Greenroots

Waterfront initiative - Greenroots engages dozens of residents in a grassroots effort to revitalize the chelsea creek waterfront. Through this work, we mobilized widespread community engagement in the opposition to the east boston substation; partnered with the boston waterfront partners to bring equity to boston's waterfront; engaged in development discussions regarding key parcels of land in east boston and chelsea; and engaged community members in revitalizing, creating public access to; and being engaged in the redesign of key parcels of land along the chelsea creek and adjacent waterbodies. We also organized weekly caminatas verdes walking groups with east boston residents. Covid-19/equity corps - Greenroots played a critical role in addressing the covid-19 pandemic's impact on chelsea. Our work included co-founding and adminstering the one chelsea fund, a cash assistance program for chelsea residents negatively impacted by covid19; creating a new program entitled health equity corps and a related team of vaccine ambassadors who worked to connect residents to information, resources, testing and vaccines and that works to advance health equity policies and programs to dismantle health disparities in chelsea, east boston and beyond; wrote and published a multilingual health equity report; and participated in local and regional coalitions focusing on covid19 impacts and responses. Climate justice / air quality / energy democracy - Greenroots works to address climate impacts including heat island effect, flooding and sea level rise throughout chelsea and east boston. Our work also focuses on climate related health impacts including poor air quality and increase respiratory incidents. Our campaigns include launching a cool block initiaitve to implement resident-led solutions to heat island effects; working with c-heat partners to understand residents' perceptions of heat waves personnally and throughout the community; implementing indoor air quality monitoring and air filteration pilot programs; monitoring outdoor air quality and working to share data broadly and accessibly; and proposing new sources of renewable, resilient energy including a community-owned microgrid, solar panels, energy efficiency programs, community choice energy and more.