Redeemer Community Partnership

Signs of HOPE. The dismantling of liquor stores encourages walking and biking. #SafeRoutesToSchool

We asked the LA City Council District 10 candidates Mark Ridley- Thomas and Grace Yoo for their views on neighborhood oil drilling and active transportation. Here are their answers. http://tiny.cc/CD10

A big thank you to USC Good Neighbors, who will be partnering with us through Adventures Ahead After School Tutoring once more for the upcoming school year! With all of the new changes and transition into distance learning, we are grateful for their continued support. Here's to the new school year!

Our Adventures Ahead After School Tutoring team finished the summer program during the last week of July! The final days were spent wrapping up lessons and playing review games in morning classroom time. With the help of their teachers and afternoon tutors, every student made 1 math and 1 reading goal for August. We created trackers and gave them stickers to chart their progress throughout the month. On the last day we celebrated with special treats and party blowers, and p...layed online games together. The kids expressed how much they would miss their summer teachers and volunteers! Last week, we assessed students on their morning classroom material and individual reading levels. Results were really encouraging! 80% of students tested advanced to the next reading level. All of the students in our beginning and intermediate phonics classes passed their benchmark assessments. Students in our advanced phonics and vocabulary classes showed increased knowledge in breaking down multi-syllable words and creating sentences using vocabulary words. We were unsure in the beginning if we could create a classroom experience where kids could engage with each other and their teachers and learn new material. With the hard work of our amazing team of interns, we did! And as we saw earlier this year, the one-on-one time was crucial to students advancing reading levels. So grateful for the 13 volunteers who made that happen! You can help keep the momentum going by volunteering to be a one-on-one Reading Buddy over Zoom this school year! Contact our director at [email protected] for more information.

We've been working hard to get lower utility rates for income-qualified households and energy efficiency rebates for all residents through our EmPower program! Our incredible coordinator, Martha, helps income-qualified neighbors access lower utility rates and efficiency rebates. Contact [email protected] get started!

#TBT to 2016 when we partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder to support a low-cost monitoring project. We deployed around 20 methane and non-methane sensing monitors throughout South LA at varying distances from active oil drilling facilities. We're grateful to all the amazing community members and businesses that hosted the monitors and the research produced from the collected data.

In a study recently conducted by UCLA, researchers found that "low-income families often can't afford to use enough energy to stay warm or cool, and as a result, they continue to live in less comfortable housing and pay a larger proportion of their income for that discomfort." Using this data, Liberty Hill Foundation has created a coordinated outreach program called EmPower which helps bridge the gap between communities of color and access to sustainable resources. RCP has b...een grateful to partner with Liberty Hill and EmPower to help our South LA neighbors access lower energy rates and efficiency rebates. Throughout this month, we are excited to share some stories. Interested in reading more? Click on the links below! UCLA Study "On energy sufficiency and the need for new policies to combat growing inequities in the residential energy sector" https://bit.ly/uclaenergystudy Liberty Hill Empower Program https://bit.ly/LHempower Maps Courtesy of LA Times Boiling Point Newsletter by Sammy Roth https://bit.ly/theboilingpoint

New report from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs on #emPOWERoutreach shows this LA program and prioritizes funding to authentic grassroots orgs working to build power in communities on the frontlines of industrial pollution https://bit.ly/emPOWER-evaluation

Supporting EJ communities with access to programs that divest from fossil fuels provides cleaner air & greater resistance to public health crises. #emPOWERoutreach reaches the most vulnerable communities and needs continued support! https://bit.ly/emPOWER-evaluation

WHERE would you like to see the next active transportation & mobility justice project that will build safe routes to schools and parks in our neighborhood? COMMENT BELOW! As we continue to envision a safe, healthy, and opportunity rich community, we're inviting you, the community, to share in the comments below where you want to see the next project focus on? The map in this post shows where the High-Injury Network corridors and local schools and parks are in our area. Share now!

We recently said farewell to our dear friend, neighbor and colleague Niki Wong. Her hard work leaves a legacy that will bless children and their families in our community for years to come. We wish her well in her new adventures. https://vimeo.com/362312673

#TBT 5 years ago to our Not Your Canary March! We had 100 children from South LA march in protest of the toxic operations of neighborhood oil drilling at the Jefferson and Murphy Drill Sites. Their message was clear: They and their families should not be treated like canaries in a coalmine and don't deserve to wait for a catastrophic accident before something is done to hold these facilities accountable for their negligent operations in a vulnerable, residential community. 5... years later, their message was heard, and we have one site on it's way towards closure. But the time as come to end the toxic emissions risking community health at the final remaining neighborhood oil extraction facility in South LA. Are you ready to end toxic neighborhood drilling at the Murphy Drill Site on Adams Blvd.? Join the Rapid Response Team for updates and opportunities to get involved. Signup at https://www.redeemercp.org/murphyrrt See more

Devastating headlines gave voice to our deepest dread. On June 5 the New York Times reported, Research Shows Students Falling Months Behind During Virus Disruptions. The article went on to report that, When all of the impacts are taken into account, the average student could fall seven months behind academically, while black and Hispanic students could experience even greater learning losses, equivalent to 10 months for Black children and nine months for Latinos. Eight week...s into online instruction we tested our Adventures Ahead After School Tutoring students to take stock of the toll. Imagine our joy and relief when we found that instead of falling behind, our students had continued to make progress. Last week, the program ended with our students making 1.4 years of literacy progress over the course of the year. While this is just short of our 1.5 year goal, under the circumstances we were delighted! Read the NYT article: https://is.gd/gMrlVG

The Summer 2020 Redeemer Community Partnership Newsletter is available on our website: https://www.redeemercp.org/newsletter Check it out!