Meredith Stern

When we decided to create a portfolio on climate change; I decided that my preference was to find a local RI organization working on environmental justice issues. I was most drawn to the Environmental Justice League of RI. The EJ League is a non-profit organization led by Rhode Island residents who envision society and economy that does not put any community in harm’s way but instead protects our health and the well being of neighborhoods and families.

There are the different projects currently making up the work of the EJ League: Green Teenz is a youth program run jointly with RI Legal Services and MYTV-Media. The Community Environmental College is a joint project with Brown University’s Superfund Basic Research Program. The CARE Alliance is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded program to bring diverse stakeholders to the table to identify the sources of toxic pollution and environmental hazards in Providence. Community members from across the city, representatives from city and state government, as well as business and industry will use CARE as a forum to identify the priority toxic hazards in the city and create an action plan to address these problems. The Green Jobs Coalition started in an attempt to track the flow of dollars from the federal stimulus package into “green” sectors of Rhode Island’s economy that could benefit the people and neighborhoods in our urban core in terms of jobs and job training.