The 2022 C.A.R.E. Challenge

Hosted by the Office of Business Diversity and Economic Opportunity, the ASCESS Summit provided a premier opportunity to place our USC values into action as diverse businesses gathered to learn about how to conduct business with USC, gain new insights to grow and scale businesses to include USC contracts, broaden business networks, and participate in matchmaking and focus groups to improve pathways for Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) contracting success. In particular, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, in partnership with the Office of Sustainability, co-sponsored expert conversations on how sustainability can drive profits for MBEs.

Blueprints for Pangaea at USC is a 501(c)(3) student-run nonprofit organization that works to reallocate excess medical supplies from Keck Medicine and conducted a shipment of 300,000 essential medical supplies, including syringes, tuberculin and PPE, to underfunded hospitals throughout the Philippines who were devastated by a tropical storm. They firmly believe in emulating the values of diversity, equity and inclusion to bridge the gap between excess and need.

With health disparities being rooted in overarching social issues such as classism and racism, Blueprints for Pangaea seeks to counteract these forces and promote greater access to medical supplies within a variety of communities. In this way, they hope to support and restore the efficacy of under-resourced healthcare systems while promoting environmental sustainability. 

A vital element of last year’s Earth Week Celebration was establishing a relationship with surrounding local community organizations and gradually expanding beyond USC’s borders to build long-lasting relationships based on trust and mutual benefit. Similarly to last year, the goal of the USC Arts & Climate Sustainability Fair was to build a community around sustainability and environmental justice issues, both internally (among students, staff and faculty) and externally, with community organizations and community members who are also passionate about these issues.

In 2022, a partnership with the DEI office allowed for a successful Earth Week Celebration, including a community resource fair and art showcase where USC students could share and display artwork, culminating with an inspiring featured artist conversation with Ron Finley.

The fair provides a place for the USC campus and community-wide organizations to unite and share their ongoing work to create sustainable communities. The ACC programming team sees great value in exposing students to the issues local organizations are addressing and providing them with opportunities for involvement. In addition, the fair invited student artists funded by USC’s Arts & Climate Collective to display artwork that aims to connect the arts, culture and storytelling with environmental justice.

The Be the Revolution Workshop focused on intersectional activism and ethical community engagement centered around climate, racial, health and economic justice, based on the understanding that all these issues are interconnected. This capacity-building leadership training was for college and graduate students of all majors who are passionate about climate, racial, health and economic justice.

Topics covered include intersectional activism, healthy coalition building, ethical community engagement, enrollment processes, the ladder of engagement, self-care, healing tools, uncovering and transforming limiting beliefs and cultural and political disruption. The workshop emphasized the accessibility of activism — that everyone, regardless of background, has a place and a voice in the movement for change and left feeling empowered with new perspectives and tools.

The broader environmental movement has not always prioritized minoritized voices. Leah Thomas is a well-known environmental leader, eco-influencer, the author of Intersectional Environmentalist and the founder of Intersectional Environmentalist the non-profit organization. Her text has not only been used in Environmental Studies courses but provides an innovative and inclusive approach to the environmental movement. This event was a collaborative effort between the Wrigley Institute, the Environmental Student Assembly, the Undergraduate Student Government Speakers Committee and the Office of Inclusion and Diversity to bring together a diverse and inclusive community of students to work toward making the environmental movement on campus more intersectional.

This Earth Month speaker event was be facilitated by Dr. Shannon Gibson, environmental justice expert, Associate Teaching Professor of Environmental Studies and International Relations, and chair of The Wrigley Institute’s DEI Committee. The conversation focused on Leah Thomas and her transition from academia to activism, followed by a facilitated student question-and-answer session. This was a student-centered event.

The Parkside Garden is one of USC’s only interactive green spaces on-campus. The garden beds and composting systems are open for all university community members to learn, use and harvest from. One of the SC Garden Club’s missions is making this green space open and accessible to everyone, so we requested tall raised beds that are accessible to those with mobility issues, in addition to a picnic table to provide an adequate shaded resting area for those wishing to utilize this outdoor space. This project makes the Parkside Garden more accessible to people with mobility issues. Going forward, the SC Garden Club wants to ensure that all future additions to the garden keep the universal design in mind. In consultation with USC OSAS and FPM, these garden beds are better suited for gardeners and visitors with mobility issues. Seating is also limited in the garden, so the table provides adequate resting space for those who wish to participate in gardening programming.

The “Mud Kin” exhibition and culminating symposium emphasize ecological community restoration and innovative conservation strategies through artistic practices led by Black and indigenous land stewards and community leaders throughout the Los Angeles area. More so, this collaborative project and programming are rooted in empowering indigenous and Black immigrant experiences through sustainability strategies rooted in the built and imagined environments surrounding the Los Angeles community. This project emphasizes collective solidarity, community agency, self-determination and artistic and cultural freedom to preserve legacies for future generations of BIPOC communities in the LA area.

Specifically, the Mud Kin exhibition is also a comprehensive, interactive online Latinx and indigenous mapping network and tool for land-based and adobe artists and activists to portray an intersectional analysis of cultural preservation, environmental policies, archival frameworks and urban planning dynamics encompassing earthen and land-based initiatives within the Latinx cultural landscapes impacted by displacement, gentrification and colonial settler impacts showcased in both the exhibition and culminating symposium. 

Furthermore, additional objectives of the project include releasing the artist interviews in an exhibition publication along with an interactive ArcGIS map in the culminating summer exhibition and symposium to share dynamic cultural resources for many Latinx and indigenous communities across LA to West Texas, building and strengthening the collective power of resistance shared amongst indigenous and Latinx communities living in borderland spaces. The adobe-making indigenous technologies workshop with artist Joanna Kean Lopez focused on objectives that collaboratively teach Black and Brown community members ways of understanding soils, clays and relationships to build earthen structures like clay pits and brick walls for climate-adaptive resources based on indigenous knowledge and practices. Specific goals for the symposium include emphasizing ecological care strategies through building positive rapport with and alongside BIPOC communities rooted in their built environment and extending alternative methods for building sustainable earthen architectures, ecologies and creative practices.