Workshop Tracks: General Descriptions

Track A: Community-Based Surveys

The majority of community-based environmental justice research projects involve surveys of residents, polluters, government, and other stakeholders in the community.  Surveys are often used to document EJ problems, to collect evidence of environmental conditions and/or disease in a community, and to mobilize community members around questions they should be asking around their environmental problems. Two sessions are being offered in this conference track.  Workshop A.2 (Sat. afternoon) will train communities just beginning their research in how to choose and to administer a survey to get answers about specific environmental problems.  Workshop A1 (Sat. morning) will focus on survey design, to enable EJ communities to gather the information they need in a way that’s tailored to their specific struggle.

 Track B: Personal Exposure Monitoring

Of the toxic substances in our environment, how much are we breathing, drinking, eating?  How much is actually making it into our bodies, our homes, and our food? Monitoring for exposure to pollutants is often more difficult technically and practically than ambient monitoring of the surrounding environment.  When communities do this, they often face more skepticism from government and scientists as well.  This track will train attendees in the experiences of community groups that have accomplished this kind of monitoring.

 Track C: Community-Based Environmental Monitoring

Because official monitoring networks often bypass EJ communities, they often have to develop their own monitoring to answer key environmental and ecological health questions. This track will provide workshops on  how to monitor for pollution at the community-level.  The workshops will address toxics monitoring at the community-level, contrasting the experiences of two different community-based research efforts to quantify the air exposure faced by residents.  These workshops will seek to familiarize participants with the types of equipment, the costs, and the types of local governmental and academic resources available to assist community-based monitoring.

 Track D: Community-Based GIS

Geographic Information Systems play an increasing role in the dissemination of environmental information.  They can also play a key role in helping a community to characterize and to organize around their own environmental situation. Communities with prior experience in GIS will demonstrate and train attendees in this track in how to design and to implement GIS for a number of goals, including problem identification, organizing, pollution prevention and citizen-enforcement.

 Track E: Community-Based “Biological “ Monitoring

We are all exposed to pollutants in the environment. The track on environmental monitoring covers ways that communities can measure those exposures, from the community-level to the personal-level.  This track is devoted to understanding the “dose” that EJ communities may be receiving from such exposures.  “Dose” measures how much pollution actually get absorbed by human, animal, and plant members of our communities, and biological monitoring is one important way of measuring this.  This track focuses on two approaches to biological monitoring: direct and indirect. Direct biological monitoring involves taking biological samples (like hair, urine, breast milk, blood) from people in our communities.  Indirect biological monitoring involves gathering samples of plant or animal life (like tomatoes grown in contaminated soil, or fish tissues and organs) to better understand how these may be contributing to the community’s “dose”. This track will also cover the important ethical and logistical issues communities confront doing this work.

 Track F: Community-Based Evaluation

Most mature community-led efforts incorporate an evaluation component to ensure that they can use their results with utmost effect. They also evaluate in order to improve their future efforts.  What are the key measures communities care about in evaluation?  How can evaluation help build and replenish leadership for future efforts?   This track/workshop will focus on measuring how well communities were able to stick to their plans and the real world impact of community actions compared to what would have happened without EJ research activity: how much pollution was eliminated?  How many polluters were fined? How much parkland was preserved?

 Track G: Government Community Research

This track will provide a forum for training in research partnerships that involve communities and government agencies.  A number of other workshops involve such partnerships as well. 

 Track H: Fundraising

This track will offer beginner and advanced workshops on how to raise funds for research and activism from a community-based perspective, including community-based foundations, and community-based control of funding strategy.

 Tracks I & J: Political and Social Research for Change/Alternatives For Sustainability

Community-based research takes place within a broader legal, political, and organizing strategy for environmental health.  A number of workshops in this track will train attendees in the types of research needed to support social and political change, as well as how to do research that leads to and promotes alternatives to unsustainable/unhealthy practices.  This includes legal and regulatory analysis, power analysis/influence mapping, and, most importantly, researching alternatives for sustainability.  The focus in this track will be on preparing the community to be proactive in response to its own research.