She/Her
My experience as a Community Coordinator for the Douglas County Climate Action Planning project was revealing. At the beginning of the project, I was optimistically excited about going out into my community and listening to climate stories shared by people whose experiences rarely get represented in the policies that affect them. But as time passed, the reality of how powerful this project could be for the marginalized groups within Douglas County dawned on me.
The members of the community I talked to were housing vulnerable, lower-socioeconomic, people of color, older adults, teens, and parents. During my interviews I could feel the amount of joy and relief from the storytellers of finally getting the chance to have their voice and opinion heard and valued. But, within those same moments they would be reminded that their voice has been historically underrepresented in the first place, and a feeling of melancholy, or sometimes anger, would settle in. What I want to see happen in the next part of this project is the continued effort by Douglas County to provide the opportunity for marginalized groups to have a further tangible role in the county’s Climate Action policy changes. This would be one of many first steps by Douglas County decision makers to represent the opinions of marginalized community members in the policies they write, the grants they approve, and the way they communicate with their constituents even after this project has concluded.
