ABOUT THE EVENT
This Citizen Science Month, join the Citizen Science Association (CSA)'s Environmental Justice Practitioners Working Group for a Q&A about how environmental justice and inclusion can be at the forefront of events and programming for citizen science.
Join Vivienne Byrd (of the Los Angeles Public Library) and Caroline Nickerson (from SciStarter), the co-chairs of the Citizen Science Association's Citizen Science Month Working Group, for this Q&A. The main speakers will be Brenda Wilson, Omega Wilson, and Vincent Martin, with an introduction from Jennifer Shirk, the leader of CSA.
Please register on Zoom to attend the event: http://bit.ly/EnvironmentalJusticeWorkingGroupCitSciMonth
SPEAKER BIOS
Vincent Martin is a community activist who has worked tirelessly for over 15 years on the local and national level to allow people the right to BREATHE, by volunteering his time to collect and provide data needed to push efforts to improve air quality for local residents. Vincent has been successful in giving a voice at the national level, representing his childhood neighborhood, Southwest Detroit, during meetings with the US EPA and US State Department. He currently works with several organizations including the Congress of Communities, Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit and the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC). He is also very active at the national level working with The Title VI Alliance task force and the Sierra Club. Vincent decided to pursue his EJ passion full-time in 2018. He has formed his own EJ consulting company that works with local communities and organizations to give a voice to the underserved.
Omega and Brenda Wilson, Co-founders of the West End Revitalization Association (WERA) 1994-95, brings decades of experience advocating for basic public health amenities for African American, Indigenous, Latinx and marginalized communities in North Carolina and the Southeast region of the USA. WERA was awarded the U.S. EPA’s Environmental Justice Achievement Award in 2008, and served on the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) 2007-2010 in addition to many regional awards and committees. WERA was invited to provide input to the Obama-Biden Administration on "Environmental Justice" 2008-2016, and the Biden-Harris Administration for reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ) 2020-present.
ABOUT THE WORKING GROUPS
The mission of the Environmental Justice Practitioners Working Group is to bring attention to inequities among the CSA community and address systemic issues holding back progress in research. The EJPWG aims to support and connect community-based organizations and EJ-focused practitioners to the CSA community and foster equitable collaborations in community science.
Global Citizen Science Month encompasses online events and opportunities to contribute to projects. The purpose of the CitSciMonth working group is to provide resources for CSA members and citizen science practitioners to celebrate and promote all things citizen science-related at their organizations.
Learn more about CSA working groups: https://www.citizenscience.org/get-involved/working-groups/