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Join us for the UCFS Learning Series!
The Citizen’s Coolkit: New tools, processes, and career pathways for engaging communities in greening/tree-planting on private land
Many communities in North America have yet to develop resilient neighbourhoods that meet canopy and climate targets. This learning session introduces a novel process for implementing local nature-based climate solutions, using the powerful Citizen’s Coolkit to motivate collective grassroots action on private land that is difficult for municipalities to influence and regulate.
The Coolkit program seeks to activate micro-neighbourhoods where residents care the most and can take practical collective action on tree planting and stewardship, in alignment with local policies and staff. The Coolkit is an attractive, customizable DIY resource which provides fun ‘hands-on’ activities and low-barrier visual learning tools to build capacity and guide local climate action. It follows a simple five-step process, which includes structured neighbourhood walks, mapping local vulnerabilities & assets, collective visioning of climate solutions on your block, leading to practical local climate action plans. The webinar will explain how a series of workshops empowers residents to become local climate champions, with municipal support, for positive action such as tree planting, rewilding and stewarding boulevards, food forests, raingardens etc.
Evaluation results will be shared from testing of this process in diverse neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver and other Canadian communities, where it has been well received by residents of many cultures and all age groups, including disadvantaged communities in low-canopy neighbourhoods.
The webinar discusses how such programs can be scaled and customized by other municipalities to help meet high-level targets on the ground and implemented through new professional development opportunities such as a train-the-trainer Micro-certificate in Climate Action and Community Engagement and online degree programs such as UBC’s Master of Urban Forestry Leadership.
Learning Objectives:
Speakers for this event are:
ISA CEUs have been applied for and are pending.