Organization:       Ubuntu Green, www.ubuntugreen.org

Location:                 Sacramento, CA

Hours:                      15-35 Hours a Week

Start Date:              March 2012 – May 2012 (Position may be extended) 

Organizational Description:

Ubuntu Green is 501c3 non-profit organization, committed to promoting healthy, sustainable and equitable communities through advocacy, education, and community empowerment.

Job Description: 

The Ubuntu Green Community Advocacy and Engagement Institute (CAEI), Research Associate will work with our Healthy Land Use Engagement project by providing programmatic support, leading an environmental justice power mapping process
and assisting with the planning of community engagement and envisioning sessions. The HLEP project engages residents in the Sacramento Building Healthy Communities area on land use issues (environmental justice, transportation,environmental health, food access, green buildings).

Essential Functions:

• Assist with coordinating the
  HLEP project.
• Leads environmental justice
  power mapping process
• Attends organizational and
  project related meetings and strategy sessions
• Conducts interviews and
  focus groups with resident leaders.
• Assist with the forming and
  planning of community engagement and visioning sessions.
• Participates
  in community outreach and engagement activities.

Qualifications:

• Masters level student or
  recent master’s graduate in the fields of public administration, public
  policy, community/economic development or related areas.
• Experience and ability to
  work with diverse staff and populations.
• Excellent communications,
  writing, management and interpersonal skills.
• Knowledge of GIS, Google
  Earth, heatlhycities.com and related tools.
• Motivated
  and independent worker.

Salary:

Monthly stipend of $500. All expenses
will be covered.

 How to Apply :

Send resume to rangineh@ubuntugreen.org by 5:00 PM
Thursday, February 23, 2012.

The Sacramento Housing Alliance is seeking a Regional Equity Coordinator. The Regional Equity Coordinator will work with the Executive Director of SHA to staff the Coalition on Regional Equity (a project of the Housing Alliance), which includes staffing the Sacramento Hunger Coalition, and supporting other coalition subgroups including the Transportation Equity and Sustainable Communities Working Groups. The responsibilities of the position include regional organizing and coalition building, policy advocacy, education and outreach. For more information and to learn how to apply, read the job posting. The posting closes on February 10, 2012.

Ubuntu Green was selected for a 2011 Local Vision Award by the Sac Valley American Planning Association.

Alvin Vaughn and Charles L. Mason, Jr. with Ubuntu Green's newest member of the Board of Directors Julia Lave Johnston.

Local Awards are giving annually by the Sacramento Valley Section to organizations and individuals that have made outstanding contributions to creating a better Sacramento Region. Winners all have challenged the members of the communities to think differently about the everyday decisions they make.

The APA at the national, state, and section levels have awards programs that recognize excellence in traditional planning activities. The Local Vision Awards recognize that sometimes you have to color outside of the lines to lead a community to plan for a better future. Winners all have challenged the members of their communities to think differently about the everyday decisions they make.

“We are incredibly honored to be recognized by such an outstanding organization as the Sac Valley APA for our work in creating sustainable and equitable communities,” said Charles L. Mason, Jr., President and CEO of Ubuntu Green. “2011 was a very successful year for Ubuntu Green, and the Local Vision Award inspires us to raise the bar even farther for 2012.”

2011′s Local Vision Award Winners included:

Brooks Truitt – Editor of Old City Guardian, Sacramento Old City Association

Stonebridge Properties – “Roots of the Past” books, lessons learned from the past highly relevant today: Stories of the Land, Sacramento Park Neighborhoods, and Sacramento’s Park Neighborhood Trees

Sacramento Tree Foundation – non-profit organization dedicated to building the best regional urban forest

Sacramento County Farm Bureau – instrumental in promoting public policy to preserve agriculture in Sacramento County

The award ceremony was held on Wednesday, January 11 at 5 pm at AECOM, 2020 L Street, 4th floor conference room and lounge.

For more photos from this event, visit our Facebook Page.

Ubuntu Green supports Healthy Development for Oak Park (HDOP) in their opposition to the planned construction of a McDonald’s restaurant with a double drive-through at 2nd Avenue and Stockton Boulevard in Oak Park.

A proposed McDonald’s restaurant at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento is being greeted with skepticism by some Oak Park neighborhood residents. Residents have raised a number of concerns about the project, including unhealthy food choices, plummeting home prices and traffic safety and congestion problems if the project goes through. In an ironic twist, the proposed restaurant would be located across the street from the UC Davis Medical Center, which among its many services, studies childhood obesity. The Oak Park Neighborhood Association and the Oak Park Neighborhood Land Use Committee recently came out against the project, and developed a matrix to quantify the detrimental effects it could have to the area’s quality of life.

According to Frankie Hansbearry of Healthy Development for Oak Park, more than 1400 signatures have been collected to be presented to the City’s Planning Commission at its meeting next month.

Read the full letter to the City of Sacramento Planning Commission below.

McDonald’s Letter to Planning Commission

Policy Recommendations for the Surface Transportation Authorization

Transportation is a crucial to ensuring opportunity for all—connecting us to jobs, schools, housing, healthcare, and grocery stores.

Inadequate and unaccountable transportation investments have stifled opportunity for millions of Americans, leading to social and economic isolation and health disparities. These trends threaten the economic prosperity of our nation and disadvantage low-income people, communities of color, people in rural areas, and individuals with disabilities.

The next surface transportation authorization is our opportunity to build a stronger, healthier, more inclusive nation. The transportation bill should work toward the following three priorities:

• Improve access to affordable transportation options that promote mobility and health.
• Expand economic opportunity to strengthen families and communities.
• Promote accountability and focus on results.

Improve Access and Health
Millions of lower-income families, people with disabilities, and people of color live in communities where transportation options are unaffordable, unreliable, or nonexistent. A robust, accessible transportation system can foster personal independence, economic security, and improved health for many Americans—particularly older adults, individuals with disabilities, people in rural areas, and the poor.

Recommendations:
• Preserve and expand programs that fund essential transportation options including public transportation, biking, and walking infrastructure—including greater flexibility to use federal funds for operating assistance.

• Coordinate existing funds used to support transportation options for people with disabilities, older adults, and people with limited incomes in a manner that provides greater flexibility to meet the diverse needs of rural areas and small urban centers. (These include the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities, Job Access and Reverse Commute, and New Freedom programs, as well as social service programs in other federal agencies).

Expand Economic Opportunity
Transportation provides access to good-paying jobs in both the construction and the operation of highways, public transportation systems, roads, and bridges. While one in 10 civilian jobs is in the transportation sector, women, low-income people, and communities of color lack equitable access to those careers.

Recommendations:
• Establish a construction careers demonstration program that would expand opportunity to middle-class careers in the construction sector by:
o Promoting work opportunities for local, low-income workers who live in the vicinity of transportation projects;
o Maximize the use of registered apprentices on transportation projects; and
o Dedicate transportation dollars for programs that help underrepresented groups gain access to apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training programs.

Foster Accountability and Focus on Results
Our transportation decisions should be accountable to the needs of our most vulnerable populations—older adults, low-income individuals and families, communities of color, and people with disabilities.

Recommendations:

• Establish a strategic planning process for states and regions to focus on the outcomes transportation investments should provide the community:
o Compare the benefits and consequences different strategies, investments choices, and development patterns have on community goals;
o Evaluate scenarios to determine the region’s potential to meet broad goals, including how vulnerable populations are impacted by transportation, such as reducing household transportation costs, providing access to jobs, increasing walking and biking opportunities, improving air quality, and reducing injury risk to pedestrians and motorists; and
o Develop strategic plans through a consensus building process that considers alternative investment and growth scenarios with widespread public involvement.

• Strengthen civil rights enforcement to ensure fair and non-discriminatory use of federal transportation funds, by:
o Increase funding for the U.S. Department of Transportation to strengthen enforcement of civil rights provisions—this would enable timely investigation of discrimination complaints;
o Maintain funding for the Transportation Equity Research Program, which funds research projects to understand the impact of transportation decisions on low-income, minority, and transit-dependent populations.
o Conduct an Equal Opportunity Assessment to identify impediments to compliance with non-discrimination and equal opportunity policies.

This is a great step forward for Sacramento and especially for Ubuntu Green’s Home and Community Gardens Project!

Here’s video of the actual vote. Skip back to view comments from community members.

From the article in the Sacramento Press by Dora Bromme:

The nonprofit organization Ubuntu Green is literally planting seeds of change within the Sacramento community, nearing completion of the first year of its Home and Community Gardens Project.
[...]
After receiving contact from families living in the BHC-targeted area, Ubuntu Green chooses recipients of the gardens, prioritized on a greatest-need basis. This need is assessed from the area of the household, whether or not it is in the target BHC area, and from their website, “families that are already receiving or have received services from green and sustainable organizations in the area.”

Read the full article here: Garden boxes in South Sacramento grow community, healthy food

Jenn Walker at HealthyCal.org posted an excellent article about Ubuntu Green founder, Charles Mason. Here’s an excerpt:

Local agencies have deemed South Sacramento a food desert — a region deprived of access to healthy and affordable foods. Mason describes it as an area lacking in adequate public transportation, scattered with vacant lots and corner stores selling junk food and liquor.

He sought to address these problems by creating Ubuntu Green, with the mission of transforming South Sacramento into an equitable, politically active place with interconnected communities, a cleaner environment and healthy food access.

Full article: http://www.healthycal.org/community-activist-helps-turn-sacramento-neighborhood-green.html

Ubuntu Green is in the news again! Cathy Locke at the Sacramento Bee wrote a great piece on the work that the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, including Ubuntu Green, is doing to make areas around South Sacramento a little greener. Our founder and CEO, Charles Mason, was interviewed for the piece:

Charles Mason works with Ubuntu Green, a subcontractor for grantee Soil Born Farms. He has spent the past several months helping residents establish home gardens.

“We looked at what is the most simple way to provide healthy food access for someone,” he said, “and the most simple way is to grow it at home.”

Redwood box gardens are designed both for aesthetics and to ensure that the soil used for crops is free of contamination, he said. The boxes, typically measuring 3 feet by 8 feet, are equipped with drip irrigation systems on timers and cost about $400. So far, 27 home gardens are under cultivation. Three more will be established this year under the grant and 30 more next year.

Read the full article here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/17/3774654/neighborhoods-get-grants-for-health.html

A recent report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found renewable energy production in the United States has increased by a little over 15 percent since the first quarter of 2010, and has increased by more than 25 percent when compared to the first quarter of 2009, which puts it ahead of nuclear energy production and closer to surpassing domestic oil production.

The EIA Monthly Energy Review reported in the first three months of 2011, the country’s biomass/biofuel, hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar energy generation plants produced a combined nearly 12 percent of U.S. energy production, while nuclear produced about 2 percent. The Monthly Energy Review reported that “energy produced from renewables is 77.15 percent of that from domestic crude oil production.” Nuclear power experienced a minimal increase, but has mainly stayed steady.

In California, just a few months ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a directive requiring that 33% of the state’s electricity must come from renewable energy sources by 2020. While this law, known as the renewable portfolio standard (or RPS), is the most ambitious in the country, many are left with concerns of how and where the renewable energy is to be produced (centralized, industrial-scale facilities or localized distributed generation) and the feeling that the percentage should be higher. Governor Brown has stated, “While reaching a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard will be an important milestone, it is really just a starting point – a floor, not a ceiling… Our state has enormous renewable resource potential.” Governor Brown’s statement reinforces the trend the EIA Monthly Energy Reviews are tracking on the national level – renewable energy continues to be the most equitable energy source of the future.