Building on feedback generated at a Neighborhood Council (NC) stakeholder engagement workshop held in May, a team of NCSA and NC volunteers from across the city have joined forces with USC’s “Code the Change” program — which selects one “social good” or nonprofit software development project per semester — to develop an online water conservation resource sharing hub for Neighborhood Councils.
NCSA Chair Laura Mack was invited to present the project at the 2015 conference of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), held last week in San Diego, as a Community Climate Change Fellow for EECapacity – the US EPA’s environmental education training program. NAAEE is a partner in an EECapacity consortium, and EPA is the funder of the NCSA water hub project with Code the Change. The (international) audience was excited by LA’s innovative Neighborhood Council community engagement approach and impressive results!
We expect to have a beta version of this online community platform, including blog, event calendar, and discussion forum features, ready for testing by November. It’s not too late to join us! We invite stakeholders with an interest in online collaboration tools and/or water conservation, and who can commit 4+ hours a month (mostly virtually), to shape our platform development and content. For more information, please send us a note: NCSA@EmpowerLA.org.
