Cooperative Climate Venture Centers (CCVC) are youth-led, community-based centers working for low-income/marginalized youth, communites, workers and businesses to 1) improve human health, 2) improve environmental health, and 3) increase local sustainable business and job activity. The vision is to start with depressed communities along the Amtrak City of New Orleans route and to branch out from those locations. The pilot CCVC will be located in Carbondale. The CCVCs are a combination of “education” and “resilience” components, and can consist of several possible configurations/components:
- Education Hubs
- Science Center/Exhibits
- Youth-led community-focused making
- Gardens and community kitchen
- Meeting space and computer lab
- Student research projects: local projects and deep future
- CLEANetwork.com: education, entrepreneurship, experimentation
- Resilience Hubs
- Mental and physical health clinic facilities
- Emergency assistance
- Workforce development: training and job placement
- Renewable materials
- Regenerative agriculture and forestry
- Renewable energy and equipment, energy efficiency
- Cross-cutting skills
- New skill development: catalysts, carbon credit verifiers
- Shop Local
- Local business consulting/assistance
- Local currency
- Local business accelerator
- Local investment network
- Networking
- Transformative climate communities (for new grants and programs)
- Job fairs
CCVCs will measure
- For human health:
- employment
- level of education
- poverty
- violence
- For environmental health
- CO2 reduction projects (verifiers)
- renewable energy penetration
- emissions (with city)
- For sustainable business and jobs:
- new businesses
- new living-wage family-supporting jobs
- existing business growth
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