EJ Ready Bus Tour & Roundtable
This month, Liberty Hill and the Resource Legacy Fund hosted the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the White House Environmental Justice Inter-Agency Council for its EJ Ready Bus Tour to connect environmental justice communities with federal climate investments and Justice40 funding opportunities.
The purpose of the tour was to center community voices by showcasing environmental justice community-led projects and grassroots efforts that can benefit from federal and state investments, share information about upcoming federal programs and initiatives with key environmental and social justice organizations, and facilitate dialogue and relationships between government and community partners.
The tour was joined by federal, state, and local agency participants who are leading the implementation of the unprecedented infrastructure and climate investment programs spearheaded by the Biden Administration and adopted by Congress.
The tour highlighted the work being led by frontline environmental justice communities and demonstrated the potential of meeting the Justice40 Initiative promise which, if leveraged, can achieve the goal of ensuring that communities that are overburdened by pollution and historic underinvestment benefit significantly and directly from this historic expenditure.
The tour also facilitated conversations between public agencies charged with the disbursement of these resources and community partners with the hope that we will increase overall support to access and mobilize public infrastructure resources.
The following day, EJ Ready also hosted the White House Council on Environmental Quality, a select group of federal agency representatives, and the philanthropic community for a conversation about the role philanthropy can play in meeting the promise of Justice40 and supporting the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
This was a unique opportunity for national and local funders to learn how certain foundations and intermediaries are advancing efforts to ensure historic levels of federal infrastructure and climate funding result in tangible improvements for our most impacted communities.
The gathering also included a presentation from Dr. Manuel Pastor of the USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute who shared findings from their pending report, A Call to Invest in Community Power.
