May 22, 2023

CAP Team Delivers a Climate Change Workshop for Community-Based Organizations

Four members of the Emerging Leaders Class of 2023 hosted the first “Resilient Communities Workshop for Community-Based Organizations as their Community Acceleration Project. (L to R: Kamille Lang, SMC Office of Sustainability’s Climate Action Specialist, Babs Deffenderfer, SMC Housing and Community Development Supervisor, Colleen Lettire, City of Half Moon Bay Communications Program Manager, and Andrea Chow, City of San Mateo Sustainability Analyst)

The Community Acceleration Project (CAP) Program is a component of Leadership Council SMC’s Emerging Leaders (EL) Program. Teams of Emerging Leaders Program participants work with a local nonprofit on an essential project.

One of this year’s CAP Teams created “Resilient Communities Workshop for Community-Based Organizations,” bringing together San Mateo County nonprofits with OneShoreline for a day of conversation and collaboration about how to work together on climate resilience solutions.

Wave of Change

This CAP Team, including Andrea Chow, City of San Mateo Sustainability Analyst, Babs Deffenderfer, SMC Housing and Community Development Supervisor, Kamille Lang, SMC Office of Sustainability’s Climate Action Specialist, and Colleen Lettire, City of Half Moon Bay Communications Program Manager, bonded quickly over shared interests in climate action and named themselves “Wave of Change.” They were assigned to work with OneShoreline, an independent agency dedicated to securing and leveraging public and private resources for the long-term resilience of our region.

Through planning sessions, collaboration with OneShoreline, and project iterations, the CAP Team established project goals: To connect One Shoreline with community-based organizations (CBOs), and engage them in a focused conversation about shared climate and sea level rise issues. They sought to seed relationships between OneShoreline and the CBOs that were based on mutual concerns and understanding, and that could continue into the future.

“Knowing our assignment with OneShoreline was short, we focused on community engagement and provided a deliverable that could be replicated in the future,” said Andrea Chow.

Bringing Skills to Meet the Goal

"What we received—in the form of a workshop for organizations working on different aspects of social services or the environment—exceeded any expectations I could have had."
~Len Materman, CEO of OneShoreline

To create the workshop, Wave of Change used their Emerging Leaders training to assess each team member's skills and interests, and share the effort.

Creating the outcomes and the agenda were especially important. Their agenda felt meaningful and purposeful to attendees and included:

Introduction to the inter-related climate vulnerabilities in San Mateo County
Opportunity for each organization to share their activities and interests as they intersected with climate impacts and resilience planning
Activities that built cross-sector strategic partnerships around action-based climate resiliency and funding

This interactive day enabled participants to visualize the overlaps and alignment they shared with others and leave the day with commitments to action.

Feedback from Len Materman, CEO of OneShoreline, was outstanding.“When I made a presentation to participants in the Leadership Council’s Emerging Leaders Program to develop a project for a CAP Team to undertake, I didn’t know what to expect," Len said. "What we received, in the form of a workshop for organizations working on different aspects of social services or the environment – organizations that don’t usually see themselves as allies – exceeded any expectations I could have had."

The Emerging Leaders Program Brought Them Together

“This was a great experience. I’ve hosted a lot of events but this was different given the creative role that we played—to prepare the outcomes in collaboration with OneShoreline and facilitate the entire program,” shared Andrea. “I’m grateful for the connections I’ve made in the Emerging Leaders Program and being able to work with this awesome team.”

Karen Hager, Leadership Council SMC Program Director, witnessed the ways the Wave of Change Team applied their newly learned leadership skills. “Congratulations to the Wave of Change on their fantastic Resilient Communities Workshop!” she said. “We were particularly honored to see the ways that they applied tools from Emerging Leaders Learning Days to guide the workshop. We are very proud of the passion they displayed, the professionalism with which they presented, and the impact they had on the agencies that attended, all on behalf of OneShoreline.”