Sustainable Neighborhoods for Wellbeing and Happiness

Photo Credit: Ramsey Social Justice Foundation

Commitment to Action

Sustainable Neighborhoods for Wellbeing and Happiness

Commitment by

Ramsey Social Justice Foundation

In 2015, The Ramsey Social Justice Foundation and the City of Tempe, in partnership with Arizona State University, Habitat for Humanity, and New Course, committed $630,000 to revitalize two marginalized neighborhoods in Arizona and Guatemala through the community-driven Sustainable Neighborhoods for Wellbeing and Happiness project. The project will retrofit 30 homes in Guatemala and 150 in Tempe, Arizona, and develop skills training for 30 women and 60 smallholder farmers. By engaging local residents in the planning and implementation process, the project aims to create localized, sustainable solutions to each neighborhoods most pressing needs and improve the overall health of community members. Ultimately, the project goal is to advance a global framework for sustainable neighborhood development and revitalization.

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Overview

Summary

Commitment

Sustainable Neighborhoods for Wellbeing and Happiness

Launched

2015

Est. Duration

2 years

Estimated Total Value

$812,599

Region

Latin America & Caribbean, Northern America

Countries

GUATEMALA, United States

Commitment by

Ramsey Social Justice Foundation

Partner(s) of the Commitment Maker(s)

Habitat For Humanity International, New Course, Arizona State University, City of Tempe, Arizona, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative

Details

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

Background

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.

Partnership Opportunities

The project will be seeking additional partners, as required, with guidance from the Clinton Global Initiative. Issues that arise during the project that require solutions that extend beyond the teams core competencies will require our team to seek appropriate technical expertise and financial resources. Potential examples include health experts, food experts, water treatment experts or fundraising experts.

The project team offers a reciprocal partnership where it leverages knowledge, skills, and expertise to improve community opportunities for locally defined happiness and well-being through the use of sustainable, inclusive development solutions created in partnership with local residents. The team also offers access to: (1) experts and passionate students across the ASU campus; (2) home building/rehabilitation techniques and methods (3) resident engagement in Tempe and Guatemala (with strengths in participatory research practices and female engagement and empowerment); (4) solution development grounded in research and prior application; and, (5) holistic approaches to sustainable development.

Progress Reports

September 2016

It has been a productive year for the partners in both Guatemala and in Tempe, Arizona. In both locations the "boots on the ground" teams have been established, communication pathways have been built, modified and are running smoothly, monitoring and evaluation protocols have been adjusted, communities have been identified

and, in some cases, specific family beneficiaries have been determined. Importantly, stakeholder engagement processes have been extensive over the past year and awareness raising and efforts to obtain community "buy in" has been successful.

The project in Tempe remains consistent with initial visions. The project in Guatemala has been modified based on information obtained from field teams and site visits. In short, the Guatemala project will be expanded to three communities and will have additional financial resources applied to subsequent years of the project. Further, the scale of impact has been increased from 60 to 150 families with anticipated additional growth in subsequent years. Community improvements will be focused initially on ensuring households have access to clean energy, improved WASH facilities including access to clean water and latrines, and in some cases, installation of cement flooring. Communities will also receive training in community organization, financial education, disaster prevention and mitigation, use and maintenance of products, and construction.

We are delighted to announce that both projects are "breaking ground" in early June and teams are excited to move from planning to implementation phases.