Climate, Health and Equity - Swat All Alumni Impact Challenge May 29, 2022
H.G. Chissell
Founder & CEO, AEG - Advanced Energy Group + Puerto Rico Energy Week | Chair of IEEE Grid Edge Innovation Challenge | Stakeholder Mobilization for Leaders as Champion Teams focused on Energy • Health • Equity
How can one possibly make an impact on the nexus climate, health and equity in 12 months? Collectively, we can't make a tangible impact on one these systemic issues, much less the synthesis of all three.
Four generous, impactful, community leaders from the class of 1996/1997, and intrepid change-maker, Professor Carr Everbach, created sacred space with their insights for a discussion on how? what?, why? and where? Swarthmore Alumni should and can deliver needed impact before we meet again for Swarthmore Reunion 2023.
For access to the presentations and Task Force sign up, please visit here.
The intersection of climate, health and equity is lethal. Despite our vast capacity to make an impact as Swarthmore alumni, how can we possibly do something tangible in 12 months? I asked each speaker to finish the following sentence and provide context for their answer.
Regarding climate, health, and equity, a critical obstacle to collaboratively overcome before next year’s reunion is:
Carr Everbach centered the group on the importance of honoring the indigenous people of Swarthmore as a wellspring and anchor in our quest to drive positive change at the nexus of three realities reflective of such suffering and need. Matt St. Clair brought the topic further home, by pointing out the importance and urgency of replacing harmful fossil gas in our living places. (T-shirt idea: Natural Gas = Methane. How you like me now?) Ch'uya Hornberger Lane reminded us that the foundation of health and healthy communities is equitable access to nourishing food. Aaron Bartley shared his personal takeaways as a community leader in Buffalo devoted to front-line, community capacity building. Vulnerable communities in a daily struggle against systemic oppression have bright visions of change but lack compassionate assistance to develop those dreams into a solid path of realization. Swarthmore alumni can develop those pathways by engaging locally where climate justice and sustainability organizations need our our time, our talent and our treasure. To address this prompt, Rebeka Ndosi invited Daniel Torres '24 and Narimen (Nari) Zorgui '25 - first generation, low income (FLI) Swarthmore students along with recent 2022 FLI Swat graduate, Gabriella (Ella) Vetter, to co-present with her. We learned from Nari, Daniel and Ella that the Swarthmore FLI Student Community, predicated on the intention to address inequity, is struggling to find empowering pathways to support their growing needs to uplift each other.
The Swat FLI Student Council has operated with a $60,000 annual budget allocated from interest derived from the Swarthmore Green Fund to foster community (trips together, developing a collective food pantry) and take care of individual needs (affordable transportation home, nourishing meals during extending breaks, etc). Despite efforts eloquently and passionately shared with us, the student leadership of FLI have not been successful in aligning needed financial support to have a budget for this fall.
Empowered by Rebeka, Dan, Nari and Ella inspired an aligned sense of focus and priority to further support Swarthmore, first generation, low income students.
Next, we worked to construct a unifying obstacle statement that incorporated insights from all speakers and those present that would confirm our decision to volunteer our time and resources over the next 12 months to deliver tangible impact as the first Swat Alumni Task Force on Climate, Health and Equity.
For access to the presentations and Task Force sign up, please visit here.
"Climate justice focuses on the root causes of the climate crisis through an intersectional lens of racism, classism, capitalism, economic injustice, and environmental harm. Climate justice supports a Just Transition for communities and workers away from a fossil fuel economy and focuses on making the necessary systemic changes to address unequal burdens to our communities and to realign our economy to our natural systems." - Climate Justice Alliance (CJA)
During our preparation for this workshop, Aaron shared that he went to high school two blocks from the Tops on Jefferson in Buffalo and shared the terror and grief laying so heavily on his community right now.
Black Buffalo determined to rebuild while dealing with grief and sorrow: "In every social category — services, job wages, transportation, employment opportunities and health disparities among them — Black people in east Buffalo lag significantly behind white residents and have seen little progress in 30 years, according to The Harder We Run, a 2021 study by Henry Louis Taylor, a University of Buffalo professor of urban studies."
Aaron's community is our community, if we make it so.
Many hands, make light work - John Heywood
A possible pathway to create a growing wealth of resources for FLI Swat students would be the creation of the FLI Impact Fellowship Program or Fund that would generously support FLI Student Council's mission and compensate FLI Students willing to support the establishment and annual execution of the Swarthmore All Alumni Impact Challenge on Climate, Health and Equity. With the engagement and leadership of FLI Students, we can connect the wealth creation efforts by alumni for FLI Student Council this year to the climate, health and equity challenges in east Buffalo so that first generation, low income high school juniors and seniors in east Buffalo can also experience an empowering pathway to derive actionable meaning from the unimaginable suffering and deprivation viciously afflicted upon their beloved community. Wealth - its disparity and necessity- is a common denominator across climate, health and equity.
A few years ago, I started the AEG Fellowship Program which provides young leaders an opportunity to support volunteer Task Forces derived from AEG Stakeholder Action Challenges. I have enjoyed working with several young Swarthmore alumni as AEG Fellows. Nearly all AEG Fellows secure outstanding job opportunities from their efforts.
Next steps:
There is much to be done that would benefit from the involvement of FLI Swat students over the next 12 months to:
1) better understand the key issues/needs surrounding this obstacle to best align on a course of action by facilitating, bi-monthly online Task Force meetings. Both Nari and Ella have offered to provide a presentation of the FLI Student Council budget and be actively involved.
2) protect and grow the momentum created from this Impact Challenge by engaging more of the Swarthmore community to understand the mission and perhaps join the Task Force.
3) host an online all-alumni online roundtable discussion mid August with special guest speakers, such as Tim Harrison and Nicole O'Dell Odim of Swarthmore Black Alumni Network, Giovanna Di Chiro, Faculty Lead of the new Environmental Justice & Climate Resilience Program (EJCR) at the Lang Center, and ideally, BoHee Yoon ’01, President of the Swarthmore Alumni Council.
Inspiring a sense of urgency is one of the most challenging leadership competencies to develop, especially when driving systemic change. Creating artificial time constraints is a proven tactic among professional team sports to strengthen communication and develop high-performance teams that effectively play to win to the very last second. Well, we have a game clock now - 12 months until All Alumni Collection 2023. Swarthmore Alumni Weekend demonstrated our ability to come together is a precious gift in a fragile world that needs our collective action, now. Will you join us on the field and deliver this win?
Know we need it - Swat Power / We gotta have it - Swat Power / What we missin? - Swat Power / Let's get up and do our thing...
Collaborative Spotify Playlist - SwatPower22
For access to the presentations and Task Force sign up, please visit here.
(Any work performed by myself or AEG staff regarding this initiative is and will be provided on a voluntary basis. I am truly grateful for the support and engagement of so many Swarthmore alumni and the Lang Center to explore this approach to actionable collaboration)
Swarthmore College Undergraduates | BA in Middle East & North Africa Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies & Religion
2yAs a rising sophomore, both an international and a low-income student at Swarthmore, I barely ever felt connected to most of the struggles many of my classmates were often opening up to me about. While their troubles generally, albeit not always, consisted of a necessary venting about our rigorous academic workloads, many of us at Swarthmore don’t have the luxury of taking this kind of time off to vent, complain, or sometimes even talk. Many FLI students, particularly the demographic of low-income internationals to which I belong, have no choice but to spend up to 20 hours of every week working to support themselves financially at a pay rate that ranges between $10 to $11.88. For that, and because of the demanding nature of Swarthmore academics, we find ourselves constantly reminded of the growing gap between us and the visible majority of our student body that does not share this same dire need to work twice as hard to be just as good.