Promising Practices to Improve Community Performance and Sustainability. Part II. Tips for Better Care.

摘要

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Program offers communities an innovative way to reduce the risks from pollution in their environment. The CARE process helps communities build capacity to reduce toxics through local collaboration. CARE provides on-the-ground technical assistance and funding to communities to help them understand, prioritize, and address environmental health threats from all sources. A recent evaluation by the National Association of Public Administration (NAPA) recognized CARE as a solid, tested framework for engaging communities and other stakeholders. Since 2005, 104 grants have reached 87 communities, allowing for the CARE process to occur in 40 states and territories. The Part II of Promising Practices picks up where our earlier CARE publication, 'Promising Practices to Improve Performance and Sustainability: Tips for Better Care,' left off, offering more tips on how communities can solve environmental problems, including the results of this work. This document describes 13 more promising practices and tips drawn from communities that participated in the CARE programs collaborative process to find new ways to reduce risks and improve environmental quality while creating sustainable programs. These lessons are applicable to all community work, not just in CARE communities. EPA has published these tips because the lessons learned and the anecdotes from one CARE community can inspire and fuel ideas and action in the other communities, promoting peer-to-peer learning. All of the examples illustrate the power of collaboration, inclusion, and willingness to take risks and to do things differently.