Host: City of San Leandro
Region: Bay Area
Openings: 1
Project Focus: Public Health, Climate Adaptation, Climate Mitigation, Disaster Response / Emergency Management, Urban Planning, Renewable Energy
Skills Needed: Community Engagement, Volunteer Management, Flexibility/Adaptability

Service Needs & Plans

The City of San Leandro is a municipal public agency serving the community of San Leandro, which comprises 15 square miles between Hayward, Oakland, and the San Francisco Bay. Despite a population of over 90,000, San Leandro is known for its small town atmosphere and diverse neighborhoods with over 32% Asian, 27% Latinx, and 12% Black representation across the City. Like many other Bay Area cities, San Leandro faces immediate climate impacts from annual wildfire smoke and extreme heat days, as well as long-term impacts from sea level rise, yet is limited by a small staff and resources to address the issues.  

As San Leandro continues its implementation of the Climate Action Plan, building internal capacity and buy-in on the climate projects is essential. The CivicSpark fellowship will focus on integrating climate into the organization through internal trainings, communications, and strategic team building across the different departments to help them to understand their role in the holistic vision for climate action. In addition to this core activity, the Fellow will assist in managing volunteers for CalFire funded tree planting and outreach for the Tree Master Plan development; and transitioning the resilience hub work to the second phase. The Fellow’s resilience hub work will pivot away from the train-the-trainer workshops and broad technical assistance to focusing on site assessments and building the internal site team participants.

Project Description

The Fellow will be serving with the Sustainability Office in the City Manager’s Office of the City of San Leandro. During the fellowship year, the Fellow will be able to serve on a wide variety of topic areas.

They will be a crucial member in strategizing how to shift culture and build organizational infrastructure for climate to be a priority across all departments. This work will be high level and involve deep relationship building and coordination across the departments to understand what they need in order to succeed. The Fellow may also lead trainings and develop strategic communications to key team members to connect the individual department work to the city-wide plan. The ideal project outcome is to develop concrete 12 month work plans for each department around their CAP projects, including resource tasks and climate storytelling products. The work plans will clarify for staff the metrics and tasks for success. The climate storytelling products may be external and internal, but will aim to increase educational awareness of climate topics and shift culture on responsibility for climate action. 

The tree planting work is a second important component. San Leandro recently received a CalFire grant to hire part time staff and plant street trees in collaboration with the Public Works Department and 100K Trees for Humanity. The Fellow will assist in project managing the community partner and volunteers, and lead coordination of the volunteer trainings and planting days. As the priority neighborhoods are identified in the Tree Master Plan development that lack trees and experience racial and socioeconomic disparities, the tree planting team will start targeting these neighborhoods for tree planting. The Fellow will work closely with the Tree Master Plan consultant to ensure the priority neighborhoods are targeted first. The Fellow will also assist with outreach on the Tree Master Plan and ensure that the engagement process is as equitable as possible, as well as give input on the tree management process based on their experience managing the volunteers.

The resilience hub initiative is a third project for the fellowship. This project is ongoing from the 21-22 fellowship, but is transitioning into the next phase. With the City receiving additional support from an external consultant this year, the Fellow will limit their project support to delivering training workshops. The Fellow will coordinate with the external consultant and the Sustainability Office to present workshops on climate resilience topics necessary for capacity building for site teams, based on the curriculum that was developed by the previous Fellow. 

Desired Skills

The ideal Fellow should have experience in communications, storytelling, and marketing to help craft the storytelling campaigns for the Sustainability Office. Imagination, critical curiosity, and ability to work with abstract ideas will be key in the strategic integration of climate within the organization. Experience with volunteer management and project management will be crucial for the tree planting project and input for the tree master plan development. Experience in partnership management and community engagement is helpful for working with the resilience hubs. Generally with COVID and other changing circumstances, flexibility and adaptability will be important traits.

Organization & Community Highlights

San Leandro provides a small community setting set against the urban backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area. Many residents have lived here for generations and are persisting despite regional gentrification and displacement. Sustainability staff can provide in-depth history for San Leandro as their hometown and current workplace. The growing Asian and Hispanic populations have shifted the community needs over the years as well as corresponding outreach approaches that can best serve the public.

With the small geographic area, there are not as many climate-focused community groups specific to San Leandro as in other parts of the Bay Area. However, with the existing relationships between the Sustainability Office and community partners, it is possible to have more community-driven efforts and build the infrastructure for community members to step into leadership. Budding organizing efforts are emerging around social justice movements and can be fostered for stronger leadership presence by black, indigenous, and people of color.

In acknowledgement of past and current systemic racism and inequities, the City of San Leandro has been developing a city-wide equity plan which is to be adopted this summer/fall 2022. With implementation starting in the fall, this presents a unique opportunity for Fellows interested in climate and environmental justice to observe and participate in the process of organizational change.

Remote or On-Site Placement

The Fellow can serve remotely or on-site. The City has taken COVID very seriously and adhered or gone above the county public health guidelines in requiring masks indoors even for vaccinated individuals during infection peak times. Outdoor meetings or outreach may be required for site recruitment or tree planting work.