Two new staff members, Ana Rico and Alhan Diaz-Correa, are expanding the Community Environmental Council’s (CEC) climate justice efforts and building climate resilience among vulnerable communities on the Central Coast. Rico and Alhan Diaz-Correa are the CEC’s community ambassadors.

Rico was raised in Santa Barbara’s Eastside neighborhood. Over the past 30 years, she experienced numerous traffic dangers as a pedestrian, including a pivotal moment when she and her three children were nearly struck by a vehicle on their daily walk to school.

This experience sparked Rico’s career as a community advocate, and she has been committed to engaging and working hand-in-hand with frontline communities to develop sustainable solutions to climate change.

Diaz-Correa is a Santa Maria native who recently returned from living in Montana for eight years, where he earned a bachelor of science in biochemistry from the University of Montana.

In solidarity with the community that raised him, Diaz-Correa works in his hometown and the broader region to address areas of racial, economic, and environmental justice.

Rico and Diaz-Correa first joined CEC in early 2020 to support efforts with Connected 2050, a Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) project to develop a community vision for transportation and housing that balances social, economic and environmental goals.

As community ambassadors, they led outreach and engagement efforts with a goal of ensuring that the voices of more vulnerable and underrepresented communities throughout the county were included in developing this vision.

“Despite the pandemic, we were able to gather valuable input from communities most impacted by this plan, and we gained important insights into how we can improve access to safe, reliable transportation, housing, jobs, and supportive services in our communities,” Rico said.

This experience, she said, shed light on the depth and complexity of the outreach work that needs to be done to ensure equitable and just planning processes. Rico and Diaz-Correa will share more about these learnings in a joint public webinar with SBCAG on Thursday, Oct. 29.

Their outreach — including one-on-one conversations about individuals’ transportation and housing challenges and needs — also led to a CEC pilot program to increase support for frontline community members: Community Ambassador Resilience and Equity Response (CARER).

Through the program, Rico and Diaz-Correa worked to foster community resilience and support climate justice efforts by responding to immediate needs of frontline communities during the pandemic.

In addition to sharing resources and information related to COVID-19 public health, food access, and tenant rights, Diaz-Correa said, “We had an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of frontline communities, including the additional emotional toll of the work they do during COVID.”

Diaz-Correa also supports CEC’s expansion into Spanish-language offerings and information as a bilingual communications associate.

In this role, he is helping to strengthen CEC’s ability to effectively engage with Spanish speakers, including through a Spanish-language Facebook group (Boletín Comunitario de CEC), which shares resources and welcomes Spanish-speaking community members to ask questions, share stories, and discuss their community needs and climate resilience solutions.

“Our efforts to develop rapid and equitable solutions to the climate crisis hinge on our ability to engage our full Central Coast community,” said Sigrid Wright, CEO of CEC. “Alhan and Ana are helping us actively address language and climate justice across all of our programs.”

To learn more about how CEC’s community ambassadors are helping to shape future outreach and inclusion efforts in our region, attend one of the free webinars on Oct. 29.

Lessons from the Field: A Listening Session for Planners — 9-10 a.m. Join the community ambassadors and SBCAG staff to hear about their experience, lessons learned, and insights for planning and implementing inclusive outreach and engagement strategies.

Community Food & Farming Discussion Series: Food Access and Food Security — noon-1:15 p.m. Diaz-Correa is helping support this panel hosted by the Santa Barbara County Food Action Network, which is implementing a countywide action plan spearheaded by CEC and the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County.

The discussion will center on how to meet the basic food needs of the entire community and ensure fair access to local food resources. It will highlight current efforts to support and care for Santa Barbara County’s vulnerable populations by ensuring access to nutritious and affordable food, and opportunities to scale and deepen the efforts.

Recognized as a 2020 California Nonprofit of the Year, CEC has worked since 1970 to incubate and innovate real life environmental solutions that directly affect the California Central Coast.

Current work advances rapid and equitable solutions to the climate crisis, including ambitious zero carbon goals, drawdown of excess carbon, and protection against the impacts of climate change. Learn more at CECSB.org/impact and CECSB.org.