We are excited to share that the Greater Portland Sustainability Education Network’s (GPSEN) Sustainability Symposium: Building Bridges to Sustainability will be co-hosted by PCC. The Sustainability Symposium is GPSEN’s signature event.��It will be held on March 8th, 2019 from 10:00am to 6:00pm at Cascade Campus. Proposal submissions to present at the symposium are open until January 6th so if you have a great regional sustainability project or initiative to share, by all means submit a proposal!

GPSEN is known globally as Greater Portland RCE, RCE is short for Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. There are currently 166 RCE’s worldwide that are acknowledged by United Nations University. RCE’s are designed to help connect local, regional, and global sustainability networks to create pathways towards Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across the world.

GPSEN participated at this years 7th RCE Meeting of the Americas Regional conference in October, ��held in Posadas, Argentina. The theme of that meeting was: ESD,��Conservation and Climate Change in the 2030 Agenda.����GPSEN’s Executive Director Neeraja Havaligi shared a nice report of her experience there that is certainly worth checking out.

And just last week, three members of GPSEN, including myself, attended and presented at the 11th Global RCE Conference: Education for the Sustainable Development Goals in Cebu, Philippines as well. And it was an incredible surprise to have all three of us accept global RCE Awards for the regional work we are doing through GPSEN.��Serena Dressel, recent graduate fo PSU and GPSEN College Network member, received an Acknowledged Flagship Project for PSU’s Intensive English Language Program which helps tremendously to increase awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). ��And to my great astonishment, the��PCC Sustain Me! podcast��won an Acknowledged Flagship Project Award as well. Kim Smith, a sociology instructor at PCC and one of the founders of GPSEN accepted an Honorable Mention Project for our GPSEN Fellows Program. It truly was an honor to be a part of this Global RCE Conference and it is exciting to help bring more awareness to, and see how we are connected with, the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Now we have an opportunity to see how these 17 SDG’s can be addressed here in the Portland area.

The GPSEN Sustainability Symposium is our RCE’s local conference which provides opportunities to showcase and highlight the work being done right here in the greater Portland area. The theme is Building Bridges to Sustainability and as mentioned above, all the work being done is connected to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals which are to be achieved by 2030. There’s no reason to sugar coat the climate crisis that we are now facing. It is baked in to this cake and now we must actively pursue ways to navigate the future we’ve helped create. The SDG’s are 17 individual tools or resources that are connected to one another and collectively are designed to help us mitigate the worst potential consequences of the climate disruption humans have participated in creating. Below is the mission of the RCE’s. It is a great way to get a better understanding of the role they play globally, regionally, and locally:

And so, the GPSEN Sustainability Symposium: Building Bridges to Sustainability is a way for us to ideally find more and better ways to help be a part of the solution moving forward. It is also an opportunity for us to help make the sustainability movement as inclusive and accessible as possible. We are all in this together though there have been systems in place that have not allowed us all to have an equitable seat at the decision making, and leadership, table. We hope to help address this and in every way we can, help to dismantle the systems of oppression that have been at play to make social justice and sustainability seem like two separate issues when indeed they are one. Diversity, equity and inclusion are paramount if we are to find success moving forward. If you are engaged in work that relates to environmental justice, sustainability, or social justice and would like to share you or your groups project or initiative, please do submit a proposal today!

To listen to the episode, follow this link:

Can you feel it? The Autumn Equinox is just around the bend. The sun is setting earlier each day, encouraging us to rest up and get a good nights sleep. There’s that brisk and invigorating chill in the air, requiring that extra layer of clothes that’s been tucked away all summer. All those colorful leaves crunching beneath your feet as our fellow trees and plant friends prepare to go within for the winter. And for a lot of folks, this is that time n’ space to hunker down and get ready to exercise those creativity muscles as the new school year gets in motion. One great way to set some new intentions and perhaps get some beneficial habits in our lives at this time of year is to join the Eco Challenge! The , brought to you by the (NWEI), is entering its 10th year and it has certainly improved over the years like a fine wine (especially in these past two years with the updated platform). And there’s also another great improvement that has come to fruition this summer as we enter the fall, the (GPSEN) has officially brought online it’s brand-spanking-new website and I must say it is looking sharp as can be.

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While both the Eco Challenge and the new GPSEN website were brought into existence through the collaborative efforts of many people, there was one person in particular who was a key player involved with both of these great things. That person is David Macek from NWEI.��I was delighted to sit down with the him just the other day and talk about both of these upcoming exciting things. David Macek is the Executive Director of NWEI and also has been a board member of GPSEN for many years as well. He lead the charge on bringing the new GPSEN website to life and of course is intimately involved with the Eco Challenge through his role at NWEI. It was a pleasure to sit down with him for a spell and talk about these great developments and I am delighted to share our talk with you. So, without further ado, I encourage you to go ahead and have a listen to this episode of PCC, Sustain Me!

Thanks for tuning in, folks. It is so greatly appreciated.

And one more thing! If you’re a part of PCC and you haven’t yet done so, !!!

Well, it’s official. ˿����Ƶ has completed another year of engaging, entertaining, educational, and even challenging events for this year’s . If you happened to be on the grounds of our four major campuses or out at Newberg Center between April 16th – 27th, there’s a good chance you got a small (or large) dose of Earth Week vibes!

This year, like last, was filled with sustainability, climate action and environmental justice-focused events. It was great to once again see students, staff, and faculty engaged in these activities across the district. There was also a decent turnout from the surrounding community members as well (which is always nice to see)! Throughout the nearly two weeks of programming based around Earth Day there were also a number of volunteer opportunities and service learning projects. PCC loves to help create ways to come together and explore what collaboration, celebration, and community can look like as we help work towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and diverse reality here at our college and beyond.

As has been our tradition here at PCC, we again offered free educational events including documentary screenings, tabling fairs, workshops and talks on #ecosocialjustice, gardening, seed and start sharing, climate change discussions, civic engagement, and your usual suspects of sustainability education awareness: tips on waste reduction, recycling, composting, and energy conservation as well. This year we broadened the dialogue by bringing artists and other leaders who play great contributing roles in environmental and social activism or “artivism” as it has been referred to. There were also a number of classes who incorporated this year’s events into their curricula and came out to make their lessons be a part of some of these great events.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Earth Week here at PCC without getting our hands in some soil! There were a number of opportunities for the PCC community to get those healing effects from playing in the dirt with plenty of action at our learning gardens! The Sylvania QRC hosted a “trans”-plant event at the learning garden and welcomed our new honey bee friends to the apiary. Rock Creek kicked off Portlandia Farmstandia and their annual garden work party was a huge success! Out at Newberg, they had some more cob construction action going on as they look to finish their cob shed which is a whole other way to get good and messy working with the earth! There were also ways to bring this goodness home with free plant starts and Pacific Northwest native seeds for our friends the pollinators.

Off campus we also had some great events this year. There was a huge turnout for the beach cleanup that Rock Creek ASPCC organized. Volunteers learned about the harm plastic is doing to marine ecosystems and human health. Then, the lovely areas around Cannon Beach got some good care and loving from over 100 “trash warrior” volunteers! The 3rd Annual Kelley Point Park Clean Up was also a great event that was coordinated out of Cascade campus. This year it was a collaborative event between the Environmental Justice Club at PCC Cascade and the Environmental club at PSU. The cleanup ended up having volunteers from PCC, PSU, OHSU, and our good friends at Portland Parks & Recreations and the support of SOLVE. There was an English Ivy invasive species removal session that went down which became a glorious stress relieving exercise for those folks who hadn’t been too pleased with this particular unwelcome guest taking over their yards and landscapes.

This year we were very fortunate to have some really great guest speakers come join us to once again explore the relationship between environmental sustainability and social justice. At Sylvania Dr. Breeze Harper provided a thought provoking lecture and workshop sharing her work exploring food justice, racism, and the intersectionality of these systems of oppression in “ethical” foodscapes such as veganism. She spoke truth to a packed house and curated insightful discussions about necessary action for food and racial justice. This event was a collaborative effort between the Sylvania Multicultural Center, Sylvania and Environmental Center and District Sustainability.

At Cascade Campus, the student leadership across the district had the opportunity to both listen to and create a lively discussion with Tara Houska, a native Indigenous tribal rights lawyer who has worked within the White House under Barack Obama and was a special council for Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Tara shared her wisdom and stories with us and we left this experience motivated and ready to take more actions to support divestment and using our money to support local businesses and enterprises that truly care about our earth. Tara also encouraged us to make it a priority to collaborate and bring diverse groups together to create meaningful and lasting change as we work towards reducing our excessive use of fossil fuels. This event was funded by a student grant co-written by the Native Nations Coordinator, Black Student Union Coordinator, and Environmental Justice Coordinator through the Eco Social Justice Grant. The district wide gathering was a zero waste event and was aptly called #ecosocialjustice.

Tara Houska receiving gifts of gratitude for being the keynote speaker at our #ecosocialjustice event from PCC alumni Rachel Black Elk (right) and current ASPCC Native Nations Coordinator Renea Perry

The three student leaders (Teri Fane, Renea perry, and Joe Culhane) who co-wrote the grant for this #ecosocialjustice event with the keynote speaker Tara Houska.

Tara Houska brought such wisdom and inspiration to her keynote while maintaining so much grace and humor sharing stories about her journey through very challenging (and often frustrating) issues that she and the environmental movement face.

It’s honestly hard to describe just how much we appreciated all the effort that has gone into making all these activities and events possible across the district. Students, staff, and faculty all played integral roles to make this all happen. We only highlighted a handful of the goodness here and honestly, so many more events and moments deserve some time in the spotlight as well! Below we’ll add one more gallery from many of the events that happened during our extended Earth Week. It’s great to be a part of a school that devotes time, focus, and energy to these sustainable pursuits and it is also encouraging to know that they happen all year round at PCC and not just around this one day a year we’ve come to call Earth Day.

• What: Celebration of UN Human Rights Day
• When: Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
• Where: PCC Cascade, Student Union, 2nd Floor
  705 N Killingsworth St, Portland, OR 97217
• Who: Open to the community; Entry is free

Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10. It commemorates the day on which, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This year, we are focusing on education as a human right. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN recognizes “the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

A panel of experts from a variety of local organizations will be highlighted to discuss this topic, with special focus given to the accessibility and affordability of education in Portland and around the world. Experts include Dr. General Johnson, PCC Faculty in Health Education and Leadership Development, Koffi Dessou, with the City of Portland’s Office of Equity and Human Rights and TOGO Core, Alisha Zhao, founder of the Kids First Project, Deidre Schuetz, founder of Lanyi Fan, and Nikki Gillis, Officer of Equity, Access, and Inclusion at Mt. Hood Community College. Opportunities for discussion of this important issue will follow the presentations.

Hosted at PCC Cascade, this is a free event, with tabling, light refreshments and snacks.

This event is co-sponsored by the Greater Portland Sustainability Education Network (GPSEN), Kids First Project, Know Agenda Foundation, Lanyi Fan, ˿����Ƶ, ˿����Ƶ Cascade Black Student Union, Portland Human Rights Commission, TOGO CORE, Trash for Peace, and the United Nations Association of Portland.