Laura Mack’s Neighborhood:
“It’s a Beautiful Day for a Neighbor” like NCSA
As a USC student from the Chicago burbs, I never really saw Los Angeles as a place with neighborhoods. To me, the word “neighborhood” is synonymous with family or community. Neighborhoods bring a sense of belonging, teamwork, volunteerism, home — all the important lessons you learn from an episode of Full House. Essentially, the word “neighborhood” brings up the warm and fuzzy in us all (don’t lie we have the success of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood to prove your love).
However, “warm” and “fuzzy” are not words I would use in conjunction to describe Los Angeles (if you’re describing anything in LA as “fuzzy” — wash your hands). When people at home ask me about LA, I always use the word “sprawling”. I know I’m not alone in asking the question: “Where does Los Angeles end?” — (seriously someone please tell me and your answer cannot include freeways). With a city as big, diverse, and as hard to navigate as LA, it is hard to feel the incentive to band together and work to solve the city’s problems. Yet, with the California drought still in critical condition (see previous article), it has never been more imperative for every LA citizen to get involved and go green. Fortunately, it has never been easier.
For the past few months, we here at Code the Change have had the absolute privilege of working with the Los Angeles’s own Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance to build them a new website that focuses on the drought. NCSA is an organization that is bringing Los Angeles together for the greener good. I could go on and on about how amazing NCSA is. Fortunately for you, here is an exclusive interview with the NCSA’s founder, Laura Mack, to tell you a little more about the organization and how you can join in.
1. What do you believe is the main goal of NCSA?
The NCSA’s aim is to help Los Angeles build green, healthy, and resilient communities, while bringing LA’s 100+ communities together to achieve greater impact on critical quality of life issues, like climate change and drought, that affect all of us. Some of the ways we do this are through advocacy, community action projects (such as our new Cool Blocks LA program), partnerships, and sharing of resources and best practices (for example, via our online Water Hub project with Code the Change)!
2. How has media and technology changed the way NCSA works?
The City’s unwieldy size — 3.9 million residents living in 100+ communities that span 500 square miles — can make it hard for dispersed community sustainability “champions” to come together to network and collaborate in person. Technology has allowed NCSA to break down geographic barriers to learning, sharing, and action; connect with a much more extensive and diverse network of sustainability advocates and organizations; and work smarter and faster.
3. What impact might the online water resource hub have on NCSA’s reach?
We believe that the Hub will serve as a unique and vital tool for the communities we serve. Many LA residents are already doing inspiring work on community water conservation and other quality of life issues here in LA, but they’ve often worked in silos and without much support or recognition. Others are new to community-scale conservation, and aren’t sure where to start. Our goal with the Hub is to foster a real learning community and make it easier for folks to find and share local, relevant drought action and other water resources.
4. Can you share with our readers some easy ways to go green, conserve water, and help save our city, and get involved with NCSA?
An easy, fun, and smart first step to “going green” is to assess your personal environmental footprint, to get a clear sense of which of your daily activities use the most natural resources and determine where you can make the greatest impact. Free water, carbon, and other environmental “footprint” calculator tools abound online. For example, http://www.watercalculator.org/ helps you quickly assess the water impact of your indoor, outdoor, and “virtual” (food, transportation, and purchasing habits) water use activities, then offers personalized water saving tips based on your responses. You can even sign up for reminder emails to check your progress, and compare your stats to others.
The NCSA also maintains a list of green action resources at its website, and invites your readers to get involved with us! The NCSA seeks volunteers who want to foster green, healthy, equitable, and resilient communities across the City of LA. There are many ways to join our efforts, from supporting advocacy, technology, communications, fund development, governance, or event planning initiatives, to serving as an outreach liaison for your region of the City, to leading a neighborhood block team for our pilot Cool Blocks LA program, to interning with the organization. Please contact us to learn more!
NCSA, Los Angeles has “always wanted to have a neighbor just like you”. Let’s all remember to be a good neighbor: http://ncsa.nationbuilder.com/
— Gabrielle Roberts, Communications Team
