Last week, we officially launched a new center at the University of Washington. The UW Center for Environmental Health Equity is one of 17 US EPA and DOE-funded Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers (TCTACs).
The UW CEHE is a $12 million initiative to serve Region 10 states (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington). The center provides technical assistance to tribal and community-based organizations to improve their access to federal grants and contracts and to strengthen their work towards environmental justice and energy justice.
Learn more about the center at our new website https://deohs.washington.edu/cehe/ .
As the center grows and evolves, we’ll provide updates on the website. Our goal with the website is help us service requests for technical assistance. The site will also help showcase our progress and highlight stories of how groups have leveraged our technical assistance. Over time, we also hope to share resources (data, tools, methods, educational materials) that relate to environmental justice and energy justice on the site.
It’s an honor to lead the new center at the UW CEHE, and to work with a remarkable team of well-respected and highly accomplished faculty and staff. All of us have years of experiece working with tribal and community partners on research, education, and service projects. The new center will bring us together, and allow us to be more effective in addressing environmmental and energy justice needs in the northwest region.
During EPA’s kick-off meeting for the Thriving Communities Network, many spoke of this as being “transfomative” for federal agencies — a real effort to deepen commitments towards environmental justice by providing a large multi-year investment into technical assistance centers across the nation to improve access to grant opportunities for tribal and community-based organizations.
It about time for some transformation!
Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash.