Update on Project Activities
This past week has been focused on our first Zoom call with Erin and Mary, some of our community partners at AEMP. This was particularly important for our group because we had not yet met either of them as Adrienne and Magie attended the in-person meeting last week. We started off the week in an email conversation with Deland, Erin, and Mary to schedule our Zoom call (which ended up occuring on Wednesday, October 10th at 8:30am). Erin and Mary provided us with several of their past grant materials for us to review, as well as the website for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. We individually read these materials and thought about questions/comments we’d like to pose to Erin and Mary. During the call itself, we spent some time introducing ourselves and talking about our personal interests and on-campus connections, with the hope that we could help AEMP through multiple channels (for example, two of our group members are broadcasters and leadership at KZSU, Stanford’s FM radio station, and another is leadership for Students for a Sustainable Stanford). We then discussed our group strategy for approaching the grant-writing, which is our main focus at the moment (see “Moving Forward” for more details). We wrapped up by outlining the scope of our project and what other tasks/deliverables we should expect to complete by the end of the quarter. The call lasted approximately one hour. Since then, we have divided up a list of past winning grant narratives for NEH amongst ourselves and begun to read them. We hope to glean some successful strategies for responding to each individual aspect of the grant prompt. What We Observed and Learned This week, while focusing on reading AEMP’s previous grant applications and the guidelines for NEH grant applications, we started to build an intuition for what qualities or angles each grant-offering institution values. The NEH grant is a humanities grant, so AEMP wants to frame the atlas as an interdisciplinary, digital humanities project, as opposed to a quantitative, cartography project. This frame means that we should focus on the collaborative, analytical work, revealing processes and experiences of the human environment of the Bay Area and looking to the past, present, and future. On Sunday, we will observe the operations and interactions of the entire collective and look forward to seeing more of how our efforts will play a role in the team. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward The Zoom meeting this week was successful because everyone came prepared, having read the NEH application requirements and previous grant proposals shared with us by the AEMP project. This allowed us to jump straight in to more in-depth, critical questions about how we should tackle this task, instead of familiarizing ourselves with the task itself. Because there are so many moving pieces, it is already challenging to juggle responsibilities and will continue to be this way. However, outlining the project’s scope with Mary and Erin helped us to begin formulating a manageable timeline for this quarter, and discussing daily to-dos over our group chat has helped us keep track of deadlines and tasks. Moving forward, we have the following list of tasks:
Update on Project Activities
This week we met with our community partners that represent The City of Mountain View. In that meeting we refined the initial draft of our survey, decided on project scope and determined final deliverables. Regarding project scope, initially the goal was to collect data in-person that would represent the entire city. However, the amount of canvassing necessary to produce that data was deemed to be too much for a quarter-long project. As such, the survey to gauge the connectedness of Mountain View residents will first be delivered electronically. The plan is to advertise the survey across The City of Mountain View’s social media channels. Once some preliminary responses are collected, neighborhoods that are not well represented on that survey will be canvassed or reached via a community liaison, such as a City of Mountain View’s Spanish Speaking Ambassador. We plan on presenting our findings to a member of the leadership team of Community Services Agency, a nonprofit that provides basic necessities to those in need. We may potentially present to the Trancos dorm as well, given its theme of equity and social justice. What We Observed and Learned When creating and revising the survey, we had some interesting debates. One was how to best represent the location of a survey participant. Our community partner is interested in knowing geographically who within Mountain View is connected to the internet and who is not. Thus, geographic information is incredibly important, but something like a street address is too identifiable. In addition, we want our survey participants to represent the entirety of Mountain View, which means ensuring that the voices of individuals without an address need to be heard. With the help of our community partners, we decided to ask survey participants to identify their neighborhood, as defined by The City of Mountain View. This approach has its benefits, such as the fact that a permanent address is not necessary and an included visual makes determining the correct neighborhood doable even if one does not drive and may not know the roads well. However, income disparity within a neighborhood can be quite vast. For example, some neighborhoods have homes that sell for over 3 million dollars, while within that same neighborhood a few streets away, some of the lowest income Mountain View residents reside. Even though we are making a region so broad, we need to ensure that the voices of the affluent and those connected to them within a neighborhood don’t drown out those that don’t have access to wifi. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Our next steps include finalizing the survey to be advertised on social media platforms and attending the City of Mountain View’s Spanish Speaking Ambassador’s meeting to recruit survey participants that may not be digitally connected. As we begin interacting with the community, our group took time to reflect on our current engagement with our community partner, as well as our upcoming in-person engagement with the Mountain View community. As was mentioned in class on Monday, we want to be mindful of our partnership. This is why we chose to create an exit plan now for the end of the quarter detailing how we plan on transferring knowledge. We also are trying to be listening to the residents. For now, that means ensuring that the survey is bilingual and includes demographic/income options that span a wide range. When we interact at the City of Mountain View’s Spanish Speaking Ambassador’s meeting we will heed the warnings in “To Hell with Good Intentions.” Rather than be like the “North American volunteer armies from Latin America - missionaries, Peace Corps members and groups...organized for the benevolent invasion of Mexico,” we want to listen and react to residents. We need to be open to the fact that we may need to change our survey if it isn’t meaningful to those that don’t speak English or aren’t digitally savvy. Update on Project Activities
We are currently preparing for our visit to Salinas on Sunday the 14th. We plan to leave campus at 10 am and arrive at Salina’s around Noon. Prior to our visit we need to have 2-3 driving research questions that focus on the manageable scope for the project. In Week 3, we had a Zoom meeting with our partners where we took a digital tour through the census documents and large varied data sets. Our next task is to delegate the midterm in the following pattern: 1. Hannah- methodology, 2. Arriana - background 3. Jasmin- tasks and timeline and 4. Anpo- will focus on the big picture. What We Observed and Learned As a team we learned that it is easy to get lost in the data sets. So this is where we hope our driving questions will help us stay directed. The range of years represented in our given data sets is very interesting. We wonder happened in the 50’s? We learned about the different map resources that are unique to Salina’s via agriculture and transportation. We could look into gathering fiscal information about Salinas (may be protected info closer to the present), Hartnell students could possibly help us gather that sort of data. We noticed the chapter on the interactions and connections between different cultural groups and communities throughout Salinas. With that, Salinas has potential to grow and expand, what’s that going to look like in the future? We noticed that the health care promotion services started in the 1920s, did that cause growth in the medical industry in the city? Where were major health centers, and what populations lived in the areas around them? What geographical level does crime data exist at? What is accessible? The Salinas GIS department has a map gallery that could be an interesting place to pull info from. Additionally, finding an Alisal area map could give us a valuable shapefile to layer onto older maps and see what falls within those boundaries. Future growth areas and focus growth area maps could be an interesting resource. Lastly, it’d be interesting to compare school district boundaries with property tax rates to start seeing the correlation between wealth and settlement. It would be neat to look into the demographics of those areas, are there racial divides within the school districts? We also noticed the school District map of Salinas has weird divisions that we want to further look into. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward We would like clarification on our relationship with Hartnell students, what are our roles, how are we expected to interact throughout the course of the quarter? For example, are we developing research questions together? Will the presentation to city hall be done jointly? We would also like to clarify if we are expected to focus on the entire timeframe or if we can narrow in to a specific time period. What is the role of the Monterey County Health Department. The research questions we developed are: Mathematically figuring out how segregated Salinas was in each decade using census data, map clusters of wealth and racial groups -- Other studies we could reference that have done this. Other ideas include: if we could create a sort of “segregation index” where we could do multiple regression and correlation studies to measure the effects of that on other city factors such as GDP etc. We would want to look for information on transportation infrastructure growth throughout the years. For instance, where was infrastructure built and who did it serve? How did that impact the demographics in those areas? Does Salinas have a center that gives info on agricultural history and movements? As a group we are looking forward to getting a clearer picture of present-day Salinas. What is the economic status, what are their main commercial industries etc? We would like to check out the political districts and how they’ve voted, does that have any impact on the other research questions we’ve posed? Update on Project Activities
On Friday, 10/12 we went to the Tech Museum to meet with Danny and Michelle. We were able to get a feel for the museum and see where the “Sustainable Cities” display will be held. We learned about the other exhibits that will surround the “Community Voices” exhibit that we are working on. Overall, the exhibit will be 6x3 feet and will display more than just the San Jose area, it will include most of the bay. This gives us some more flexibility when collecting stories because we do not have to dismiss a lead based off of geographic location. Along with seeing where the exhibit plans to be, we went to the backroom where the prototype is being created. There is a more cartoon-like map as of now but we spoke with Danny and agreed it should have a more landscape type of look, but then have bodies of water and green areas brightened and bolded in order to provide clarity of location. We spoke about having background noises from the places we interview playing on the map and Danny showed us how as of now there are “water” sounds in the rivers and a news cast playing in an area where there was a story about climate change. Beside from the planning of the visual aspect of the map, we spent a lot of time speaking about who we should be interviewing, how to get access to them, and what questions or prompts to ask. We will create a “how-to” list in collaboration with Danny in order to be on the same page when interviewing others. As of now, a lot of the interviewee list is tech companies or bigger organizations that have been doing mitigation. We spoke about getting local orgs that could connect us to community members in order to broaden our group of stories. We collected our first story by interviewing Anja Schulze, a coworker of Danny and Michelle from the museum. She spoke to us about the use of mushrooms to build materials such as plywood, bricks, and even styrofoam. We will continue to interview others and begin reaching out to organizations this week in order to conduct the interviews in the coming weekends. Our next meeting with Danny and Michelle will be a conference call just to check in on our progress with stories and interviews. What We Observed and Learned During our visit to the tech museum on Friday, 10/12, we were able to observe the atmosphere of the museum, and spend some time walking around, noticing how people interact with the space, and who these people who visit the museum are. We noticed, and heard from Danny that a large percentage of the visitors are student groups, and field trips from local schools. We got to see the exact location in the museum where our project will be housed - within the larger exhibit which is about how technology is being used to combat climate change. The exhibit has a definite positive undertone - an emphasis on hope and inspiring collective, constructive action. We were also able to take a look at the prototype of the project, back in the office area / work space. We had a good talk about the design of the project, and how it will work, technically. Mapping seems a great way for people to engage and connect the issue to their own communities and landscapes. They can see where they live and the places they frequent in their neighborhoods in relation to climate issues. They can also learn about members of their communities that are taking action and get inspired. After the tour of the museum and taking a look at the prototype, we met in a meeting room for a discussion where we clarified the expectations for our project with the community partner, smoothing out wrinkles, and making sure that we are all on the same page. During this discussion, we expressed our concerns and strategized altogether on how to complete our project in an ethical and impactful manner. We learned that our group has a lot of discretion in choosing the stories we wish to collect/pursue - our community partners have created a spreadsheet with some contacts (mostly tech-related companies and groups) and ideas for who to contact and interview… during our discussion, we did some brainstorming, and added some more ideas onto this spreadsheet. We definitely got a better idea of the types of stories our community partner has in mind, and we also talked about respectful ways of reaching out to interviewees, and the types of questions we want to ask them. After our discussion, Danny introduced us to Anja Schulze - a biotech developer in charge of an interactive exhibit in the museum on the process of turning fungi into sturdy bricks for building, etc, potentially replacing materials like styrofoam and plastic. Cameron gave us a quick lesson on the equipment, and provided a great example of how to listen, record, and ask questions at the same time - emphasizing the importance of adapting to your interviewee and trying to maintain a natural flow of conversation. We had a good conversation about how to prepare for interviews as a group, and how to create guiding questions beforehand, but also being able to adapt during the interview if the conversation goes off track. Critical Analysis / Moving Forward After reading “To Hell with Good Intentions” and class on 10/08, we began to really question the ethics of our project in terms of who we are going to interview. We have come to face the ethical issue of interviewing people impacted by climate change without actually helping their situation nor being able to offer some type of solution. Although we know we are giving their story a platform and amplifying their voices, the exhibit may not directly help impacted people nor may it even be accessible to them given that the Tech Museum's entrance fee is $25. However, we acknowledged that this is a long-term project for the Tech Museum and that reciprocity may come in the long term. Finally, we also see how this all fits into the grand message of the museum in that we wish to inspire hope for action when visitors learn about how their own communities are being impacted by climate change. Moving forward we plan to research political community orgs and focus on grassroots, community solutions/mitigation in order to find regular community members to interview. The Tech has many connections and leads with big tech companies and corporations, and while they are important players in climate change mitigation in the bay area, they can not be the only stories being told since we want visitors to be able to relate to them. We believe that focusing on community orgs and community grassroots movements would allow us to achieve this goal. Moreover, we want some stories that focus on political systems and corporate accountability instead of centering too much on individual mitigation/adaptation stories. We recognized individual action, but we don’t want to neglect the larger issues of corporate complicity. We also want to highlight the importance of pro-climate candidates in the area in order to drive home the fact that government regulation is vital for a sustainable future. Although we are still figuring out the ethics of interviewing marginalized affected communities, we do want to find stories that show the intersection of race,class, and the environment since these communities tend to face the brunt of climate change. Examples such as the stories of flooding victims/ areas that flood easily but aren’t receiving enough public $$$ to restore and prevent flood damage. Lastly, we created some action items as we begin to dive into our project. We want to create a flexible script and list of best practices for interviewing people. Additionally, we want to prep for our interviews with a training session with the audio recording equipment. Finally, we hope to move along and start interviewing our first round of subjects within the next week. Update on Project Activities
This week, our team explored the Menlo Park Green Challenge website in further detail and held a conference call with Diane Bailey in order to provide updates on our project progress. During our call, we offered suggestions to improve the accessibility of the site, discussed potential strategies for surveying students and their preference of prizes for completed actions, and set a date next week to meet on-site. We also met outside of class to begin our scope of work and get to know each other better! What We Observed and Learned In order to organize all of our suggestions for the Green Challenge site, we held a meeting before the call and grouped both our older and recent observations into specific topics. When addressing Diane, we went over each of our suggestions in detail, all geared towards making the site less complicated for the average household. We first shared our suggestions from last week: to make the site user friendly by adding time commitment and cost filters on the actions as well as using survey results to determine the most applicable actions to get started on the Challenge. We also think a beneficial addition to the survey would be a checklist of all the actions, giving users the option to check off completed actions before being taken to the main page with all of the actions. This way they don’t have to search for each completed action individually, and can get to new actions more quickly. Next, we explained our most recent concerns surrounding the content of the actions and the point system. Regarding the general actions, ranging from recycling to installing an electric pump heater, the descriptions on their respective pages are extremely long, and sometimes lack specificity and/or citations for important statistics For example, the article discussing solar panel installation uses statistics matching the size of a solar system in comparison to the size of a home, but loses credibility by not citing the source. Furthermore, how the points were assigned to each action was confusing and somewhat arbitrary. To provide context, an “easy” action like line-drying clothes has a very similar point value to the “challenging” action of insulating one’s floors and walls. Each of our suggestions centered around making the Green Challenge more feasible, easier to understand and more relatable to participants. In order to incentivize students to participate in the Green Challenge, we need to find out what types of prizes they would be most interested in. We are going to email the principals at La Entrada and Menlo Atherton to see if we can send a survey home in students’ take-home folders. During our meeting this week, we got to know each other better, we outlined our project scope of work, assigned team roles, and organized our time table for completing the deliverables due in the following weeks to the class and our community partner. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Diane appreciated our suggestions for improving the Green Challenge website and urged us to compile these notes into a document so she could share our findings with the Menlo Spark team. This action will be a part of our scope of work so that we can make a timeline that fits in with each of our goals well. Next week we hope to provide more website suggestions, and include them in our write up, decide the most mindful and ethical way to survey teachers and students, send out our survey to school students and/or teachers, and get more connected with the community we want to serve. In addition, we hope to find a family and/or students to interview within the next few weeks so we can publish a more realistic success story on the Green Challenge website. In order to do so we will write up some information about the story so that it can be advertised to families via Menlo Spark’s newsletter. |
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