CIVIC-FA Track A: Kickstarting A Youth-Centered Green Economy For The Environmental Justice Community Of East Boston

这项研究涉及了解服务不足的社区如何积极参与向充满活力的绿色经济过渡，改善环境条件和社区对气候变化的适应能力。为了实现这一目标，这项研究通过一个非营利性社区实体(Eastie Farm)，让当地青年参与建设性和生产性活动，包括城市农业、海岸恢复和社会科学驱动的社区参与。以青年为中心的活动包括提供财政支持，帮助青年在学习城市农业科学和实施的同时，通过实验、记录和研究当地沿海湿地恢复的最佳植物方法和物种，旨在减少海岸洪水和社区边缘湿地土壤中工业污染物的再动员。在大学社会科学团队的监督下，由青年推动的社区调查以及数据收集和分析帮助青年学习如何在他们的社区中做出积极和重大的改变。大学研究人员、社区成员和以社区为基础的Eastie Farm正在共同开展这项试点工作，以了解低收入和受环境影响的社区如何通过基于自然的解决方案来应对气候变化的挑战。该项目的更广泛影响包括青年赋权和指导，重点是发展对如何使社区适应气候变化和提高居民生活质量的深刻理解。它创造了一种模式，可以扩展并转化为其他低收入、环境受损的城市和沿海社区。该项目还为低收入、传统服务不足的城市社区的青年提供绿色职业方面的专业知识和培训，并学习和认识到青年驱动的行动的力量，这些行动有可能改变一个社区，改善其居民的生活。公民创新挑战是与能源部、国土安全部和国家科学基金会合作开展的。通过伊斯蒂农场试点计划，年轻人积极参与和学习社会、气候和生物科学。在这个项目中，东波士顿一个低收入社区的40名青年将参与一项计划，重点是通过学习绿色工作技能；适当的植物识别、选择、繁殖和安装；改善和监测环境条件，以最大限度地减少和减少沿海洪水和海洋湿地中工业污染物的运输，同时与生物科学和社会科学的科学家和专家密切合作，为他们和他们的社区建立一个绿色未来。他们还将收集和分析有关障碍的数据，这些障碍阻止他们所在社区的家庭采取有助于缓解和提供应对气候变化影响的方法，这些方法在生态和经济上对他们自己和他们的社区都是有益的。此外，该计划还让年轻人参加体验式活动，帮助他们了解科学过程的力量，以及如何通过让他们参与实验和安装试验来培养创业心态。该项目包括实地考察，与绿色能源和经济领域的专家交谈和互动。该计划的其他影响包括将相关青年与绿色工作的提供者联系起来，从农业到太阳能和能源审计，再到教育和绿色金融工作；所有这些都可以帮助他们在自己的社区启动绿色经济，为更好的可持续未来铺平道路。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research involves understanding how underserved communities get actively engaged in making the transition to a vibrant green economy with improved environmental conditions and community resilience to climate change. To accomplish this goal, the research engages local youth in constructive and productive activities involving urban farming, coastal restoration, and social science-driven community engagement via a non-profit community entity (Eastie Farm). Youth centered activities include financial support to help youth make a living while they learn urban agricultural science and implementation via experimenting, documenting, and examining the best means and species of plants for local coastal wetland restoration that is designed to reduce coastal flooding and remobilization of industrial pollutants in wetland soils at the verge of their community. Youth-driven community surveys, overseen by university social science teams, and data collection and its analysis help youth learn how they can make positive and major differences in their community. University researchers, community members, and the community-based Eastie Farm are working together on this pilot to understand how low income and environmentally impacted communities can meet the challenges of climate change through nature-based solutions. Broader impacts of the project include youth empowerment and mentoring, focused on developing a robust understanding of how to make communities resilient to climate change and improve resident's quality of life. It creates a model that can be scaled and translated to other low-income, environmentally compromised, urban, coastal communities. The project also provides youth in low-income, traditionally underserved, urban communities with expertise and training in green careers as well as learning and realization of the power of youth-driven actions that have the potential to change a community and improve the lives of its residents.The CIVIC Innovation Challenge is a collaboration with Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Science Foundation. Through the Eastie's Farm pilot program, youth are actively engaged in and learn social, climate, and biological science. In this project, 40 youth in a low income community in East Boston will be engaged in a program focused on building a green future for themselves and their community by learning green job skills; proper plant identification, selection, propagation, and installation; the amending and monitoring of environmental conditions to minimize and mitigate coastal flooding and the transport of industrial pollutants in marine wetlands while working closely with scientists and experts in bioscience and social science. They will also collect and analyze data on the barriers that keep families in their community from adopting approaches that help mitigate and provide resilience to climate change impacts and that are beneficial, both ecologically and economically, to themselves and their communities. In addition, the program exposes youth to experiential activities that help them understand the power of the scientific process and how to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set by involving them in experimentation and installation trials. The program includes field trips to talk to and interact with experts in the green energy and economy. Additional program impacts include connection of involved youth with providers of green jobs, from agriculture to solar and energy audits to jobs in education and green finance; all of which can help them kickstart a green economy in their own community, laying a pathway for a better sustainable future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.