CREATEBloom LA - Guide for Emerging Climate-Solvers
Bloom LA is a guide and campaign helping LA's emergent climate leaders and citizen creators establish career paths in climate resilience work rooted in LA communities. The guide provides immersive frameworks, tools and resources for exploring the vast and varied roles citizens need to play building climate solutions across the LA region. The goal of the project is to advance a workforce of thinkers, builders and problem solvers advancing climate solutions this decade.
What is the primary issue area that your application will impact?
Youth Economic Advancement (sponsored by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation)
In which areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
Central LA
East LA
South LA
West LA
South Bay
City of Los Angeles
In what stage of innovation is this project, program, or initiative?
Pilot or new project, program, or initiative
What is your understanding of the issue that you are seeking to address?
Solving LA's climate challenges and adapting to our warming climate means transforming every part of our city: repowering to clean energy; redesigning everything from transportation to housing; creating new policy frameworks; and new economic models and ways of engaging with our environment. Making this grand transformation will require mobilizing a workforce of citizen creators across roles and industries - learning new skills and working together to bring climate solutions to scale. Our understanding of climate careers is too narrow and needs to expand beyond the roles of climate science, technology and conservation. In order to transom Los Angeles toward a climate-resilient future, we need to harness the creativity of every problem solver, thinker and designer.
Describe the project, program, or initiative this grant will support to address the issue.
Bloom LA Guide is designed to support people in starting career paths in climate resilience work by providing frameworks to easily explore the vast and varied climate careers. This project is unique in two ways - 1. It centers the people building and implementing climate solutions within the LA region, rather than the solutions alone. 2. It broadens the understanding of climate work, focusing on the creative industries needed to build climate solutions across the city. The guide moves individuals through 4 focused sessions: 1. Grounding in what a warming climate means for LA communities - foundational understanding of our regional climate challenges and the root causes, 2. Survey of the tool box of climate solutions and the roles citizens need to play in building those solutions, 3. Exploration and identification of skillsets within the context of our regional solutions, 4. Creation of a personalized guide to start each participant on the path of climate work that matches their skills and interests - mapping next steps for deeper exploration. The guide will feature all workshop materials, outreach activities, resources and tools on an online platform and in a printed zine workbook. The project will culminate in a communication campaign, sharing the Bloom LA guide with the larger LA community. The PR campaign will include sharing the guide with regional community colleges, universities and high schools, ending with a "Climate-Solver Job Fair".
Describe how Los Angeles County will be different if your work is successful.
With success of this project LA will be served in the following ways: 1. LA's young people entering the workforce will have frameworks, tools and resources to easily explore the vast and varied career paths of climate resilience work within the Los Angeles region. 2. Bloom LA Guide will provide the knowledge, inspiration and support to launch and advance careers across fields implementing creative climate solutions in LA communities. 3. This project will elicit new narratives centering on the ingenuity, creativity and resolve of citizens working on the frontline of our city's climate challenges, implementing solutions within our LA communities. As a result, the climate narrative will shift from doom and gloom to the solutions we have in hand and the opportunities and benefits those solutions bring. 4. Los Angeles will have a workforce of climate resilient leaders, problem solvers and citizen creators working to meet our region's ambitious sustainability goals this decade.
What evidence do you have that this project, program, or initiative is or will be successful, and how will you define and measure success?
The Bloom LA Team will conduct ongoing evaluation of the success of each phase of the project, compiling results into a final evaluation report at the end of the project year. Quality of the project will be measured by the following: - Pre/post surveys for participants measuring skills, attitudes, and behaviors - Surveys for participants measuring engagement and project effectiveness - Surveys for facilitators measuring ongoing overall effectiveness from their perspective - Surveys for community partners to determine satisfaction and feedback - Focus groups with participants, facilitators, and members of partnering community-based organizations measuring effectiveness and suggestions for improvement In addition, we will track: - Participant attendance - Participant demographics - Engagement of community partners: community colleges and community-based organizations
Approximately how many people will be impacted by this project, program, or initiative?
Direct Impact: 3,000
Indirect Impact: 25,000