the days that you, you know, it's cloudy or just at night until you can get that solar generation going again to recharge the battery. You can get, you know, three to seven days of resilience just from that. And in addition to having that kind of onsite generation and backup power, and you also don't have to worry about things like indoor pollution, that's another thing we saw. Some of you might remember from the snow storms in Texas, we were seeing a huge spike in carbon monoxide poisonings from folks. running diesel generators inside their homes. So that's another big concern for us is, you know, using clean generation, both just in terms of not using fossil fuels, but also literally improving indoor air quality for folks. And then the other benefit of having a battery is when, you know, there isn't a severe weather event, when it's blue skies, you can also, if you're in a state that has demand response programs, which Massachusetts does, You can actually be getting bill savings off of that battery as well through demand response programs and that is kind of an aspect of energy resilience that we we see is a part of capacity building in a way because it's allowing these groups to benefit from the battery, to benefit from bill savings, to be able to reinvest in their services and in their community through those bill savings, even when there isn't a power outage. So it's really a sort of holistic approach to kind of improving the autonomy of these organizations and allowing them to serve their communities and continue to serve their communities in the best way possible.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would like to follow up with a question just to learn more about this Resilient Power Technical Assistance Fund that I think the Clean Energy Group is working on or offers. Can you share a little bit more about that in terms of like the model, you know, and any brief example of case studies of communities that have taken advantage of that resource and what that looks like?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so the Resilient Power Project, which is the project I work on under Clean Energy Group, was started in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy. That was kind of the One of the biggest severe weather events here in the Northeast and after that event we were really seeing that underserved communities, communities that have historically had the least investment in grid infrastructure nearby are the ones most likely to lose power during a severe weather event. They're most likely to have folks who can't evacuate or who need to shelter in place for whatever reason. And that was kind of where we're like, OK, this is where there needs to be greater investment in getting clean energy resources, resilient power resources to these communities. And one of the biggest initial hurdles we were seeing for we particularly cater to kind of what we call community serving institutions. So that's both we work with a ton of affordable housing providers as well as municipal facilities, but also a large number of our awardees are nonprofits, community based institutions. folks who are kind of just, you know, working in marginalized communities in whatever capacity. And what the Technical Assistance Fund does is we provide small grants to cover what we call pre-development feasibility assessments So that's kind of the initial assessment of a site to see whether or not it can support solar and storage and what kind of resilience you could expect to get from the amount of solar and storage that the site can support. So for a lot of these groups, they're not experts in solar, they're not experts in batteries. So this is a really valuable first step for them to have a unbiased expert who's in their corner who's like all right let's you know walk through what you want to do and what you hope to get out of this process and hope to kind of have as an end product and what do we need to do to get you there. Um, it's really, it's helpful for, um, also just giving folks a sense of their options. So, okay. If you can't afford, you know, a huge battery, then what can you afford? Can you, um, only do solar right now? And maybe that's battery ready solar. So it's ready to be hooked up to a battery. Um, later on, what are your, the, um, financing options that are available in your state? What are the incentives that are available in your state? Um, you know, all of this is like pretty technical stuff and, um, for most of these community groups that might only have two staff that are full time, they just don't have the capacity to go through that on their own. So we found that this is a really helpful way to kind of demystify the process a little bit and give folks a good kind of standing to then move forward with pursuing installing the system. We wish we could cover the cost of installation, but unfortunately we do not have that level of funding. So we are able to offer these kind of small level grants And in particular, now with the rollout of the expansion of the investment tax credit for solar and now also for battery storage and the addition of bonus credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, we're seeing a lot more interest from folks. And honestly, it's just a lot more feasible for nonprofits and states with less supportive regulatory environments than Massachusetts, for example, to potentially get stolen storage. So we're hopeful that this program will be able to expand and help more groups get resilient power. And I missed, you wanted an example of a community as well. So I know I've been talking for a long time, but I can just like, we do, we have supported several resilience hubs. One that's kind of in the Massachusetts area is Cambridge Community Center. And that's a community center in the Cambridge area. They've been there in a huge old historical building. that's currently under renovation and they were able to use a technical assistance fund to get a solar and storage feasibility assessment. They're going through kind of energy efficiency upgrades as well and they're hoping to get a fairly large scale battery to support backup power for a full kitchen. So that once all their upgrades are complete, they'll be able to provide food services to the local community as well as act as a heating and cooling center. And that's a big aspect of a lot of the resilience hubs we've supported in the past is that heating and cooling aspects. So being able to provide heat in the winter when the power is out for folks who've lost power as well as air conditioning in heat waves.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great, thank you for reminding me about my questions. That was great to share on somethinglocal.a4. Franceli, so we're dropping the link in the chat. We can learn more about that. Turning the questions back, the conversation back to Aubrey and Penelope to kind of talk through a little bit further. You both mentioned and directly or indirectly about, you know, the key is building trust, right? This relationship with the community members. How did, how did you, how do you build trust for this internal and external collaborations both you know with staff to support you know different departments to support the resources but also with the community. organizations or the community members and like, you know, make this space for them. And so maybe start with Aubrey and I know Penelope, you have, you know, as part of this project, a wonderful community liaison model. Perhaps you can also share about that as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, yeah. So, you know, I think Baltimore specifically, one of the things that I've noticed that's really worked to expand this program is kind of initiating conversations not as like a sense that oh the city has this program and we want to like you know, impose it on you, but it's more of a conversation around, we acknowledge and see that you are already doing critical work in the community and climate change and disasters are happening at an increasing rate, right? Like there's more stuff going on in Baltimore all the time. Most of these community orgs have already, you know, supported a lot of community-based crisis events in different ways, they know. a lot of these organizations, I've also heard inherently are like, our communities are in crisis all the time. So it doesn't matter what scale or what nature or what time period or how severe, it's like, they see that as kind of their root, the root of the mission driven work that they do. And so it's really just, I always start with just a conversation around like, you know, the work that they're already doing and how, the resiliency hub model and the additional kind of components of it are providing back end kind of support for the work that they're already doing to help bring more resources and connections to resources to their existing work, not imposing additional workload, or that the city is placing additional burden on them. And I try to, you know, have these conversations around, like, this is a collaborative opportunity, you know, and one of the things too, that I always say, because the, we have, you know, 17 orgs in the program, but right now, for example, four, sorry, five have solar and battery storage, three more, four more, sorry, are slated to receive solar and battery, because they have funding lined up. And then I have a grant application right now into FEMA for up to 17 community orgs, solar and battery storage solution. The opportunities for like major investments in these buildings only comes as opportunities present themselves every once in a while there's no like big funding source out there where it's like if you become a resiliency hub you get all these things at once, so I always start with a low cost no cost strategies We're starting a conversation. I'd love to start roping you into the monthly meetings that we have. I'd love to start just keeping the door open. Because some orgs, I will say, are skeptical at first. They're like, what is the city program? And what are they trying to put on us or do? Or especially if I ever leave with like some, if there's like a solar battery feasibility opportunity, as Abby was saying, we got grant funding a while back for Oh, for supporting solar and battery feasibility studies for 30 organizations in Baltimore. When I was conducting outreach around hey we have this like free solar and battery assessment opportunity. Some orgs are just like, what is the city trying to sell us. this is free we're just trying all we need is access to your building like we'd love to just give you a free feasibility report so you know what the opportunities might be if you're interested in backup power and cost savings you know with renewable energy so that was like one opportunity where we got that funding for more sites than we already had existing partnerships with so then it was this outreach meeting with a solar battery feasibility study. And that was just that was actually hard to do. We had some great like responses, but a lot of the orgs we reached out to were like, very skeptical. And I had to try to ping them a couple of times. And they were they expressed like their skepticism. And then when I was able to finally explain it to them, they're like, Oh, okay, this is great. The city's not usually trying to give us free things ever. So like, I understand. very much understand. Um, so it's, it's part of like acknowledging, especially being on the city side, acknowledging that you're part of the city, and acknowledging that the community does not always trust government and being real and honest about that and that is okay. I think communities often want the city to be more humble and acknowledging their role in the existing disparities and injustices that exist and so it's okay to like you know talk and leave with that and acknowledge that this program is part of a solution not the end all be all but part of a solution to bringing more investment and better resource delivery to communities that are underserved and have been underserved for decades so part of like the, what kind of was successful in the pandemic for example, was, you know, because I already had connections built with a lot of organizations. At the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was pretty crazy, a lot of the orgs just reached out to me organically and were like, hey, Aubrey, we're really confused. There's all this messaging coming out about this, this, and this. We're not sure what's true. We're not sure where to send people. We're not sure how to refer people to different services. A lot of community members are not trusting the testing sites and the vaccination sites that are at city-owned operated sites or the food resources. They think if they go, to a city rec center site for some of the food work that's going on that they're going to IDs are going to need to be checked and like they're going to get on some list that the government's going to have and they're, you know, so these were various conversations coming from different community organizations where it was like these are real challenges, and I was able to relay some of that information to the city agencies that had say over where those resources were allocated. So I talked to the health department, I talked to our food policy team that was handling the city's emergency food strategy. I talked to our office of emergency management on how they were distributing PPE and all that and made sure that the community based approach was ingrained and kind of all the work that was going on. And it wasn't just oh, we're just going to stand up city sites at our libraries and rec centers and schools because it's easier and we have you know control over those buildings and you know whatever but and they have set you know standard open and close times but rather that even though it might have been harder or more nuanced making sure that the community-based response was being supported in their resource distribution work in just getting in on various communications getting access to the various like real rapid relief grant opportunities that were popping up and I would immediately as soon as I heard something I would send it to them I would offer technical support and writing support and letters of support, because part of what being a resiliency hub can do for A community based organization is it gives them that extra edge of like they're already partnered with the city they're already committed to building resilience and getting resources out quickly to those who need them most. And so there's this like extra layer of just like clout, I guess, some of the work that they're doing, which in major disasters can be really helpful in like getting things out the door quicker, because I don't know if any people on the call are with jurisdictions, but something that I saw and have seen is that sometimes the city fits on resources because they don't know the best way to get it out the door or it's sitting in a warehouse. Like there was lots of PPE, like sitting in a warehouse and communities were like, we need this. And so I was like, you're a distribution partners that are already committed to this work. And it was really interesting and effective. Same thing with when there were, you know, hard to reach, really hard to reach communities around testing and vaccination. I was able to share a list of existing partners in those hard to reach areas and say, they want to work with you, health department, you know. So, and then the health department was able to start standing up testing and vaccination clinics that help where the community was able to say, we want this here. And also don't just come in once for one big clinic. Like we need this, the community needs to see regular commitment and acknowledgement that this is for them and that this feels safe to them. So there was just the two-way communication relationship building between city entities that have, you know, power over resources, and then the community voice being able to directly inform how the city handles this type of work in emergencies of various scale, I think is just so critical. And so as those situations arise, like trust gets built, because these services are working better for these communities than if they were just like referred to a helpline, and like, put in line with everybody else. It's like, they know how effective they can be and the city is acknowledging how effective they can be and working with them and not against them to help do the work.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's so awesome. Thank you for sharing that and such a great reminder of not just talking about it, but showing up actually, you know, and acknowledge our gaps and opportunities where we can grow together and improve together and take that feedback and, you know, and show your response. Penelope, I'll turn to you. I know I mentioned just now too, but can you please share about this awesome community engagement model that the City of Medicare kind of developed for this project? What works, you know, and what's next? And then, you know, should other communities consider what they want to involve community members in the work, kind of echoing what Aubrey was saying too, but like, you know, what should they consider? Capacity, financial support, and things like that from your, you know, experience in Medford.
[Funaiole]: Yeah, thank you. Um, so, the city of Medford approached. So, let me first say this right relationships are key, and also giving credit where credit is due is also key I am, I am just a piece of this puzzle of people who have really created this model within the city. We have, you know, our sustainability director who now is the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability, Alicia Hunt. She was the first one to say, hey, I think the health department needs to get involved. I think the Outreach and Prevention Office could really help make this a reality. And there were a few things set up like I was saying like we had our community partner liaison sort of model where we have a weekly meeting when people have really high risk but a lot of multi service needs. So we already have that going on and. And the other piece of the puzzle for the city of Medford is we're resource desert every agency with the exception of one. that is important and critical to serve our community, they sit in the other surrounding cities around us. And so it's really difficult for our community members to see that those agencies are actually a part of our work, because they'll go to Malden, they'll say, well, Malden took care of me at the DTA office or at, you know, the food resources or something. But luckily, we did have our YMCA came in and helped us really build out a lot of that work. We distributed, I believe, like 6,000, 7,000 meals in a short period in 2020. We created this RUOK program where we had volunteers calling and really resourcing things to people. So we sort of built up our capacity to get to the liaison model. prior to and then through the pandemic and really understanding like, what are we missing here? Because we're doing a good job. We were really proud of what we were getting done, but we were missing a lot. We had built a language access team, but it wasn't enough. And these are volunteers, right? So we need to pay people to help us do this work. So our first step was to say, number one, do we even know what we're talking about? Right, so we brought in, we brought in people with lived experience. It was low income food insecurity, we did trainings to staff to our local, our local organizations and agencies to say, are we all on the same page. And are you speaking correctly when you're addressing our community members, because if you are automatically using language that is very isolating marginalizing. So, unfortunately, there have been many calls where we're like, that's not a nice thing to say don't say it like that you know so really holding ourselves accountable. To really doing this work in the long term in the future and then also thinking about like, how do you build the, the understanding of where we're coming from. And so that's just really looking at like where's points of interest for different departments in different ways. So number one foundation. This is a three prong approach I'm getting to the liaisons in a second, the city officials need to understand what we're doing and they need to operate it together. right, chief of police, chief of fire, whatever, right? Everybody needs to be on the same page. Second, we, again, making sure that our agencies are all on the same page too, because we don't want to drive people to agencies that are stigmatizing. We can't do that, right? I can't ask from the city's perspective to bring in these paid liaisons to go out and do that. So what we did was we hired a team of our community members, one being our black African-American representative We had a Haitian Creole representative, a Spanish speaking representative, an Arabic speaking representative, and a Brazilian Portuguese speaking representative. Those are our key largest populations that we wanted to outreach to. What was incredible about this team was they didn't come in as community organizers. They came in with their own talents, their own understandings, their own professional places. So David Mojica-Perez, he came in, he's working at the schools in the EL department. So not only is he our Spanish-speaking liaison, he's also got an in-touch, real day-to-day experience working with the young people in our community. Isadora Brito she was our Portuguese speaking liaison. She is, she works at BMC and domestic violence work and getting people social support so she brought that lens to the table. We had Aaron Olapade, he's a young up and coming you know political science major but he's, he was our black, our black African American representative and he's an incredible facilitator. He's an incredible meeting, he can run a good meeting so he was able to teach all them, you know skills for their meeting outreach and the ways that they were doing stuff. Samira Hayek, she is deeply embedded in her community in the Arabic speaking community and she'd already been for years like newcomers come here I'm going to show you how to get here. I'm going to show you where this lies and so she's already done a lot of that resource mapping and management, and then we have Darlene Raymond who is our like, oh, she's just She's just a superstar, invites and attracts people in. So they were able to kind of work together. And ultimately they really were saying, look, let's have some multicultural, we want a multicultural center. We don't just want individual communities. We want to create a whole community as a team. So they did a lot of work in building up as best as they could, like groups. So our Arabic community and our Haitian community were able to really build and coalesce groups where they're discussing climate change, learning about climate change and adaptive capacity and all of the other lingo. But they also are, you know, really inviting those folks in and right now in 15 minutes our Medford Haitian Task Force is singing to all the staff at City Hall for our final event for Black History Month. And they did, they did the same thing at our interfaith meeting. So the point is, is that they're getting into the community, and they really like, leading by example, they're doing their best. It's been very difficult for our Spanish speaking community and our Brazilian Portuguese speaking community to coalesce. Two reasons, our Brazilian Portuguese speaking community, they have one language that they're all speaking, right? And one culture, but they're also very busy people, right? And so they are business owners there. So we're working at an angle right now where we're looking at like, how can we create like a business community amongst our Brazilian professionals, right? And then with our Spanish speaking population, it is difficult because there are a lot of people who speak Spanish, but they're from a lot of different cultures and a lot of different backgrounds. And so Trying to figure out what that simulation looks like across those communities and thinking about how to thread some sort of movement forward. That's something we're still in creation of. So what we've done is we've embedded these roles into the health department. So this is all grant funding. And I have to tell you that this is how you get something started, right? This is a prove-it model. Let me show you how I can do this. Please give us a chance that you can buy into this idea. The only challenge with that is that it's still part-time. These people really need to be full-time. We really need a full-time team so that they can be available and responsive and earn a very, very important part of this. would be economic needs, right? We want our employees to be able to earn a good living and feel confident, right? So that's one key thing that I wanna say is that I want to see in the future, these is full-time city funded positions, and for us to continue to think about other communities in other ways. So for this next round, so this was for a round of grant funding, that was our first pass. The second pass that we're doing now, it's really, again, I said this earlier is to take that model and then apply that model to multiple locations throughout the city with a few of our nonprofits that are really involved with us, our West Medford Community Center and our YMCA, our Mystic Community Market, which is the YMCA's together, and really give and get that resource in those spaces too, right, to really drum up more effort of outreach and engagement. The key to this, though, is that it was pointed out that we really need to have an Asian community representative. And that gets really complicated because there are so many languages that would need to be served. And so we can't necessarily get an individual. So what we're looking at doing is using our medical reserve corps effort and creating that language access volunteer team so that we can get a myriad of Asian-speaking languages as a team and have them start gathering and coalescing, and then having a coordinator who can activate that team just like we did throughout the pandemic with our volunteer response. So we're really trying to just be as comprehensive as possible, but it's hard to just to be deep, because at the end of the day, this takes time. And this is the only thing that you need to walk around away with for me, OK? A sense of belonging takes time. Trust takes time. People need to, one, you need to learn. Not I need to learn what they need. We both need to learn, as you were saying, Aubrey. But I really need to be present. I need to show myself in spaces. where people are gathering and really build that relationship, allow for it to flourish on its own time, not on my time, not on the grant's time, and not, but, you know, that's the long-term goal. I'm a prevention specialist. I know it's a long game all the time, so I've got it in me to be tenacious and keep moving forward. But really to keep articulating that to my partners, and to the city, and to elected officials that this is a really critical component of community engagement. But I think. I think overall, I just wanna make sure I didn't. The other thing that I wanna tell you about, it's really critical. I see 104 people on this call. Your chat is flying. You've got all kinds of lingo and language and jargon. That's not the lingo and the jargon that you go out to this community with, right? You don't go to your community members and use all these big language words that you're consolidating concepts for. Break it down, make it simple, make it humanistic. What is it going to benefit that person if they're involved in this, right? And really thinking about that as you're bringing this community education about climate change and all of this effort that you're really considering who is listening and how are they hearing you? Right, not what you have to say. So one of the key things that we discussed for multiple meetings was the concept of the word resiliency, it does not translate into those languages. So we can't use that we can't we can't be putting it all over flyers. Because I can't then translate it so that it makes sense right so every translation that we get done we pay for a large translation, and then we have our liaisons review it for context, the word homelessness. It's not okay to put that down on your pamphlet. You have to change the way that that is framed because the straight translation is not friendly. It's not inviting. It's not helpful. So I would be very, very, very remiss to say if I didn't say this to you, look at the language you're using, ensure that you're vetting it with a group of people who can really give you feedback on it. And that's the way forward. I think, so that's, I think that this is a short meeting so I'm gonna step back.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's great. I, like I said we could have this conversation all afternoons but then you'll be very mad at me. I have so many more questions as you can see and notice the questions are flying in the chat as well. I think some are very specific and thank you to to you all for taking the time to address some of them very specific questions. We're running out of time, so we won't be able to address all the questions, but we will follow up with an email and we will coordinate with our panelists today to get some of the responses and the resources and links and things like that out to you. There are some wonderful examples, references of organizations, community-based organizations in there as well. So thank you all for your participation. I want to end this session, just this conversation today. We will continue this for sure. And you'll hear more from these wonderful stars as well. But for today, I hope you can leave with some thoughts with this question. So Looking at the bigger picture of building climate and social resilience I truly believe to be climate resilience, and these examples that you share today, our communities need to be resilient, you know, whether it is thinking that the capacity buildings their resources. financially sound, so like make sure that they can respond to all the impacts that many of them are disproportionately impacted by climate change, for sure. But looking at this bigger picture, what's next? What's next for your work on this topic and what gives you hope for this work? Let's start with Abby, sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. Yeah, I'll say for us, the thing that we're most excited about right now is the opportunities that are coming out under the Inflation Reduction Act. You know, with the expansion of the ITC and all the bonus credits, this is like an unprecedented level of investment and opportunity for nonprofits in particular to access solar and battery storage. And it's super exciting. I mean, I think this is going to help shift the autonomy and the power of these groups and just really expand clean energy. So we're very excited about that. I'm gonna drop a link in the chat actually to some resources we recently published on that. And I encourage you all, if you have groups in your communities who might be interested in solar and storage, send them our way. We'd love to support them if we can. Thank you all.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Abby.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so similarly, um, you know, something that would really be a game changer for Baltimore's program is if the schema grant comes through. case where the city was the applicant on behalf of 17 community-based organizations applying for solar and battery. And because of that feasibility study that I had mentioned earlier, that's what enabled us. We already had these systems designed due to feasibility study funding that we had. So that's just such a critical piece. The FEMA funding could potentially also support site enhancement costs that are, but for those enhancements or improvements, the solar couldn't be installed. So for example, some upgrades to the building or the roof in order to handle the system, things like that. A lot of these organizations, if you're working with community-based works, they have a lot of deferred maintenance on their buildings. They're operating out of old churches, old community centers, old school buildings, things like that. And so it's really important that if we're talking about, you know, renewable energy, backup power, things like that, that the site specific needs are also considered. And the SEMA grant could potentially cover kind of all things, because in the past, we've had to apply for like, you know, one thing first, then another, then another, or wait for the organization to raise funds to repair their roof so that we could get solar and battery, you know, so there's just, it's very piecemeal. And this opportunity could be really great. similar to what Abby was saying, there's ways now to maximize the cost savings and the benefits to community-based organizations that weren't there before. Really excited about that potential. Baltimore is really interested in figuring out if we get that funding, how to promote workforce development and on-site job training with the installation of these systems and integrate that. We've got some really great solar partners that are helping out with all of this. We'll see. what happens. But if anyone on the call has questions, again I don't know if that FEMA grant is going to come through, but we did have to do a benefit cost analysis to access, to be able to apply for this opportunity. So, and I know that FEMA is trying to figure out how to make their funding opportunities more accessible for pre-disaster mitigation and also for communities and environmental justice communities. So, just keep that on your radar. Because that's really, really exciting potential there. And really just excited about continuing to expand community partnerships. There's just every community has so many amazing community organizations doing the work already. So in my mind, it's really just a matter of working better together, acknowledging each other's role, and capabilities and, you know, opportunity and maximizing opportunities for impact.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great. We're going to cross our fingers and rooting for you. Please keep us updated when that FEMA grant comes through and so we can virtually celebrate together. And, you know, I think a lot of folks here will be interested. And for folks locally, the MVP Action Grant, I believe the resilience hubs work in MedFARC. was actually part of it, or if not all, was funded through the MVP Action Grant and supplemented with the Accelerating Climate Resilience Municipal Grant as well. So reach out to us if you have questions and we're happy to talk more about it. And Penelope, last but not least, parting word, 30 seconds, sorry.
[Funaiole]: My 30 seconds are a little selfish. I'm looking forward to seeing my network come to fruition over the next year and a half and hoping to come back and tell you how this is working out for us in the future. So thank you all.
[SPEAKER_05]: Beautiful. Thank you all so much for your time today. Thank you to the audience for the questions. We will definitely follow up. Have a great day and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you all.
[John McLaughlin]: Thanks, everyone. Recording stopped.