The Sustainable Neighborhoods for Wellbeing and Happiness project commits to revitalizing two neighborhoods with residents living in communities suffering from poverty and poor environmental and housing conditions including 30 homes in a neighborhood in Guatemala and 150 in Tempe, Arizona.
The project will engage local staff, community leaders, and residents to identify and co-create solutions to their most pressing needs, guided by the Sustainability through Happiness Framework (Cloutier and Pfeiffer, 2015) in an iterative process. The project team will work closely with community stakeholders to determine what aspects of sustainable development will improve opportunities for happiness. Demographics, housing quality, happiness levels, and other data will be collected to establish baselines. The Ramsey Social Justice Foundation will then implement a suite of solutions such as residential retrofits, smallholder farmer trainings, resident engagement on local water, natural resource, and healthcare committees, or women leadership trainings. The process will feed into additional focused community discussion on opportunities for happiness. Documented shifts in metric scores (e.g. housing quality, number of women trained, etc
) will be assessed to further guide the development process.
The Ramsey Social Justice Foundation crafted the project vision, assembled partners, contributed funds, and will continue to fundraise and provide leadership. The City of Tempe and Guatemala government officials will engage in all aspects of the project cycle. Arizona State University will provide project leadership, oversee monitoring and evaluation, and lead community engagement processes, systems-based solutions development. Habitat for Humanity will provide construction leadership at all levels as needed by the neighbors/residents, from ground up sustainable building, to restorative and rehabilitative repair, and neighborhood revitalization. New Course will provide marginalized stakeholder integration guidance.
Potential challenges for this project include team coherence over the project cycle, managing unanticipated community member requests, managing community development expectations, and recruiting future partners to fill implementation gaps.
Q1 2016
January March
- Arizona State University (ASU) collects baseline data in Tempe community, draft stakeholder engagement plan, initiate community meetings
- ASU provides report on baseline assessment in Tempe
- ASU and New Course make a field visit to Guatemala to finalize community selection, identify potential field partners, and conduct preliminary stakeholder engagement
Q2 2016
April June
- All partners finalize needs assessment in Tempe, Arizona
- ASU drafts action plan and circulates the plan to stakeholders and partners for Tempe
- All partners finalize the overall community vision for Tempe
- All partners finalize Year 1 action plan based on needs assessment in Tempe
- ASU finalizes the monitoring and evaluation plan for Tempe
- ASU conducts baseline data collection in Guatemala and the initial stakeholder engagement process
Q3 2016
July September
- All partners perform implementation of action plan in Tempe
- All partners finalize the needs assessment report for Guatemala
- All partners finalize the overall community vision for Guatemala
- ASU drafts an action plan for Guatemala and circulates to stakeholders and partners
- ASU finalizes monitoring and evaluation plan for Guatemala
Q4 2016
October December
- All partners finalize Year 1 action plan for Guatemala
- All partners initiate implementation in Guatemala
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe
Q1 2017
January March
- All partners evaluate Year 1 progress and impact with stakeholders in Tempe
- Tempe stakeholders finalize Year 2 action plan
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe/Guatemala
Q2 2017
April June
- ASU continues implementation in Tempe/ Guatemala
- ASU continues monitoring and evaluation in Tempe/Guatemala
- All partners identify partner and funding gaps in Tempe/Guatemala
Q3 2017
July September
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe and Guatemala
- All partners augment partner engagement and fundraising
- All partners begin leadership training in Tempe
Q4 2017
October December
- All partners evaluate year one progress and impact with stakeholders in Guatemala
- All partners finalize Year 2 action plan with stakeholders in Guatemala
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe and Guatemala
- All partners augment partner engagement and fundraising
- All partners continue training in Tempe
- All partners begin leadership training in Guatemala
Q1 2018
January March
- All partners valuate Year 2 progress and impact with stakeholders in Tempe
- All partners finalize Year 3 action plan with stakeholders in Tempe
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe/Guatemala
- All partners continue partner engagement and fundraising in Tempe/Guatemala
All partners continue training in Tempe/Guatemala
Q2 2018
April June
All partners continue implementation in Tempe/Guatemala
All partners continue partner engagement and fundraising in Tempe/Guatemala
- All partners continue training in Tempe/Guatemala
Q3 2018
July September
- All partners continue implementation in Tempe/Guatemala
- All partners continue partner engagement and fundraising in Tempe/Guatemala
- All partners continue training in Tempe/Guatemala
Q4 2018
October December
ASU evaluates project progress and impact with stakeholders in Tempe/Guatemala
All around the world, people struggle to balance the reality of day-to-day survival with ideals of building a sustainable future for themselves and their families. This tension arises because the skills, equipment, and knowledge necessary to advance a vision of sustainability are often costly in terms of time and money and can take long periods of time to accrue benefits. The commitment will focus on residents in an identified Tempe, Arizona neighborhood and a Guatemalan smallholder farming community experiencing lower than average levels of well-being driven by inequity and poverty, as well as poor environmental health and living conditions. Tempe is home to residents who have been isolated and displaced by highway projects and gentrification, while Guatemala is home to residents who are getting poorer each year, with many families surviving by using slash and burn farming methods and facing diminished land productivity. These limitations act as barriers to the many resources and innovations that can be deployed to make communities healthier, safer, and more environmentally sound. By removing these barriers and empowering all communities to develop sustainably, we can work towards reducing environmental injustice, creating healthier living conditions, and increasing safety and personal security. The cumulative impact potential is decreased poverty, decreased income disparity, and increases in physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. In Happy City, Charles Montgomery notes, the most important psychological effect of the city is the way in which it moderates our relationships with other people. Research shows that incorporating thoughtful sustainable development projects, such as community gardens, robust greenspaces, green homes, and sustainable transportation networks have been shown to not only increase happiness but also enhance and strengthen social networks.
This commitment will address many of these challenges through a holistic, systems-based approach to sustainable development at the neighborhood scale. The project will focus on ensuring that on-the-ground community development, particularly home building and resident training, translates directly into the improved physical, mental, and emotional health of community members and environmental conditions.