The Air Justice Project: Creating Air Ambassadors Among Residents of Washington, DC.

Title:

The Air Justice Project: Creating Air Ambassadors among residents of Washington, DC

Author: Adebimpe Rasak-Usman¹, Preshona Ambri², Parisa Norouzi³, Valentina Aquila¹

¹ American University, Department of Environmental Science

² D.C. Environmental Justice Coalition

³ Empower DC, 1419 V St NW, Washington, DC 20009

The non-profit advocacy organization and core member of the D.C. Environmental Justice Coalition, Empower DC, has partnered with DC’s Department of Energy and the Environment {DOEE}, and American University on the Air Justice Project, a program to educate residents of different DC neighborhoods on air quality inequities within the District. This partnership has developed new training material on air pollution and environmental justice and delivered it through a series of online workshops and in-person site field trips in July 2023 to DC’s first cohort of Air Ambassadors.

Air Ambassadors are a select group of seven DC residents of communities disparately impacted by poor air quality and trained to be lead-point people on air quality in their communities. As part of their training supervised by American University, the Air Ambassadors installed PurpleAir monitors in and adjacent to their residence to learn how these tools help to document their local air quality.

Since completing their training, the Air Ambassadors have now begun to take their training to their communities via tabling at community events, and via the co-creation of a short video piece documenting their journey uncovering the importance of air quality and environmental justice. They will culminate their experience by conducting four “Clear the Air” workshops to educate their own communities on air quality. In this presentation, Air Ambassadors will present their experience and the lessons learned, in order to facilitate and spread air quality awareness and advocacy to District communities. In this presentation, we will present our experience and the lessons learned, in order to facilitate the implementation of this model in other communities.