Introducing Neighborhood Resilience Corps

It's my pleasure to introduce Neighborhood Resilience Corps ! Neighborhood Resilience Corps is a Denver-based nonprofit focused on building the climate workforce of the future while adapting our built environment to allow everyone to thrive amidst a hotter and drier future.

If you don't have time to read below, check out our coverage by Denver7: https://www.denver7.com/news/environment/csu-spur-hosts-student-visit-aimed-at-building-climate-workforce

This is an initiative I've been working on for the last six months and it builds upon my decade of experience in youth workforce development and my experience running for local office, where I had the privilege to hear concerns from residents in Northeast Denver. One of the most common issues I heard about was the negative effects on daily life resulting from extreme heat.

The Problem:

We've all experienced Denver's extreme weather. Not just hotter temperatures in the middle of summer, but prolonged hotter temperatures throughout the year when it's supposed to be cooling down. When it is 90 degrees deep into October, it's hard to get your Pumpkin Spice Latte on! There's an equity component as well. Much of Denver's "Inverted-L" neighborhoods experience surface temperatures 10-20 degrees higher than more affluent neighborhoods due to a lack of green infrastructure and abundance of asphalt and concrete.

Climate adaptation is the practice of adapting the built environment to better thrive within a changing climate. Mostly practiced in coastal areas, there is a growing consensus that urban areas in the Western US need to adapt as well, given their lack of water resources and urban development that promoted concrete over green infrastructure during the past several decades.

As I did more research into climate adaptation, climate adaptation workforce capacity stuck out as an issue that, until very recently, was not receiving nearly enough attention and investment.

Thanks to a grant from Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency - City and County of Denver 's Green Workforce Fund, Neighborhood Resilience Corps is starting to change that with a three phase development strategy to build the climate adaptation workforce of the future:

• Phase 1: Take a cohort of students from Northeast Denver on site visits around Denver to explore careers and mentorship related to climate change and climate adaptation.

On November 13, we kicked things off by taking twenty Denver Public Schools students who identify as BIPOC to see Denver Water 's Recycled Water Plant to meet water professionals and understand how climate change affects our water supply and the importance of transforming our landscapes. Additional visits to CSU Spur and the 39th Avenue Greenway with Denver DOTI will take place this month. While not the immediate goal of the visit, several students inquired about internships and apprenticeships at Denver Water!

Additionally, in partnership with Superbloom , Neighborhood Resilience Corps will be working with DPS on their sustainable landscaping plan. We will be advising on how to integrate student work-based learning into creating sustainable landscapes on every DPS campus in Denver.

Phase Two: We will host a Summer Climate Adaptation Academy to provide both classroom and hands-on paid training opportunities in partnership with DSST Elevate HS in Montbello. Students will learn by doing, adapting their campus to be more waterwise, connected to nature, and shaded while learning about college and career pathways in climate change.

Phase Three: We will launch a registered apprenticeship in climate adaptation thanks to help from Apprenticeship Colorado . Apprentices will train and work on both long term adaptation projects. Eventually, we hope to develop a social enterprise where apprentices can be hired to adapt any residential, commercial, or governmental property to be more resilient in the face of extreme weather.

Partners:

We are very excited to have several partners in this endeavor including:

Colorado Nonprofit Development Center as our fiscal sponsor.

Denver Public Schools and DSST Public Schools as education and property partners.

Superbloom as our landscape architecture partner for the DPS Sustainable Landscaping Plan.

Our funding partners include Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency - City and County of Denver , TEGNA , WOLCOTT FAMILY FOUNDATION , and Colorado Water Conservation Board

Lyra as a partner to work on many of our youth participants qualify for graduating with Colorado's Seal of Climate Literacy.

Blair Knicely has been our design and marketing star!

We have many more partners that will be announced in time.

How to plug in:

While we're proud of the progress we've made so far, we have a lot of work to do and could use your help. Here are two ways to plug in:

• If you are a climate adaptation or youth workforce professional who wants to get involved in our work as an adviser, volunteer, or help implement some of our adaptation projects, send me a message.
• If you are a funder looking to shore up support for adaptation and resilience projects amidst the uncertainty in federal funding in this area, send me a message.

-Brad