Our Programs

Our Communities, Our Bay (OCOB) is a five year project dedicated to better understanding how climate hazards affect communities in San Mateo County– specifically in Belle Haven, East Palo Alto, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City. To do this, OCOB is recruiting 420 families to conduct a long-term study with households at-risk of wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and flooding. The goal of this research is to find potential strategies for climate resilience, as well as to test technology that may improve health. Participants receive multiple benefits, including getting to keep the technologies installed and learning valuable information about their air pollution exposure.

Learn more and sign up to participate here! 

Through our Community-Based Adaptation program, CRC has helped to establish and manage Climate Change Community Teams in North Fair Oaks, East Palo Alto, and Belle Haven. These groups are composed of residents, city officials, youth, faith, and business leaders which aim to identify local vulnerabilities and learn how the community can be better prepared to face the impacts of climate change. The teams serve as a vehicle for forming and expressing community preferences for addressing a multitude of climate hazards that vary by local condition.

If you are interested in joining one of the CCCTs, email cade.cannedy@crcommunities.org!

Alongside Grassroots Ecology, CRC was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority's Measure AA grant program. This project will restore the marsh-land along a half-mile of the Bay Trail at Ravenswood Preserve in East Palo Alto. The site is owned by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space Preserve, another project partner. The marsh is home to the endangered Ridgway's Rail and Salt Marsh Harvest mouse as well as other species that will benefit from the shelter and forage of new native vegetation to be installed. Grassroots Ecology will lead the restoration effort and CRC will lead the community engagement and outreach, including hiring several interns from the local community to help with the work! A thriving marshland will make East Palo Alto more resilient to rising sea levels and coastal flooding events.

Learn more here!

The purpose of this project is to bring together, educate, and train East Palo Alto (EPA) residents to install rain gardens and cisterns in local homes that mitigate flooding, drought, extreme heat, and other climate change impacts. Our goal is to create a community-led and science-based strategy for city-wide scaling of rainwater harvesting systems. This project will also install rain gardens and water cistern systems at 25 residences in East Palo Alto. The gardens will offer residents additional food and water security, flood prevention, reduce water pollution, and improve their property values to reduce displacement risk.

Find out more about the project here.

BRACE worked with five focus groups conducted by CRC and its partnering organizations. These meetings were convened to gather information regarding knowledge and behaviors related to the connections between a changing climate and health, prior experiences with the health impacts of climate events, personal resiliency, and communication needs and preferences. Each focus group was convened intentionally with a focus on unhoused people, low-income families, and people with disabilities. The results of these focus groups were compiled into a final report, that demonstrated the amount of work required to ensure equitable access to resilience resources and information about the health consequences of a changing climate. The full report is linked below.

Learn more here!

CRC is working with the City of Menlo Park and the San Mateo County Office of Sustainability to conduct outreach and solicit community input on proposed alterations to Ringwood Avenue and Coleman Avenue. These two streets are in significant need for upgrades, particularly because they are used by many students to get to school at Menlo-Atherton Highschool or the Laurel School. This is an opportunity to redesign the corridor to better accommodate community preferences around access to public transit, bicycle lanes, or any other necessary upgrades.

Click here to learn more about the study, and click here to take the survey and have your voice be heard!