Alongside Connie Valencia, another Research Justice Shop fellow, I worked with the Madison Park Neighborhood Association – Getting Residents Engaged in Empowering Neighborhoods (GREEN-MPNA) and in the GREEN-MPNA/UCI Collaborative. In the co-design process, RJS and GREEN-MPNA defined the role of the RJS Fellows in the collaborative- to serve as team science facilitators. The fellowship clearly articulated what the responsibilities were, what systems were already in place, the ability to give feedback, and the acknowledgment that this could shift and change given the conditions of COVID-19. In 2020-2021, in my role, I co-facilitated the Collaborative (set and ran meetings, took notes, created a newsletter to communicate the Collaboative’s work), co-produced a report for a California Air Resource Board (CARB) grant, and acted as a thought partner in the GREEN-MPNA programs. The vision of the collaboration and of GREEN-MPNA was laid out for me and facilitated my understanding of how this role was grounded in a shared mission and vision of Research Justice, Community-based Research, and Team Science (which came out of the residents served by GREEN-MPNA).
GREEN-MPNA is a community-based organization that focuses on minimizing health inequities and environmental injustices in Santa Ana, in part, through getting residents involved in research. GREEN-MPNA’s guiding principles are informed by the residents, and residents’ engagement is critical to their work. Their efforts involve advocacy with the Santa Ana City Council, research projects, building stronger resident and community engagement, working with local schools, and other organizing work. GREEN-MPNA works with organizations across Orange County on research projects, advocacy efforts, and city legislation, which intersect with GREEN-MPNA’s mission. One example of advocacy efforts using collaborative research is the GREEN-MPNA/UCI Collaborative which has been working to leverage findings from research as well as the testimonies of UCI researchers in public forums, such as city council meetings, to use data about social and environmental problems as evidence to back up rationales advocacy for policy changes in the City of Santa Ana where GREEN-MPNA is located.
With the GREEN-MPNA/UCI Collaborative, members are engaged in several simultaneous projects guided by the needs and input of the GREEN-MPNA residents. In this multi-stakeholder effort, it is important for roles to be clearly established and responsibilities defined for people and teams to understand their responsibilities and feel empowered in the work they engage in. These responsibilities can be based on project needs, team member skills, or expertise. Sometimes, responsibilities may also be based on where a team member wants to grow in their skills and knowledge.
The COVID-19 pandemic made this grounding even more important. Although everything shifted a bit as a result of the pandemic, the trust built in the relationship never faltered. Given the organization’s urgency around city matters in Santa Ana, there became a concerted effort to shift some of the focus toward other pressing concerns for the residents of the Madison Park Neighborhood. Towards the end of my first year with the fellowship, in collaboration with our GREEN-MPNA collaborators, the RJS directors, and my collaborating fellow, we re-defined the RJS fellow role to be more responsive to emergent priorities related to the pandemic. These conversations fostered healthy working relationships within our collaborative. In the context of working with community partners during a crisis, the organization’s goals, and individual responsibilities may change, and partners should be responsive to the dynamic situation. At the same time, GREEN-MPNA was applying for and waiting to hear back on multiple grants which they would need help with. Therefore, RJS fellows and staff, along with GREEN-MPNA, had to envision a new role for the fellows in the upcoming year, still rooted in their shared vision of the collaborative. By defining roles and responsibilities, we sought an understanding of how our new individual roles would function to fulfill the mission of the larger collaborative and be a part of a unifying goal.
Over my time as a fellow partnering with GREEN-MPNA, my roles and responsibilities shifted, as GREEN-MPNA made organizational changes and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and other pressing advocacy opportunities. Specifically, my work shifted from working primarily on CARB grant reports to supporting GREEN-MPNA’s advocacy efforts. In August 2020, GREEN-MPNA shifted its focus to delaying the City of Santa Ana’s General Plan from passing because it did not include environmental justice issues despite recent legislation, SB 1000, that required such an element. GREEN-MPNA was also applying for multiple new grants during this time. In both of these roles, supporting advocacy and grant writing and reporting, I engaged in expanding partnerships with other organizations, departments, and institutions at UCI and beyond. GREEN-MPNA also went through changes as an organization at this time, including transitions of staff and advisory board members and a transition to a new fiscal sponsor organization, OneOC. These transitions provided both opportunities and challenges, including a need to clarify my role.
At this time, GREEN-MPNA began to collaborate on several projects funded by four grants which included various research investigators. GREEN-MPNA sought the fellows’ support in coordinating the work with the new collaborators, which significantly increased the demands on my time. The pandemic also impacted timelines for the already existing grants and thus impacted my schedule for supporting the grant reporting process. Having multiple grants with overlapping investigators sometimes had investigators and RJS fellows feel lost in the midst of the significant changes in the work plan. While never losing sight of the overall purpose of GREEN-MPNA, the lack of clarity along with grant obstacles (delays, problems, etc.) made for additional meetings and unclear next steps. By trusting everyone’s visions for the collective, and clearly outlining the different meetings, creating detailed agendas, and outlining roles and responsibilities, we created the clarity and accountability around our roles that were needed for proceeding.
At the end of my second year of working with GREEN-MPNA, came a renewed sense of roles. GREEN-MPNA began working on four grants alongside several departments at UCI (and different departments on different grants), so there is a lot of work to be done in the foreseeable future. This includes reporting to the funding agencies, data collection, facilitating new meetings and collaborations, and working to engage the residents of the GREEN-MPNA community in the goals and intentions. GREEN-MPNA staff’s work on the General Plan continues in a new stage of implementation through engaging with city council members and other ways of involvement with the city. Taking on these important collaborations and projects is vital towards attaining the goals of GREEN-MPNA. These collaborations allow for a wide range of knowledge and expertise, situated within a vision of socially and environmentally just outcomes, to analyze and develop solutions towards the issues faced by the community of Madison Park and Santa Ana more broadly. The Team Science approach in this collaborative worked because it created interactive spaces for a cross-disciplinary group of researchers and community members to collaborate and feel empowered, while integrating their different knowledge, roles, and research projects into one unifying vision.
For further reading on team science
https://sc-ctsi.org/training-education/what-is-team-science
https://sc-ctsi.org/uploads/training-education/TeamScience_FieldGuide.pdf
About the Writer
Ian Baran (he/they – ibaran@uci.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy at the University of California, Irvine. Ian was a 2020-22 Research Justice Fellow and worked with GREEN-MPNA on community-campus collaborative for Community Air Monitoring Project. Ian’s research looks at carcerality, labor organizing, environmental justice, and working-class struggles. For more information regarding the Research Justice Shop please visit the website or contact researchjustice@uci.edu or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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