EPA REGIONS 4 & 6 Recipient: Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) Applicant Type: Not for Profit Award Amount: $13,000,000 Title: Community Investment Recovery Center (CIRC) Location: EPA Region 4 (AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN, and 6 tribes) and EPA Region 6 (AR, LA, NM, OK, TX, and 66 tribal nations) Partners: Academic: Alabama A & M Univ., Bethune Cookman Univ., Spelman College, Dillard Univ., Jackson State Univ. North Carolina Central Univ., South Carolina State Univ., Tennessee State Univ. Texas Southern Univ., Xavier Univ. Community-Based:
Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe and Sustainable, Unity in the Family Ministry, Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate, and Health Organization, East New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Commission, Coalition of Community Organizations. Government: U.S. Representative, 2nd District, City of New Orleans Office of Hazard Mitigation, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, New Orleans City Council District E. Research and Policy:
Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, Alliance for Affordable Energy, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Protection Network, Health Impacts of Degraded Environments, Healthy Gulf, Land Loss Prevention Project, Ocean Conservancy, Union of Concerned Scientist, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Metropolitan Group, Center for Earth Energy and Democracy, People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources. Faith-Based: Louisiana General Missionary Baptist Convention and the Baptist Pastors Conference of New Orleans. Goals and Description:
The DSCEJ and partners will establish the Community Investment and Recovery Center (CIRC) as a Technical Assistance Center to serve rural, remote, and underserved communities in each of the states located in Regions 4 and 6. The CIRC will build the capacity of 250 community-based organizations (CBOs) to apply for approximately $50-100 million in grants from the EPA, DOE, and other sources over the 5-year performance period, and to manage those grants. To this end, the DSCEJ has designed the CIRC to provide direct services through six levels of capacity building and training that will:
(1) build knowledge of environmental, health, climate, and energy issues of concern; (2) develop research skills to access, analyze, and present community-level data; and teach participants to (3) develop workplans to reach priority goals, build partnerships, and engage decisionmakers; and (4) access grant opportunities, and write, submit, and manage grants. The DSCEJ has a proven track record of helping environmental justice communities create sustainable change that spans more than 30 years, and a track record of successfully writing, winning, and managing federal grant awards spanning 25 years.
The DSCEJ has in-place infrastructure for building the capacities of small, grassroots organizations; this work is currently ongoing in five states across the Southern US in Regions 4 and 6. Funding from this grant would support the DSCEJ to expand the breadth of our work to cover all states in Regions 4 and 6, and to offer direct services to at least 250 CBOs from underserved urban and rural/remote communities within these states. Additionally, the grant award would allow us to enhance and replicate DSCEJ’s model in new states. In other words, establishing a Technical Assistance Center draws on DSCEJ’s strengths as the longest-serving environmental justice resource center.
In addition to providing direct technical assistance to communities across the southern United States, DSCEJ will also serve as the lead coordinator on the delivery of technical assistance across