Partnership & Collaboration

Improving community - government collaboration

Currents

Alignment & Flow for Community Capacity to Drive Climate Solutions (Currents) is the next phase design and pilot process born out of the Synergizing Process Innovation for Climate Equity (SPICE) project. It continues to bring together national thought leaders and facilitators working to improve government and community collaboration in service to authentic partnership and power shifting for better governance. Climate Innovation has partnered with Kapwa Consulting to lead the start of this collaboration with Facilitating Power, Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN), Race Forward, and NRDC’s SPARCC. Leveraging the expertise of this braintrust and all of SPICE’s lessons, tools, and resources, this process has served as the first iteration design phase. 

The team worked to address  two core design challenges: (1) how to create more effective, equitable relationships between frontline communities and local governments for acceleration of climate justice solutions; and (2) how to strengthen networks connecting frontline change-makers and governments, philanthropies and other institutions, and provide training, alignment, and sharing of best practices.

Project Details

Currents is centered around three key power shifts. These elements inform Currents’s partners as they work on solutions in this space between government and impacted communities:

  1. Economic Power: shift to community ownership and benefit. 
  2. Political Power: change the nature of governmental/frontline community relationships and the face of local government by supporting BIPOC leadership in positions within governments and running BIPOC candidates for office- ultimately shifting local government accountability to communities.
  3. Cultural Power: undoing white supremacy culture in government through community & government alliances for racial equity while supporting power-building within BIPOC communities.

PROJECT LEAd

Climate Innovation Program Team
climate@climateinnovation.net