Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations
Sustainability transformations are most meaningful when communities take ownership of their collective futures and guide transformative processes that are rooted in their local traditions and value systems. Yet, researcher–community collaborations aimed at facilitating meaningful transformations can...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Resilience Alliance
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Ecology and Society |
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| Online Access: | https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss1/art8 |
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| author | Vanya Bisht Regional Carrillo Monique Franco Virginia Angeles-Wann Jose-Benito Rosales Chavez Samuel Gomez Jessica Hess Amanda Kuhn Paige Mollen Jorge Morales-Guerrero John Wann-Ángeles Chingwen Cheng Marta Berbés-Blázquez |
| author_facet | Vanya Bisht Regional Carrillo Monique Franco Virginia Angeles-Wann Jose-Benito Rosales Chavez Samuel Gomez Jessica Hess Amanda Kuhn Paige Mollen Jorge Morales-Guerrero John Wann-Ángeles Chingwen Cheng Marta Berbés-Blázquez |
| author_sort | Vanya Bisht |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Sustainability transformations are most meaningful when communities take ownership of their collective futures and guide transformative processes that are rooted in their local traditions and value systems. Yet, researcher–community collaborations aimed at facilitating meaningful transformations can fall short of their objectives if they do not explicitly recognize bottom-up transformative processes that already exist in the community that enable grassroots ways of knowing and addressing sustainability challenges prevalent in the community. This paper addresses this gap in researcher–community partnerships by illustrating a transdisciplinary collaboration that emerged among researchers, educators, and advocates in South Phoenix, Arizona that sought to center recognitional and epistemic justice from the start. These collaborations led to the co-designing and execution of school curriculums in three learning centers in South Phoenix aimed at developing researcher capabilities among learners for exploring the pasts, presents, and futures, and contributing to transformative action in their community. This paper outlines the approaches that this group of collaborators, who are all co-authors in the paper, took toward forming reciprocal relationships and facilitating just transformations in the community. First, we describe our collaboration process, which was mindful of activating existing spaces of community leadership as well as cultivating spaces of reciprocal knowledge exchange and reflection among the collaborators. Next, we outline our approach toward facilitating just transformations, which we call “barrio” innovation, which is based on principles of embracing a mindframe of abundance, enabling transformative pathways, and focusing on the micro-scale. We further illustrate, through case studies, how our approaches to collaborations and transformations manifested in different learning centers and with different collaborators in South Phoenix. We conclude with our collective reflections and the practices that worked for us toward facilitating just transformations through meaningful researcher–community collaborations. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8f182ba5283a4865bef7ce7bb8733c3b |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 1708-3087 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-03-01 |
| publisher | Resilience Alliance |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Ecology and Society |
| spelling | doaj-art-8f182ba5283a4865bef7ce7bb8733c3b2025-08-20T01:50:48ZengResilience AllianceEcology and Society1708-30872025-03-01301810.5751/ES-15749-30010815749Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformationsVanya Bisht0Regional Carrillo1Monique Franco2Virginia Angeles-Wann3Jose-Benito Rosales Chavez4Samuel Gomez5Jessica Hess6Amanda Kuhn7Paige Mollen8Jorge Morales-Guerrero9John Wann-Ángeles10Chingwen Cheng11Marta Berbés-Blázquez12University of WaterlooAZ(LAND) Fund Founder and CEOCentral Arizona-Phoenix LTER Program, Arizona State UniversityOrchard Community Learning Center, Phoenix, ArizonaSchool of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State UniversityThe Sagrado Galleria, Phoenix, ArizonaGarfield Elementary School, Phoenix, ArizonaSchool of Life Sciences, Arizona State UniversityMollen Foundation, ArizonaSchool of Sustainability, Arizona State UniversityOrchard Community Learning CenterStuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, The Pennsylvania State UniversitySchool of Planning, and Faculty of Environment, University of WaterlooSustainability transformations are most meaningful when communities take ownership of their collective futures and guide transformative processes that are rooted in their local traditions and value systems. Yet, researcher–community collaborations aimed at facilitating meaningful transformations can fall short of their objectives if they do not explicitly recognize bottom-up transformative processes that already exist in the community that enable grassroots ways of knowing and addressing sustainability challenges prevalent in the community. This paper addresses this gap in researcher–community partnerships by illustrating a transdisciplinary collaboration that emerged among researchers, educators, and advocates in South Phoenix, Arizona that sought to center recognitional and epistemic justice from the start. These collaborations led to the co-designing and execution of school curriculums in three learning centers in South Phoenix aimed at developing researcher capabilities among learners for exploring the pasts, presents, and futures, and contributing to transformative action in their community. This paper outlines the approaches that this group of collaborators, who are all co-authors in the paper, took toward forming reciprocal relationships and facilitating just transformations in the community. First, we describe our collaboration process, which was mindful of activating existing spaces of community leadership as well as cultivating spaces of reciprocal knowledge exchange and reflection among the collaborators. Next, we outline our approach toward facilitating just transformations, which we call “barrio” innovation, which is based on principles of embracing a mindframe of abundance, enabling transformative pathways, and focusing on the micro-scale. We further illustrate, through case studies, how our approaches to collaborations and transformations manifested in different learning centers and with different collaborators in South Phoenix. We conclude with our collective reflections and the practices that worked for us toward facilitating just transformations through meaningful researcher–community collaborations.https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss1/art8asset-based community developmentenvironmental justiceepistemic justicejust transformationstransdisciplinary collaborations |
| spellingShingle | Vanya Bisht Regional Carrillo Monique Franco Virginia Angeles-Wann Jose-Benito Rosales Chavez Samuel Gomez Jessica Hess Amanda Kuhn Paige Mollen Jorge Morales-Guerrero John Wann-Ángeles Chingwen Cheng Marta Berbés-Blázquez Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations Ecology and Society asset-based community development environmental justice epistemic justice just transformations transdisciplinary collaborations |
| title | Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| title_full | Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| title_fullStr | Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| title_short | Enabling “barrio” innovation: a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| title_sort | enabling barrio innovation a grassroots approach for centering community initiatives in just sustainability transformations |
| topic | asset-based community development environmental justice epistemic justice just transformations transdisciplinary collaborations |
| url | https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss1/art8 |
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