Pitzer College
EN-10: Community Partnerships

The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) is a progressive, base-building, non-profit organization bringing communities together to find opportunities for cooperation, agreement and problem solving in improving their social and natural environment. Using the lens of environmental health to achieve social change, we work within communities to develop and sustain democratically based, participatory decision-making that promotes involvement of a diverse segment of the community in ways that empower the community. We have placed students with CCAEJ, working on land use issues, policy proposals, opposition to local projects, as well as a major report on air quality and public health. We have also been involved in a legal case they took on related to farmland preservation. https://www.ccaej.org/

We support their mission to retain open space within the Inland Empire, to fight for access for marginalized community members, to protect biodiversity, and to engage in struggles around industrial land uses that compromise land, biodiversity and that have detrimental environmental justice impacts.
https://www.pitzer.edu/redfordconservancy/
https://sangorgonio2.sierraclub.org/content/san-gorgonio-chapter

Huerta del Valle is a community garden and urban agriculture project in Ontario that has grown out of collaboration between the Pitzer in Ontario program and community members. The project is supported by the City of Ontario and
a partnership of organizations working to improve community health through comprehensive environmental,educational, policy and promotional strategies.
The Huerta del Valle project offers interns a diverse range of opportunities including community organizing; outreach
and promotion; urban farming; setup, support and maintenance of community plots; documentation; story-gathering
and blogging. Research will focus on the experiences of participants in the community garden and may be used to
evaluate success of the project for grant funding purposes, to publicize and promote Huerta del Valle and/or to
affect policy decisions regarding local food systems.
https://www.huertadelvalle.org/

We have over 50 partner organizations and closely collaborate with about 15 partners. Our students are immersed with policy work as part of classes or writing project-based thesis project in a way that provides benefit to community partners. Our partnerships include the fields of environmental justice, farming and agriculture, land conservation, biodiversity preservation, and energy/climate advocacy. We are lucky to partner with high level groups throughout the state as well as CBO's and municipalities locally. A beginning list of partners is here and at the website below. https://www.pitzer.edu/redfordconservancy/partners-and-collaboratives/; https://www.pitzer.edu/casa-pitzer/community-projects/; https://www.pitzer.edu/cec/community-engagement-center/community-partners/community-partner-profiles/;

Above, we have provided a document with links to thesis papers and films relevant to our partnerships and student work.