Imperfect LA

K-12 STEAM education

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Climate change has world wide effects but also functions by disproportionately affecting certain communities and can have drastic effects on underserved and minority communities. The East Los Angeles Community has felt the effects of climate change in a variety of ways. For example, the lack of green spaces causes worsening smog and air pollution- often leading to respiratory and health ailments. Many people do not have access to clean and consistent resources such as water and fresh produce, this creates health problems and causes high rates of metabolic issues. Lack of education on the degradation of their neighborhood allows for stagnant systems and creates a continued cycle of oppression that inherently harms not only the earth but the people who live on it. Accessibility and equity are necessary to ensure a complete mitigation of climate change and sociology shows that power by the people creates the greatest potential for change.

With the protection of the environment there is a lack of education and resources. Therefore, people are unable to change habits to help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Habits of Waste’s foundation relies on the idea that everyone has the ability to make a positive change, no matter how small, inspired by the book, Imperfect Environmentalist our founder and CEO Sheila Morovati wrote and published. By providing an avenue for agency, which (due to racism) is something that minority youth often have too little exposure to, we aim to empower students in Central LA to create a generation that can be prepared to combat the global phenomenon of climate change. Studies show that eating plant-based meals is the single most effective step people can take towards combating global warming. By providing accessible and affordable education around eating more plant based meals, we, as a collective, can greatly mitigate our impact on the planet. By inspiring students who are typically overlooked we can create an inspiring, and actionable movement to address one of the most important phenomena of our time, climate change. HOW aims to educate students in Central LA on the benefits of Imperfect Environmentalism and provide detailed equitable resources for students to become changemakers and community researchers. Funding will be used to create various activities, including lesson plans, workshops, and cooking classes that are catered towards advancing the agency of young Angelinos.

Small changes over time can add up to big differences in the world. We believe that through empowering the youth to think critically about climate change and inspiring them to become community researchers, we are creating a group of people who can make difference within their communities. The students have the power to influence their family, friends, peers, and teachers creating a powerful narrative to help combat and fight climate change. At Habits of Waste we believe in the power of thinking globally but acting locally. We also strongly believe that the sum of all the small changes in the world can have great effects.

In order to define and measure success we will be collecting both qualitative and quantitative metrics. These metrics include students impacted and a food diary students can keep to track their meals and carbon reduction. We also hope to gain insight into community sentiments through empowering students to become community researchers. Another avenue we will use is the use of social media, such as infographics and compelling content for students to post and interact with. The programming also includes survey data collected from multiple points in time of the program duration. For growth purposes, there will be ongoing opportunities for students to provide feedback in order to center student experience to measure the efficacy of the program. We will define our success through the changes we see in the students and through our feedback surveys. We will also use all the collected data to get a full picture of the issue and use this to expand the programing to various schools.