Central Events!

This year's Central Events are lunchtime learning sessions. Join us from wherever you are (home, work, a park, the grocery store!). Simply listen in or engage more actively in the conversations and practices these gatherings offer.

Details below. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 9/24 and Thursday 9/26!

Tuesday, September 24 - Noon-1:15pm ET

Land Connection for Mental Health and Healing

“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction,” shares ecologist E.O. Wilson. What tools and practices exist that support healing and thriving when we experience or witness crises, violence, and suffering, including losses from climate change? Speakers will share these, along with how to empower and care for ourselves and communities when facing extreme weather events and challenges in advocacy and changemaking.

RSVP here: bit.ly/CentralEvent1CPW2024

WHO'S JOINING AND SPEAKING?

Chris Kocher is a leading expert in building national survivor networks and trauma-informed advocacy programs. He recently co-founded Extreme Weather Survivors (EWS), a nationwide community of people directly impacted by extreme weather disasters like wildfires and deadly air pollution, floods, droughts, extreme heat, and superstorms. The EWS community provides: a space for survivors to support and learn from one another, no-cost trauma-informed support programming in English and in Spanish, and storytelling and media opportunities for interested survivors to become the changemakers in the fight for a clean energy future. Previously, Chris built and led the survivor network at Everytown and Moms Demand Action for nearly a decade, where he connected and supported hundreds of families through grief and advocacy. In 2020, he launched COVID Survivors for Change, where he conceived and executed a national remembrance event that placed 20,000 empty chairs outside the White House lawn, drawing attention to the failed federal response just ahead of a critical election. 

Judith Foster is a Mom, social justice activist, and lover of Mother Nature from Boston, Massachusetts. She is the founder/president of H.E.R.O. Nurturing Center, a non-profit organization located in the heart of the city that seeks to use nature to promote healing, empathy, redemption and to create the Oasis (environment) in which we all can thrive. She is a Public Speaker certified by the Labor Guild’s School of Labor Management Relations. She is also certified in the curriculum of ESPERE: Schools of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.

Judith Foster

Jo delAmor is a mother, coach and Work That Reconnects facilitator who has dedicated over twenty years to the care of children and their families. She is the author of Raising Children in the Midst of Global Crisis: A Compassionate Guidebook for New Paradigm Parenting.

Jo delAmor

Thursday, September 26 - Noon-1:15pm ET

Depaving & Other Nature-based Solutions

Depaving’s a global movement! Learn all about this unique and rewarding tool for liberating the land and creating more space for trees, gardens, and thriving nature spaces. Speakers will share their depaving projects, how they do the work and engage communities, and how the land is transformed  post-depaving.

 RSVP here: bit.ly/CentralEvent2CPW2024

WHO'S JOINING AND SPEAKING?

Renee Scott & Leigh Meunier organize with Green & Open Somerville, a Boston, MA area organization that advocates to improve and increase local green space, focusing on ecological restoration and climate change resilience. Green & Open has been home to the Depave the Way initiative since 2017, leading neighborhood depaving parties and helping residents rip up pavement in their driveways and yards. Renee co-founded Green & Open Somerville (G&OS) and, through this work, has advocated to stop artificial turf installation on playing fields, led depavings, invasive weed pulls, and native pollinator garden planting, and worked to strengthen and create stronger environmental standards, including a green roof amendment and first-of-its-kind Native Planting Ordinance. She earned her Master of Public Policy degree from Tufts in 2022 and coordinates the NOFA Mass Pollinator Network, where she advocates for pesticide regulation and organizes people across the state working on pollinator health and habitat creation. Leigh works with Renee and Green & Open on all of the projects mentioned above. She is also Program Manager for CREW, and both serves and learns from her community in many capacities – public education, songwriting and performance, community organizing, and ecological landscaping. 

Renee Scott (left), Leigh Meunier (right)

Emily Amon (She/Her) is the director of Green Infrastructure at Green Communities Canada, based in Cowichan Tribes Territories on Vancouver Island. From 2019-2022, Emily led the Depave Paradise program with Green Communities Canada. She continues to lead the overarching strategic vision for the program, fundraise for new installations and support ongoing coordination at Green Communities Canada. In recent years, Emily launched the Living Cities Canada Fund, which supports community organizations from across the country to establish equity-embedded green infrastructure sites. Emily holds a Master of Arts in Sustainability Studies and Honours Bachelor of Environmental Sciences and Studies from Trent University. When she’s not working, Emily homesteads with her partner, and runs ancestral and practical subsistence skills workshops within her community. 

Emily Amon

Jason Sprouls is an urban forestry professional with experience in leveraging trees and green infrastructure solutions to address urban stormwater challenges. Currently serving as the Urban Forestry Manager for the Cumberland River Compact, he implements programs aimed at enhancing green infrastructure, such as DePave and Root Nashville. Jason was awarded a Masters of Forestry and a Watershed Management Graduate Certificate from Virginia Tech for conducting research on using trees grown in gravel bed stormwater retention systems to reduce stormwater runoff in urban areas as a cost-effective stormwater management tool. For over 25 years, the Cumberland River Compact has had a breadth of experiences in education, restoration, and outreach to promote watershed health in the Cumberland River Basin. Since 2017, the Compact's urban waters division has offered its Depave program to convert impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, into thriving green spaces that provide habitat, reduce flooding, and improve water quality.

Jason Sprouls

Chip Gurkin works in the Office of Community Revitalization at the U.S. EPA, where he manages the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities program. Building Blocks provides planning assistance to communities large and small, helping them grow and develop in ways that are more environmentally friendly and conducive to public health. This assistance is locally led and inclusive, bringing together local residents and government with state, federal, and nonprofit partners to develop an achievable path toward the community’s goals. Chip has been with the EPA since 2009 and lives in Arlington, VA.