Several of MELDI’s current and past staff were in attendance at the WE ACT conference on “Advancing Climate Justice: Transforming the Economy, Public Health and Our Environment.” The conference was held at the Fordham Law School in New York from January 29-30, 2009. The MELDI Program Director, Dorceta E. Taylor, made a presentation on the opening plenary entitled, “Climate Justice and Coastal Ecosystems: The Forgotten Territories.” Other MELDI staff members in attendance at the conference were: Latonia Phillips, MELDI Program Coordinator and student research assistants, Sarah Lashley, Yukari Higuchi, Sidney Brown, Alexandra Teague, Marcia McDade, Sarah Barjum. Former MELDI research assistants, Amy McDonald and Beth Hertz were also at the conference.
The MELDI staff will participate in the Michigan Green Jobs conference that will be held in Lansing on May 11, 2009.
MELDI received a grant from the Ford Foundation to study the emergence of green collar jobs. MELDI will study the creation of green jobs nationwide as well as the rise of green jobs training programs. This research fits into MELDI's long-standing interest in workforce dynamics and diversity in the environmental field. MELDI is interested in how the creation of blue-collar environmental jobs will affect the overall environmental workforce. “All projections are that the number of green jobs will expand dramatically over the coming years and it is important for us to understand what kinds of green jobs will be created. Will these be professional, skilled or unskilled jobs and who will have access to them? There is also a need to understand the extent to which people who are currently not a part of the environmental workforce will have access to training for these new jobs,” says Dorceta E. Taylor, Program Director of MELDI.
When a team of environmental justice activists needed data on diversity and green jobs to present to President Obama’s environmental transition team they turned to MELDI. MELDI’s research on diversity trends in environmental organizations and our preliminary findings on worker characteristics desired by employers advertising green jobs was presented to the transition team. The data was quite influential in helping the president’s transition team to formulate policy in this arena. The impact was readily apparent when the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, pledged to increase the diversity of the EPA’s workforce in her first public address. That address was given at WE ACT’s conference held in New York from January 29-30th, 2009.
As one student who worked on putting together the database from which the information on green jobs was taken said, “It is very exciting to see all the hard work used to make an impact. It is difficult to see how the big picture fits together sometimes when we are spending hours on end looking for information.” In addition to the MELDI Program Director, Dorceta E. Taylor and Program Coordinator, Latonia Phillips, several students worked on the green jobs project last year. We received invaluable help from: Sarah Barjum, Sidney Brown, Yukari Higuchi, Sarah Lashley, Marcia McDade, Alexandria Teague
MELDI is pleased to launch its new website. We made this change because our old website could no longer handle the volume of information on it. We have taken the opportunity to develop a more user-friendly, dynamic and interactive site that organizes information in ways that are more readily accessible visitors. We hope you enjoy using the new site and find the resources provided helpful. We are also asking you to help us serve you better by using the Submit page to provide information to us that can be considered for inclusion on this site.
We have also changed our name and logo. We are now the Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative (MELDI). While MELDI remains true to its core organizing principles, this name reflects the broader array of issues MELDI focuses on. See the About MELDI page for a description of our mission, accomplishments and ongoing activities.
Our new logo reflects our commitment to a diverse, fair, equitable and sustainable global environment and environmental movement. It incorporates a tree-like symbol that reflects our foundation in the concern for equity, justice and diversity in the environmental field while at the same time branching out to new areas and taking a leadership role in facilitating connections between disparate groups. The circle symbolizes a continuing-journey that we hope will be completed as time goes by.
Back by popular demand! MELDI has collected additional profiles and is releasing online an expanded version of the Profiles of Minority Environmental Professionals who have had Outstanding Careers in the Environmental Field. This database contains more than 200 profiles of people of color who have built successful careers in many areas of the environmental field. The online database combines the profiles originally contained in the reports, The Paths We Tread and The Journey Continues. In addition, new profiles have been added. This is the largest collection of profiles of People of Color environmental professionals in existence. But we are not done yet! We are still collecting profiles and will be expending this database. If you are a person of color and has had an outstanding environmental career (or know of such a person) please go to the Submit page on this website and provide us with information to complete a profile.
Stephanie, an undergraduate in a college environmental program where she encounters no other student of color and has no faculty of color in her program sent us a note after reading the profiles, “I can’t tell you how happy I was to come across and read the profiles. It feels great to know that other people like myself are involved in the environment too.” A teacher in an environmental high school where more than 70 percent of the students are students of color said, “I use the profiles to help our students find role models. We have a difficult time, particularly with our young black and Hispanic males. They don’t see themselves represented in environmental organizations so they switch their majors when it is time to go to college. I hope they can find mentors from looking at these profiles.”