Pandemic Resilience AmeriCorps Opportunity

Here’s an opportunity to earn money and/or college credit while working for pandemic resilience, food security, and climate justice this summer at the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, New York.  This program is being offered as an AmeriCorps VISTA program through Siena College.

The program runs from June 8th through August 2nd and pays $239.54 per week (34.22 per day @ 7 days).  Upon completion there is a $1311.00 educational award (or $345.00 cash award). This is a full-time position.  For more information, please email: sk@radixcenter.org

Title: Pandemic Resilience and Climate Justice

This project focuses on building community resilience and justice in the South End of Albany, NY, by increasing local food security and mutual support networks amidst pandemic uncertainty and climate change.  Additional research focuses on how race, class, and equity pertain to food, health, soil, water, waste, and biodiversity. 

Abstract:

Disasters of all sorts – from hurricanes to wars to pandemics disproportionately affect the poor. The coronavirus pandemic has compounded the issues facing communities in low-income neighborhoods, particularly regarding food security. The Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, a non-profit organization, will be working this summer to build pandemic resilience gardens throughout the South End of Albany.  Garden surpluses will be shared with society’s most vulnerable by coordinating with food pantries or other local networks to distribute nutrient-dense fresh foods to the home-bound and sick. As Albany’s South End is already a food desert, this work will have lasting value in increasing the amount of locally available food and Albany’s resilience overall. 

While confronting the coronavirus pandemic requires significant attention, it is important to remember that there are numerous other pressing social and ecological issues that are closely interconnected and cannot be ignored. Strategies for building resilience for pandemics are as equally applicable to addressing climate change, food security, environmental toxicity, and social inequality. In this program, we apply a social justice analysis to urban ecology. Using a sociological framework, we explore the emergent concept of “urban ecosystem justice”. With it, we ask questions of how social issues of class and race, access, equity, and fairness apply to both the biophysical dimensions of urban ecosystems such as soils, watersheds, biodiversity, waste cycles, and climate as well as to issues of social sustainability and resource equity. In doing so, we will examine whether it is possible to meet the material needs of city residents while simultaneously regenerating urban socio-ecological health. Further questions include whether urban ecosystem benefits can be distributed equally amongst a populace without further aggravating “green gentrification”, “disaster capitalism”, or “urban ecological securitization”? The course will synthesize the social critiques of urban political ecology and environmental justice with the concepts of adaptive governance, urban commons, just sustainabilities, and resilience science. 

Participants in this program have the option to co-enroll in the SUNY Albany course ASOC 299/399, “Sociology in Action: Ecosystem Justice and Research with Youth in Urban Environments”, a six credit, six-week class spanning from June 22nd to July 31st.  

AmeriCorps fellows will potentially engage in aspects of the Radix summer EcoJustice summer youth employment program including facilitating a four-week urban agriculture/environmental justice themed program for high school aged Albany youth; taking on teaching roles in the ecojustice youth curriculum; and engaging in physical gardening activities. Using YPAR (youth participatory action research) method YCJ Fellows will engage youth in documenting ecological conditions in Albany’s South End culminating in creation and presentation of visual, recorded, and written information to benefit local community and creating positive social change. Please note that because of the uncertainty created by the pandemic, we cannot be certain at this time if the youth program will run or not.