Interview with Changemakers | NorCal Resilience Network

Meet the Changemaker: Bonnie Borucki and the Ashby Garden

by admin | May 4, 2021 | Food, Interview with Changemakers, Resilience Hubs

This interview is part of an occasional series showcasing different inspirational community organizers who are part of the NorCal Resilience Network and organizing resilience hubs. Meet Bonnie Borucki and the Ashby Garden!

Ashby Garden, located in South Berkeley was founded in 2004. It started in an empty lot of the location and grew into a flourishing garden of many fruits, flowers, and vegetables. People here grow their own food and are independent of ongoing city programs. Volunteers also come by to help out with the garden and participate in community events. People also come together to share their knowledge of urban farming and grow food collectively.

NorCal Resilience intern Tracy Ngyuyen caught up with Bonnie to talk about this beautiful oasis and her role in it.

How did the garden begin? How has it grown and flourished?

We have a group of young people who are food activists and there were more vacant properties back then. They decided that this lot should be used for purposeful things for the community such as involving the community and growing food.

People who started the garden went to the books and asked who owned the land. We the flyered the neighborhood, had potlucks, community meetings, and eventually started classes and workshops. In the broader community, people have members and volunteers. We have garden members who pay for plots because it’s not financed. There are water bills, insurance. They grow whatever they like, grow and harvest, and share when they can. It’s a community space so it can be arranged for people to come and collect food. Or they can pick and distribute.

What does Ashby Garden hope to get out of the leadership training?

It’s difficult to stay with projects so trying to get people to commit is what we’re hoping. How do you commit and get other people to commit for a long time ya know? It’s also a lot of experimentation. Seeing other people can be incentives, and also going to a beautiful garden is another.

What are the short-term and long-term goals for the garden? Whom to you hope to impact?

Our long term goals are keeping the space, having it grow and thrive, and be part of the community. We’re hoping a land trust can help take it over. Our vision is to have a spot to build community by allowing people of many backgrounds to participate and contribute their best. Also we’re hoping for more community building overall.

The biggest impact would be to connect people with soil, plants, and support of other creatures. Water is also important and having an appreciation for these spots is also important.

What other kinds of projects are you working on in the community?

I am a co-director of Transition Berkeley, an organization that brings neighbors and community members together to build a more equitable, regenerative, self-reliant future for Berkeley. Projects we are working on include “Bee City Berkeley”, where we are planting pollinator gardens in Berkeley parks and public schools, and educating the public about the relationship between plants, pollinators, and our food. Another project is Essential Repair Skills Trainings, where we are bringing in repair experts in clothing, bike, appliance and electronics repair to teach these skills to high school and college students. A third project is Mobilize Berkeley. The group brings together UCB SERC students, environmental educators, faith-based communities, and other Berkeley residents to provide information on the state of climate change, ways to participate in a climate emergency mobilization, and preparation for the impact of climate change and other crises we are increasingly experiencing.”

Why is this work important so important to you?

“I’ve realized that the most important and satisfying work is to join with others in creating a society that lives in good relations to the earth and all the people and life forms that inhabit our planet. I recently heard a phrase that puts this work in perspective, “ When we have hope, we have life, and when we have life, we have hope”. To me this means that as long as we are living and thinking, we can make changes that will sustain a dignified, joyful life for future generations.”

Maxwell Park Frick Seminary

by admin | Apr 6, 2021 | Interview with Changemakers, Resilience Hubs

Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is going to end: The Maxwell Park Frick Seminary

Climate change is a global problem, but Laura Nicodemus is stepping up to be a part of a local solution. In this interview, Nicodemus talks about starting resilience hubs in her own neighborhood, and how one person can make a difference.

Tell us about your resilience hub team.

Our team actually is just me and my husband. We’re going to be pulling in other people in. We live in Maxwell Park in Oakland. We’re really starting from scratch, I have a lot of neighborhood organizing skills and we’ve lived in our neighborhood for seventeen years. In terms of getting a resilience hub going, we’re at the beginning. It’s a little daunting, so part of the challenge is… getting used to dealing with the challenge.

So, why did you want to start a resilience hub?

Because it made sense to us to be a part of something that had more aspects to it than just disaster preparation. Personally, I think a lot of people lead really isolated lives. We need to be connecting more and depending on each other and helping each other out. This is a really good way of doing that. Also, it just makes sense to put different aspects of resilience altogether. In terms of disaster preparation, it’s a good excuse for us to get our acts together. Something that just occurred to me this morning was like, setting up a disaster prep buddy system. I’m sure people are already doing this, but it’d be a program where there’s someone you’re checking in to stay accountable. That seems like a good, tangible way to get started. For us, one of the challenges is that there isn’t a clear space we can have.

You talked about disaster preparation. What kind of disasters do you see affecting your neighborhood specifically?

Well, certainly an earthquake. But also just living through fires and the smoke. For people who can’t go out, I’m thinking that the fire season and this level of smoke threat is going to become unfortunately pretty regular. We need to be ready to help each other out. And there’s the pandemic. That’s another disaster. My fantasy would be if we could set up a general neighborhood helping system, so that if there’s an elderly person who needs help, then that could be a part of it. I live on the border of two neighborhoods, one is Maxwell Park, and it’s more affluent and more, as far as I’m aware, more organized. And then the other neighborhood has people who are struggling with a lot of day-to-day stuff. As I’m talking to you, I’m realizing that before I make any conclusions, I need to find out more about that other neighborhood. I want to avoid coming in as a white person with the solutions. I’m going to try to avoid that.

You’ve talked a lot about you and your husband taking the initiative to combat really global threats, like the pandemic or climate change. Do you think a lot of other people are waking up to create local solutions to global problems?

That’s a good question, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I actually have a theory about that. It’s a dialectic, a yin-yang thing, and it’s pretty simple. Basically, there’s these huge problems like global warming and climate change and pandemics and they’re really overwhelming, right? People spend a lot of time thinking about ‘Can we save the world? Can we stop this? Oh my god, what if we can’t?’ I think we need a more constructive way to deal with problems. I see it as a dialectic where there are threats where people just need help. People need aid. So, if you want to build people’s sense of agency, then sure, try and do work to reduce the threat, but acknowledge it’s just as important to help the people, the animals, and the environments after they’ve been damaged. So, there’s always something you can do that makes a difference. Nobody is going to say to you: I didn’t appreciate your help because you weren’t working on the source problem. A good example are the fires in Sonoma. It’s a terrible problem, and most people just needed help. That’s just to say that if you think of the humanitarian support as part of the equation, then there’s always something you can be doing. The cool thing is that the organizing that is necessary is a lot of the same organizing that is necessary for preventing the problems.

Have you heard of a woman named Joanna Macy before?

No I haven’t.

You should check her out. She is somebody who has been working on helping people get strong enough to deal with this stuff for decades, since the, I think the, 70s. She’s about to stop teaching, but she’s generated this whole movement of people who are trained to help others to deal with their feelings and to hook in. I did a training with her at a place called Spirit Rock, which is a center up in Marin, which organizes a lot of politically active stuff. This amazing 6-hour training with her goes from this place of ‘What’s to celebrate about the Earth? What can you be grateful for?’ and then going deep into the ‘It’s really bad right now though,’ and then coming to this place where you can bring the two things together, a place of gratitude and love and acceptance where you can work to make things better. At the end, she says, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is all going to end.’ I was really inspired about that, and I thought, We don’t know how this is all going to play out, and we can’t buy into the notion that we’re going to hell in a hand basket. That’s just too simplistic. Even if things go downhill, there’s still all this helping each other, and organizing that’s really profound and that we can all be doing. I don’t mean to sound resigned, I think the resilience hub is a place where all these ideas can meet. Also, I like the idea of blending physical resilience with cultural resilience. I’m a singer and a musician, so it’s a cool place to see this blending. But all this being said, I still feel overwhelmed. I’ve got a full life, a teenager, and a host of my problems to deal with.

Regardless, it sounds like you’ve got a great framework to be building off of.

I would say so. It’s helpful to understand the other kind of challenges and responsibilities that regular folks have. If you want to pull them in, you need to know where they’re coming from.

Interview with the Canal Community Resilience Council

by admin | Apr 6, 2021 | Interview with Changemakers, Resilience Hubs, Uncategorized

by Emily Zou, NorCal Resilience Network Intern

The Canal Community Resilience Council (CCRC) is a part of the Multicultural Center of Marin’s Community resilience program, and is working to mitigate the local impacts of climate change in the Canal area of Marin County. Marco Berger, head of the Canal Community Resilience Council, notes that “The canal is particularly prone to sea level rise. It’s probably going to be one of the first to be affected in the area.” Located at a low elevation, issues of sea level rise are particularly pertinent to the neighborhood. Water levels in the San Francisco Bay can rise eight inches by 2035 and sixteen inches by 2050. Parts of the Canal could face up to two feet of flooding in the future.

The CCRC, comprised of members of the Canal neighborhood, convenes every month to discuss issues that could affect their community. And there are a lot of issues, including (but not limited to): housing, sea level rise, water quality, water access, flooding, waste management, transportation, and emergency preparedness. At CCRC meetings, stakeholders and community partners from local government agencies join to clarify policies and listen to citizen input.

Berger is keenly aware of this, observing that “People sit at home and they go, ‘Wow climate change. Stuff is going to go down. Things are gonna happen. But it’s over there somewhere, and I gotta put food on the table, I gotta pay rent.” However, he adds that communities are beginning to become more attuned to these issues. “I think as there are more things coming out about extreme weather and snowstorms in Texas, and people are starting to wake up.”

This work is a part of a larger impetus to provide local solutions to what is ultimately a global crisis: climate change.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to build community networks, so people know where to go for resources. That’s why Berger signed up to join the Resilience Hubs Leadership Training Program, “We’re really in an exploratory stage, we’re looking to see how we get involved and become a hub. It’d be good for people to know there’s a place for them to go for resources in a place of disaster.

Despite the added obstacles of the COVID-19 pandemic, Berger is persistent. “As long as I can keep doing work, that’s what I’m going to be doing.”

BACS Fremont Wellness Center

by admin | Apr 1, 2021 | Interview with Changemakers, Resilience Hubs

In this interview, NorCal Resilience Network intern Emily Zou spoke with Astrid Scott, the program manager at the Fremont Wellness Center, which is an arm of the Bay Area Community Services. Scott’s passion for serving the community is clear, and she is insistent on continuing the work for those who need it most. According to their last quarter report, the Fremont Homeless Wellness Center provided carry out meal services to approximately 30-50 individuals on a daily basis. The Wellness Center also provides every participant with masks, gloves, face shields and hand sanitizer. The Fremont Wellness Center is also looking ahead, and preparing the Fremont community for imminent wildfires. Last summer, five of the largest wildfires in California history raged across the West Coast. The smoke from the fires would create apocalyptic landscapes, and also send the AQI (Air Quality Index) skyrocketing to dangerous levels. Given that, this year, California’s rainy season is starting nearly a month late, it is likely that we will see more wildfires this year. The effects of global climate change are starting to manifest. The Fremont Wellness Center is providing support for the most vulnerable communities in the face of climate catastrophe.

The Fremont Wellness Center hopes to be a resource for the communities most vulnerable to global climate change in the coming months. As is evidenced by their adaptive COVID-19 response, they have been able to meet people where they are at, and they will continue to do so

Astrid scott, BACS Wellness center coordinator

Q: So, can you tell me, in a nutshell, what the Fremont Wellness Center does?

Scott: Pre-COVID, we were a wellness center set up to help anybody in the community, and we were a safe space for people to come in here and get meals. We have a kitchen, so we make meals, we also have a computer lab so that people can apply for jobs online. We have groups that teach skills such as anger management, and we also have substance abuse programs. A lot of people who come into the community are homeless, so we have a program that helps with housing. We help them get on the waiting list for section 8, or people who don’t really know how the system works (CEA). Our hours were extended from 8AM-8PM, 7 days a week, so people can drop by for any resources they need. We have showers, a food pantry, a clothing pantry, we also have a program where people who have pets can come in here and pick up pet food. We work with a nonprofit that helps people with pets. That was before.

Since shelter-in-place, we had to close down our community room and computer lab and limit the people who come in. As of now, what we’re doing is that people call in and schedule a time to shower. They either let us know if they need clothing or a hygiene kit and we help them. Once they’re inside, they have to call and make an appointment. Since our kitchen is closed, we’ve linked up with local groups focused on food recovery, so they pick up meals from Kaiser meals and share them with us so we share them with the community. We also work with volunteers in the Fremont area, there’s a group called Feeding the Hungry that we work with. There’s a kitchen in Milpitas that still has a kitchen, and they drop off meals three times a week. It’s been a huge help, since we’re able to provide those meals to the homeless community and the increasing amount of families who need food. Since shelter-in-place, we didn’t get a lot of families since our program is adult only. We tailor our services, such as grocery box giveaways. We’re trying to serve our community based on what they need right now.

Q: Why is the center interested in becoming a resilience hub?

Scott: Part of it was, on a personal level, at the beginning of shelter in place, I felt unprepared like everyone else did. What can I do? How can I best serve the community? How can we be more knowledgeable in these kinds of situations because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Back in April, we started going through our emergency kits and all of that stuff expired. We need to learn more about this. The services we provide might not look like this in a couple a months, and we need to keep up with what the Fremont community really needs.

Q: You talked about being prepared, what other events that you feel like you need to be prepared for?

Scott: Something my team has been talking about is the heat wave that is coming in the summer. We’re also thinking about other natural disasters, but based on the patterns that I’ve seen, I know that the needs during the summer. Is there a space that we can provide a cooling station? We’ve been really thinking along those lines.

Also, last summer, when we had the air quality issues, we didn’t have the resources to be an air quality center, which would have been ideal. So if anything like that happens this summer, we want to be prepared, and we want to be able to provide that service. We also want to become a vaccination site. We work with the city of Fremont to do testing with the fire department, so anything to provide the best services that we can.

Q: Why do you do this work? Why do you think it’s important?

Scott: Basically, I feel that it’s a really fulfilling job for me, and by working with BACs and being involved, I’ve seen so many people succeed and their lives change. That’s why I do this. I believe that there are people capable of changing and there are so many people who have lost hope, and we’re here to provide hope.

Q: What does the future look like for BACs and the Wellness Center?

Scott: BACS has not stopped going into the community, BACS has not stopped reaching out to people who need to get tested and vaccinated. The way we’re headed is to continue providing and to not take a back seat. If you think about it, all of the social services offices are closed, and there’s no way for people to get phones anymore, they have to be on the phone for hours and hours to get their stimulus check. The library is closed, and you can’t apply for a job online. So, a lot of our employees are providing services and meeting people where they’re at. As far as the wellness center here in Fremont, depending on what the CDC says, it depends on when we’ll open our doors. There’s a lot to think about.

Oakland SOL and Leo Orleans

by admin | Jul 22, 2019 | Interview with Changemakers

I caught up with farmer Leo Orleans at their 6-person collective residential and community space called Oakland SOL (Sustaining Ourselves Locally) in the San Antonio neighborhood of Oakland. The collective is home to Queer and Trans People of Color who run arts and gardening programs out of the center. Oakland SOL was a mini-grant recipient through our Resilient Hubs Initiative to support neighborhood models of resilience. I got a tour and a conversation after their workday to install a drip irrigation system in their sizable backyard farm.

What is Oakland SOL?

It’s a sustainability project that was started 15 yrs ago by a group of mixed race folks who wanted to live as a sustainable home. They turned an empty lot into a garden, and this is still going. Over time it became obvious that this needed to be a space that was safe for Queer and Trans People of Color. And it’s been a QTPOC space for at least 6-7 years. We have a youth program that we run in the summertime. We serve youth of color and we have a community garden day once a month.

Is the youth program around gardening?

It is, they come twice a week and help us upkeep the garden, and help us develop projects that we want to work on. This year they built a trellis and last year they helped revamp the chicken coop to make it twice as big as it was before.

What’s your background and what areas are you involved in here?

For me the fact that this was a space for Queer and Trans People of Color attracted me. But also there’s a garden in the back. For me the desire and action a community takes towards autonomy, self-preservation, sustainability and along with that preserving our own cultural heritage like preserving food and seed saving, was politically and personally interesting. Just believing that these skill sets are totally valuable for our survival and what we need to move into in our future.

Tell me about the garden. What’s the history and vision?

So it’s been here for 15 year and there used to be a functioning greenhouse and they used to give away food to the community. But there were a lot of projects that got abandoned, or the information about how to manage it was not passed on. So at this point the real work in the garden is to redesign the garden for accessibility, for ADA, children and adult learning. The goal is to have a hoop house that would serve as a propagation and nursery production so we can do seed saving and share starts consistently. Another is to have a comprehensive 3-compartment compost site, and make it really like a closed loop system. Get our chickens back in for compost as well.

Also design the yard so that there is a manual to go to, that these systems are easy to learn and maintain. I think to really have this as an educational hub so that folks understand more about the political nature of food systems and how if there is desire to move towards autonomy and self-sustainability, that there is a real empowerment in being able to grow your own food and collect and conserve water. And also developing so that we can give away a lot of the produce we are growing, and have a production site so more jobs can happen and we can have some economic viability.

Currently who comes to the work parties?

I don’t notice that a lot of people from the immediate neighborhood come to the work parties, but it is a lot of QTPOC community folks. We do make an effort to serve the communities of color who are here, while being explicit that this is a Queer and Trans POC led space.

As a Resilience Hub site that is neighborhood-based, do you see yourself doing more outreach to the neighbors who live around here?

Part of our youth program is having relations with the East Side Arts Alliance which is around the corner. They will often come to our site even to use the storefront space. I think that we can build more program that’s connected to our immediate neighborhood, but I would say that the way that we do that at the moment is to connect with the organizations that are in touch with the youth here. The youth don’t necessarily always live right around here, but they have done programming that’s right in the neighborhood. Another thing that SOL has done is some programming with the Village, the homeless encampment on 23rd and E 12th [which moved to deep East Oakland before being evicted from their site once again] to offer a gathering space and periodically bring meals over there. But we need more infrastructure as SOL before we can consistently connect with our community in the area. The other thing that’s unique about our space is that we are very much program-based.

So recently, SOL along with the other organizations bought this building. Tell me about that.

We partnered with Oakland Community Land Trust to make the purchase of the building. First phase was acquisition. And now we are in our second phase of learning how to manage the building as a collective. Those are very slow moving steps and takes a lot of focus and investment. Any collective or collaborative effort I’ve known about has never followed one step-by-step process. We’re just trying as little people to understand our power.

Who are the other organizations co-owning the building?

There are 8 residential units and 4 commercial spaces. SOL is one of the commercial spaces and occupies some of the residential units as well. There’s also Liberating Ourselves Locally (a QT maker space), Peacock Rebellion (Trans women arts collaborative), Shaolin Temple (Qigong and Kung Fu school), and the Bikery (community bike shop, a program of Cycles of Change). By and large all these projects are QT and POC led.

What does it mean to have bought this building as rent prices are skyrocketing and even this area of Oakland has been going through a lot of gentrification?

Well there’s a building being built right in front of us so I don’t know how that’s going to affect the demographic. I think it’s incredible that this happened, and we had a lot of things in our favor. The seller of the building was willing to accept our first offer, and we were given the opportunity to be the first ones to put a bid in.

What is it that Oakland SOL needs to materialize the next phase of the vision?

I feel very limited as the main garden person because I don’t have transportation to go pick up supplies. We really need mulch in our yard and the support to get it here. We need soil, manure from the horse stables and a way to get it here, cover crop, and we do need various labor. I’m trying to find ways to open the space, because right now we can’t just leave it open for people to come in and work. We need people for financial plan to figure out what steps to take. We need someone who knows how to prune large trees properly and safely. And production infrastructure, like a commercial walk-in refrigerator, or a storage freezer. These are all a part of our general vision. And having a consistent person to help with outreach and media.

So if someone wants to volunteer at the Oakland SOL garden every 2nd Sunday, should they just show up, and what would you like for them to know?

Yeah, folks usually just show up. And we really focus on serving communities of color, and that’s really our goal is to have this space for POC and QTPOC. So people should know to show respect for our politics and capacity, and to ask people for their pronouns I think is a really big deal. We want to learn together in the garden and not feel like we are challenged around these things. We want to keep this as a space that’s a protected and where we feel joy and unchallenged to move about freely.

You can visit Oakland SOL online: http://oaklandsol.weebly.com/

Or on their FB page: www.facebook.com/Oakland-SOL-Sustaining-Ourselves-Locally-1521617184779276/

Engineers for a Sustainable World

by admin | Apr 5, 2018 | Interview with Changemakers

On a beautiful April day in South Berkeley, I instantly relax as I step into the lush urban paradise of Ashby Garden. It’s a busy work party day and volunteers are peppered throughout this fecund haven with it’s emerald Spring leaves bursting from the ground and the bright technicolor of sundry flowers beckoning the native butterflies and bees.

I turn a corner and notice some of the hardest working folks are a quad of UC Berkeley students who are busy digging and weeding. These students are here with Engineers for a Sustainable World—a national organization made of professionals and students. This local chapter is based out of UC Berkeley and it’s student membership is drawn from the University’s venerable Engineering and Science programs.

For two work parties ESW has co-organized with the NorCal Resilience Network to support grassroots community efforts that provide food security, gathering spaces and urban greening. First at Hoover Elementary School earlier in the same April and now at Ashby Garden, the diligent and industrious ESW crew has helped with everything from re-designing a chicken coop, to helping with promotions, to getting hands-on dirty with neighborhood volunteers. The projects were supported thanks to a grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellors Fund.

After a shared lunch, I sat down with the four students including project leader Priscilla Khuu, to learn about their experiences supporting these projects and about their future goals.

Please introduce yourselves and what brought you to ESW.

Kristy Wong (3rd year Molecular & Cell Biology major): I wanted to get into something to do with environment.

Priscilla Khuu (Civil & Environmental Engineering major w/ focus on Environmental Engineering): I wanted to get hands-on experience, and thought it’d be cool to get involved with a community garden and actually do change.

Jerik (1st year Civil & Environmental Engineering major): I’m really interested in public service and project management. I’m also really interested in Environmental projects.

Adrian (1st year Chemical Engineer major)

What is ESW & How long has it been around?

Priscilla: It’s a national organization that has professional chapters, but the chapter at UC Berkeley is made of students and not all the projects are community-based. Some are campus or research based, and they all take into account sustainability. For example there was one where they tried to take paper towel waste into energy. It’s been around UC Berkeley for a few years now. There’s one at Clark Kerr (dormitory) that’s working on water conservation stuff. There’s one working with Hoover Elementary. There’s one that’s building a succulent wall on campus.

How is working on community-based projects influencing your trajectory of studies?

Jerik: One of the most important things is community engagement and I feel that’s really overlooked in engineering projects. So for sure with Ashby Garden there’s a lot of community engagement, talking with community members and instead of just creating the engineering projects, giving some options on how to attack these projects. I think this will help ESW members with their future and give the skill they will need in their careers.

Priscilla: Helping the garden feels really fulfilling and makes me feel sure that’s what I want to do. In the end I want to be an engineer to help people and help the environment.

Has being involved in more low technology and low funded projects changed the way you look at the work you can do in the world? Is that different from what you’re being taught in school?

Priscilla: It’s definitely different than what we’re being taught in school. Like this chicken run, we had to do several iterations on the design and really understanding that what you design isn’t what’s actually going to be built when it comes to actual construction. But that’s not really talked about in our Engineering classes, it’s more theory-based and how technology works. But that kind of technology isn’t really here [at Ashby Garden].

Jerik: I think for sure the challenges with working in the community gardens is definitely fulfilling in that it teaches the students and the members how to work with funds, work schedule, and materials—just being able to make it efficient for the purpose of the project.

Prior to involvement in these community projects, had you heard of the term “resilience” versus “sustainability”? What difference do you see between the two?

Priscilla: I know NorCal Resilience is about making sure the local community can withstand things without having to rely on outside sources. And I know “sustainability” is more like global scale, it doesn’t have to focus on local. But I think “resilience” does, which is important.

Jerik: I think the stigma around “sustainability” is around not about being able to retain its own assets and functions. The term “resilience” has more clear cut way of saying we’re able to do our own thing and functions, we’re not reliant on government or other parties. Just being able to be independent and that’s a distinction from “sustainability” I think.

Do you think this distinction is going to affect the work you’re going to do in the future around engineering or science?

Adrian: As an engineer you want to make something that’ll last long, not just sustainable for the environment.

Priscilla: I wanted to make environmental justice a thing, because environmental engineering is more office work and technical stuff but I want to promote environmental justice on the side. I think learning about resilience helps change my mindset about how to go about the solution. But I still need to think about how I can help.

Kristy: I think for research it’d be really important to innovate new technologies that are more accessible to communities without as many resources, so it changed my mindset in that way.

How are you sharing the learnings from these projects with your fellow students, and incorporating into your studies?

Jerik: I used to be in one of the competitions team at Cal, and it seemed to be more of a repetitive nature to get the best efficiencies and such. So I thought ESW had a little bit more from the beginning stages to end stages and everything in between, it was more comprehensive in terms of learning.

Priscilla: ESW has a project showcase at the end of the semester, it’s when all the project leaders come and showcase what they do. All ESW members and anyone else is welcomed to come and talk to us about it. And hopefully this is also helping to promote more awareness about the topic.

What’s next for each of you?

Kristy: I’m not sure about my professional career track but right now I’m considering becoming a physician’s assistant so applying to PA school and getting some healthcare experience.

Pricilla: My goal for now is to become an air quality consultant, but also work on environmental justice issues on the weekends. I’ll be helping out with the garden over the summer as well, and maybe into next semester if Jerik is too busy with other plans to take on Project Lead!

Jerik: I plan to continue my membership in ESW. I’m only a freshman right now, and hopefully I could become a project lead. Eventually I want to work in the public sector. I think working with the community is the best part. I don’t see private sector as having as big of an impact as the public sector. I’m just getting new skills and trying to feel out the different areas of Civil Engineering, and hopefully I’ll decide my path.

Adrian: I’m also going to continue with ESW and my next goal is to get a research position. Maybe after that I’ll try to do something where they’re trying to turn algae into energy.

*Thank you again ESW for a wonderful and fruitful season of partnering on community projects! And thank you to the Chancellors Fund for supporting this collaboration!