Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Mission Statement: The Cambridge Compact for a Sustainable Future, through the collaboration of it signatories, will, through research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and social enterprise, strive to create a more healthy, livable and sustainable Cambridge community by addressing global environmental challenges including climate change. In what is considered to be the first agreement of its kind, MIT, Harvard University and the City of Cambridge developed a compact to work collaboratively to address issues related to sustainability and climate change on a local basis. The “Cambridge Compact for a Sustainable Future” lays out a framework for signatories to work in a more coordinated and robust fashion to tackle local sustainability challenges. Open to eligible organizations and individuals, the Compact aims to leverage the different organizations’ core skills and competencies in research, best practices and governance to generate new solutions in the areas of building energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, climate mitigation and adaptation, waste reduction, water management, renewable energy, urban natural resource management, and green tech incubation. On-going collaboration with annual dues to support effort. MIT provides staff time to support the partnership in addition to a substantial founding financial contribution to stand-up the organization. MIT also contributes an annual membership fee to provide on-going support to the organization. MIT also provides meeting space and in-kind contributions as needed. MIT's Cambridge Compact for a Sustainable Future simultaneously supports social equity and environmental health and seeks additional partnerships with community leaders in order to inspire its institutional mission and measure its success. With 25 of the leading organizations in Cambridge, the Compact provides an innovative forum for community engagement with the City of Cambridge. The Compact provides a mechanism to engage community individuals that are interested in providing subject matter expertise to the Compact. Faculty and students have engaged through community-focused research and class projects that advance core objectives of the Compact including building energy efficiency and solar power system adoption. Periodically, City priorities are considered against Compact member core competencies and research opportunities to pair needs and expertise. A full governance structure has been established with an elected board of directors, standing committees, and ad-hoc working committees. This is an on-going partnership with a governance structure, annual objectives, and public reporting.Every effort is made to institutionalize knowledge, best practices, and collaborative practices through case study development and sharing, survey analysis, policy briefings, legislative stakeholder input, etc. The Compact recently adopted a comprehensive three-year strategic plan. Website: https://cambridgecompact.org

Solve is a multi-stakeholder collaboration addressing the world’s most pressing challenges through open innovation and partnership. Their mission: Identifying the best solutions to specific, actionable challenges through open innovation. Building and convening a community of leaders and changemakers committed to partnering together to pilot and implement these solutions. Their core values: OPTIMISM While big challenges exist in the world, they are solvable. PARTNERSHIP No one organization, sector or industry can solve these challenges alone. OPEN INNOVATION Talent and ingenuity are everywhere, and we must tap into them. HUMAN-CENTERED Solutions must start, end, and involve the people they’re designed for. TECHNOLOGY Solutions will include a technological component, but must also address political, economic, and cultural barriers and ensure that technology is adopted by most underserved communities. https://solve.mit.edu/about

A project of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Climate CoLab is an open, problem-solving online platform where 800,000 people (and growing) collaboratively develop and evaluate plans to reach climate change goals. By building a community that includes scientists, policymakers, business people, investors, and citizens alike, Climate CoLab aims to generate plans more detailed, effective, and actionable than otherwise would have been developed. Approach Nearly every country in the world -- along with many companies, cities, regions, and other organizations -- have outlined goals for addressing climate change. But there is still much work to be done to create the detailed implementation plans to actually achieve these goals, let alone ensure that these actions are enough to protect ourselves from the risks of climate change. In the same way that Linux welcomes thousands of software developers to help build its operating system, and that Wikipedia lets anyone edit the world’s largest encyclopedia, Climate CoLab enables thousands of people and organizations from around the world to help build such implementation plans. To do this, people with a broad range of expertise are welcome to submit, evaluate, and select proposals for what to do about various aspects of the climate change problem. They also can integrate ideas from many other proposals to suggest local, national, and global plans (coming soon). This activity occurs in a series of interrelated online contests (which we call “contest webs”) that are run on the platform each year. Engagement Anyone can join Climate CoLab’s open community and participate: Submit actions. Do you have a practice or project that can contribute to meeting global climate goals? Submit your proposal into one of our open contests or workspaces. Combine actions into integrated plans. Collect compatible proposals in an integrated proposal to suggest plans for how to meet climate goals. (Re-opening soon.) Network, find collaborators, and help other members’ work. Find and collaborate with others on the platform interested in similar topics. You can comment on their proposals and even ask to join their team. Support, share, and vote. Give a thumbs-up to the proposals you think are the best, and help them get recognition. During the voting period, you can help them win their contest’s Popular Choice Award. https://climatecolab.org

https://sustainability.mit.edu/topic/thriving-networks https://solve.mit.edu https://www.climatecolab.org