Green NAU
Action Research Teams
Seven Community-Based Action Research Teams (ARTs) bring first year students together with graduate students, faculty, and community partners to work on issues of sustainability and democratic community organizing.
Action Group for Water Advocacy (AGWA)
Friends of Flagstaff’s Future/NAU Community Based Action Research Team
A Partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community, the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS), and the Friends of Flagstaff’s Future
The Action Group for Water Advocacy (AGWA) brings together Friends of Flagstaff Future members and Friends of Flagstaff Future’s NAU Student Chapter, Freshmen from the SEED Learning Community, graduate students from the MA Sustainable Communities Program and community members to address one of Flagstaff’s most pressing and often controversial concerns: water use. Especially in the arid Southwest, water is life! Yet the best estimates indicate that our water supply will be insufficient in a few decades. Precisely because water is so precious, it is the center of much debate both historically and today. AGWA takes on this crucial issue, examining the local and regional implications of the world water crisis, exploring current water use questions, and supporting local efforts to use water more sustainably. Both on and off campus, AGWA helps community members access and benefit from water-saving strategies and innovations – like switching from bottled water to “Taking Back the Tap,” harvesting rain water, employing permaculture landscaping and urban-agricultural techniques, creating responsible local water-use policies, and more! AGWA looks at where Flagstaff’s water comes from, where it goes, and with whom it is shared. This team strives to better understand the roots of water issues in Flagstaff and works actively toward resolving them in an inclusive, collaborative way.
For more information, please contact Bryan.McLaren@nau.edu.
Flagstaff Foodlink
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
A Partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community, the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS) and Flagstaff Foodlink.
Students on this team work to catalyze a profound change in the way we produce, consume and value local and regional foods in the greater Flagstaff region. In collaboration, the team is working to assemble a broad and diverse Community Food Task Force that will assess Flagstaff food security needs and facilitate policy changes to influence how the local food system impacts the health of Flagstaff residents, addresses hunger and food insecurity, and supports an economically viable, socially just and environmentally sustainable food system.
Flagstaff Foodlink is a community organization that aims to offer strong educational, organizational and fundraising tools to the exciting, emergent local food movement in the greater Flagstaff community. Flagstaff Foodlink believes there are abundant opportunities to connect farmers, ranchers, restaurateurs, food distributors and sellers, the general public, community organizations, and the governments of the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County into a more democratic food network to encourage local economic self-sufficiency, community and individual health, greater food security and energy-conserving agricultural practices. By creating sustainable agriculture curricula for Flagstaff schools, convening members of the Flagstaff food system on a regular basis, and channeling funding opportunities to food system innovators, Flagstaff Foodlink is an organizational body which can catalyze profound change in the way we produce, consume and value local and regional foods here in Flagstaff.
Students on this team put their relational skills to work as they engage with members of Flagstaff Foodlink to assemble a strong, diverse and enthused Community Food Task Force. Since September of 2009, students have been playing a key role in:
- deliberating about what sort of diversity (public/private; ethnic and racial; neighborhood, food producers, distributors, health workers, representatives from the emergency food communtiy, etc) is needed on a task force of this kind,
- meeting with and assessing the skills, insight, and commitment of potential task force members in the community,
- giving shape and definition to the vision of a just, sustainable, more democratic food system in Flagstaff,
- convening and facilitating the first face to face meeting of the task force members they successfully recruit.
The convening meeting of the Greater Flagstaff Community Food Task Force was held April 24, 2010. Students will continue to support and help realize the vision and work of the Task Force, improving how the local food system impacts the health of Flagstaff residents, addressing hunger and food insecurity, and increasing access to SOLE (sustainable, organic, local and ethical) Food.
For more information, please contact Dr. Kimberley Curtis at Kimberley.Curtis@nau.edu.
Immigration
Northern Arizona Interfaith Council/NAU Community Based Action Research Team
A Partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community, the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS), and the Northern Arizona Interfaith Council.
Students on this team work with a dynamic and broad-based group to enhance understanding, respect, improved relationships, and collaborations that nurture a community of freedom, equality, and democratic community engagements between new immigrants and American citizens.
The Northern Arizona Interfaith Council (NAIC) is a broad-based community organization made up of churches, synagogues, schools, and nonprofits, which works to create systemic change to improve the lives of families. NAIC is not a religious organization but draws on shared democratic values – many with deep roots in religious traditions – to bring people together across lines of race, class, religion, and neighborhood. NAIC’s primary objective is to build civic leadership by teaching people the skills and practices of public life, the tools for building power for change.
NAIC is part of a statewide network of similar groups and is affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation [about which you’ll be reading in Ed Chambers’ Roots for Radicals]. In Flagstaff, NAIC’s recent work has focused on integration of new immigrants and immigration policy reform; organizing parents and students for improvements at low income schools; and developing a strong coalition to fight state budget cuts and advocate for tax reform. NAIC is non-partisan, and works to hold public officials from both political parties accountable for their actions.
All students working with NAIC have the opportunity to participate in leadership training to learn the basic skills of organizing. They put these skills to use in helping advance the issues identified by NAIC leaders, particularly around immigration.
For more information, please contact Leah.Mundell@gmail.com.
Public Achievement
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
Publich Achievement ART is a partnership with:
- The national Public Achievement organization
- Program in Community, Culture & Environment
- Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community
- Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS)
- Killip Elementary School
- Kinsey Elementary School
- Kinlani Dormatory
Overview:
Public Achievement provides young people of all ages the practical experience of designing and implementing their own projects to solve serious public problems while simultaneously asking them to learn about the broader conceptual and theoretical issues of public life. By working on issues that directly affect their lives, young people learn that politics is found in the day-to-day action that people take to make changes in their communities and their lives. Our hope is that the Public Achievement will initiate young people as lifelong public actors in our diverse and challenging world. However, PA is more than the changing of individual lives. Our ultimate goal is to help renew democracy. As increasingly greater numbers of people see themselves as citizens and act together to repair and build our common world, Public Achievement becomes more than a civic education initiative, it becomes a national movement.
Public Achievement is a youth civic engagement initiative focused on the most basic concepts of citizenship, democracy and public work. Public Achievement draws on the talents and desires of ordinary people to build a better world and to create a different kind of politics.
Our work is anchored by a few core ideas:
- Everybody can do citizen work: All people—regardless of age, nationality, sex, religion, income or education—can be powerful public actors.
- Citizenship isn’t easy: Democracy is messy and sometimes frustrating, but when you work hard with others you can accomplish extraordinary things.
- We learn by doing: The most important lessons of democracy come from doing public work and finding ways to cooperate with people who are different and may disagree. We learn from each other when we solve problems together. This is the kind of politics that everyone can do, not just politicians.
For more information, please contact: Lauren Berutich at Lauren.Berutich@nau.edu or Jacob Dolence at Jacob.Dolence@nau.edu or visit: PublicAchievement.org
School Gardens Action Research Team
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
A Partnership between Flagstaff Foodlink and the Flagstaff Unified School District.
This Action Research team adds fuel to the exploding school gardens movement in the Flagstaff Unified School District and across the country! The School Gardens ART is helping the rising generation toward better food security through urban gardening.
Students on this team work in groups of three or four at three different public elementary schools in the district. At their schools, they will join the larger School Garden Sustainable Dreams Team. This Team includes Master Gardners, parents, teachers and, of course, students. The nature of their work will depend on each school's culture, visions and needs as well as on student initiative and vision. This will be a very collaborative process, and there will be a great deal of opportunity for students to actively participate in shaping the school's food system.
Many schools will be using a new interdisciplinary garden curriculum tied to state standards that engages students' math, science, arts and language skills while teaching students the wonder of becoming native to place. That curriculum was commissioned by Flagstaff Foodlink and written locally, and so reflects the challenges of gardening sustainably in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau: learning how to use and conserve water, how to create compost to enrich our locally poor cinder soils, and so much more. There is much to learn and much to teach!
Flagstaff Foodlink has provided financial support and visionary inspiration for these school gardens. It is a community organization that aims to offer strong educational, organizational and fundraising tools to the exciting, emergent local food movement in the greater Flagstaff community. By creating sustainable agriculture curricula for Flagstaff schools and supporting school gardens, convening members of the Flagstaff food system on a regular basis, and channeling funding opportunities to food system innovators, Flagstaff Foodlink can catalyze profound change in the way we produce, consume and value local foods here in Flagstaff.
For more information, please contact Dr. Kimberley Curtis at kimberley.curtis@nau.edu.
Sustainable Living and Urban Gardening (SSLUG)
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
sites.google.com/NAUSSLUGA Partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS).
SSLUG is an NAU student group focused on maintaining a garden demonstration site and advocating for food justice on the NAU campus. They seek to collaborate with and learn from the broader Flagstaff food justice and gardening community. Their goal is to integrate growing local foods and broader food-sustainability issues into education at the university via hands on learning.
Students involved with SSLUG work on campus and in the broader Flagstaff community to promote practices such as community gardening, fruit tree planting, composting, research on traditional agricultural practices. A central project of this team is to promote modes of organizing these efforts in ways that cultivate broad participation and durable networks of support so that they are able to flourish for many years. Additionally, students work to enhance the collaborations between SSLUG’s efforts and those in the broader community, in particular Native Movement’s Urban Lifeways Project.
The SSLUG garden is maintained by a core of student volunteers, and organized by a coordinator. They maintain regular workdays, open to the public, wherein in participants can learn about growing food in Flagstaff and take home food. Throughout the last two seasons, about 40 students have occasionally participated at the garden.
The garden hosts heirloom annual food crops, climate appropriate fruit trees, native shrubs and flowers, rainwater harvesting, sunken and raised beds, a cold frame, composting, and intercropping techniques. The overall garden design is influenced by southwest indigenous agriculture and permaculture design.
Other SSLUG projects include helping restart the NAU composting program (composting food from NAU dining halls at the garden site), and creating pamphlets on Cold Frames in Flagstaff and Climate-Appropriate Vegetables. SSLUG has also held workshops and hosted various community groups for activities at the garden. Groups that have participated in projects at the SSLUG garden include: NAU classes Local Sustainable Agriculture, Permaculture Design, and Southwestern Gardening and Agriculture, the Associated Students for Women’s Issues, Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy Gardening Class, and the Upward Bound/Nizhoni Academy Sustainability Class.
For more information, please contact Lisa Eldredge at lisaeldredge@gmail.com.
Green Scene - Creating Public Space on Campus for Civic Engagement, Sustainability, Issue Forums
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
A Partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS).
This action team works with students in several other organizations to research and initiate the creation of a public space/café where students, faculty, and staff regularly meet to discuss pertinent issues, engage speakers, organize deliberation and action, and so forth. Team members are interested in the idea of creating a sustainable café on campus that would provide space for the above interactions and be based on fair trade, organic, and locally grown food (some in the café itself). They are also exploring the possibility of a mobile version of this public space housed in a retrofitted bus.
Promoting a campus culture that seriously deliberates about issues of sustainability, social justice, democracy, and major global issues would be greatly enhanced by having a space or spaces where students interested in such topics could gather knowing that others with similar interests would likely be there. Imagine a public space that was both appealing and the site of regular informal presentations by and discussions with knowledgeable individuals on a wide range of issues, a place where artistic projects relating so such issues might be displayed, performed, etc. Imagine a public space where campus organizations frequently met to discuss vision and plan action. Imagine a very cool place that students designed, ran, organized – or simply relaxed. This is a great project for students wishing to get involved in campus networks and make lasting changes at NAU!
For more information, please contact Caleb Phillips
Velo Composting
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
Velo: To go cycling Compost: Decayed organic material used as a plant fertilizer
VeloComposting: A new program at Northern Arizona University using bicycles to collect and transport organic matter to create compost for use in gardens on campus.
History
VeloComposting began as a collaborative idea between Patrick Pfeifer, Jacob Dolence, and Adam Davidson. The Green Fund was solicited for funds through its grant program and enabled the startup of VeloComposting in February, 2012. The program was slated as an extension of the Students for Sustainable Living and Urban Gardening (SSLUG) Action Research Team (ART), in collaboration with Local FARE, FoodLink and the Composting sub-committee of SSLUG.
Inspiration
The project was born from a synergy between Patrick, Jacob, and Adam's passions. Patrick brought his extensive commitment to composting as both soil amendment and waste stream diversion to the equation. Jacob has a powerful drive for creating spaces for student involvement in community action. Adam brought a passion for bicycles, recreation, and community cohesion. The obvious role of the VeloComposting program in the University's commitment to sustainability was a driving factor once the idea began to develop.
Goals
The VeloComposting program aims to divert the waste stream of dining halls and cafe spaces on the NAU campus. It will play a key role in providing material for the creation of high quality compost in the gardens of NAU. The program will be developed and operated by its participants, with the intention of creating confident, competent and active members of the community.
Mission
The mission is still under development with participants.
Who's involved
Northern Arizona University students, SSLUG, faculty, staff and community members.
For more information, please contact Jacob.Dolence@nau.edu.
Weatherization and Community Building Action Team (WACBAT)
NAU Community Based Action Research Team
WACBAT is a partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS) and Friends of Flagstaff's Future.
Students work in a collaborative network, exercising leadership to weatherize homes as well as cultivate community relationships and capacities for environmental stewardship more generally. This project focuses on working with Flagstaff’s private and public sectors in organizing people in Sunnyside and Southside (Flagstaff’s two poorest neighborhoods) around house weatherization and retrofitting. Team members work with the City, County, NACOG (the preexisting retrofitting and weatherization providers here in Flagstaff), as well as community centers and private sector energy efficiency firms, to increase awareness of and education about these opportunities. The team also works directly with people in the installation and documentation of these weatherization and retrofitting projects. The most important part of this effort is working with the residents on increasing their awareness and creating a culture of environmental stewardship within Flagstaff in an economically sensible way! This project reduces Flagstaff’s carbon footprint, generates economic savings in gas and electric bills that enhance affordability, and lays the ground work for advancing sustainable economic development in the greater Flagstaff region. WACBAT attracts environmentally minded students, faculty and staff who want to start making an environmental difference NOW!
For more information, please contact Jason Lowry at jel68@nau.edu or visit http://wacbat.wordpress.com/.
