Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

By Donna Drewes and Randall Solomon
Sustainable Jersey

As Pam Mount presented the overflowing bag of fuzzy, ripe peaches to Stephen Shen, the Minister of the Environmental Protection Administration of Taiwan (EPAT) and his delegation, a big grin spread across our faces. This was a really great day.

It had only been two months earlier when our roles were reversed, and we were the ones touring Taiwan to develop collaborative partnerships. Although we hoped that our new friends in Taiwan would visit New Jersey, we were surprised when we got a call one month later that Minister Shen didn’t want to waste time. The Taiwanese EPAT delegation planned to visit New Jersey on August 9th and hoped we would set up meetings with communities and stakeholders involved with Sustainable Jersey.

We put together a jam-packed, one day New Jersey tour that included a selection of short meetings with Sustainable Jersey’s friends and community leaders. As the meetings progressed, we realized that we were learning a lot as well. Listening to the program participants tell their Sustainable Jersey stories was powerful. Sustainable Jersey is making an impact.

Caroline Ehrlich, Chief of Staff for Woodbridge Township, met with the delegation first and candidly told the group about her Sustainable Jersey experience. She said that when she first approached Mayor John McCormac to see if she could register and work toward Sustainable Jersey certification for the town, he said that it was fine, as long as Woodbridge Township “won” or got the most points in the certification.

Carol explained to the Taiwanese delegation that the Sustainable Jersey certification action list became her “bible.” She spent months visiting the Sustainable Jersey web site and clicking on the actions to learn what she needed to do.

She told Minister Shen that Sustainable Jersey allowed a regular person like her to become a sustainability expert that was able to lead a team of community members and municipal staff to achieve certification. She recounted how she quickly became passionate about the green initiatives and shared her goals with everyone around her. By involving a cross-section of people that live and work in Woodbridge, she was able to gain the support and build the workforce she needed to get sustainable programs and initiatives done.

Hearing this story was especially inspiring because Woodbridge Township didn’t just get certified. Carol and her team have earned the Sustainable Jersey Sustainability Champion award for the past two years after securing the most points in the certification program – just as Mayor McCormac had requested.

A few years ago, Woodbridge Township may not have immediately come to mind as a green leader in New Jersey. Sustainable Jersey has helped quantify what each town in New Jersey is doing to become more sustainable. Now Woodbridge is at the top of the list.

The Taiwanese delegation proceeded to meet with the Sustainable Jersey certified communities of Lawrence and West Windsor Townships. Meetings with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and New Jersey Board of Public Utilities were very productive.

The day finished with an inspiring tour of the Ben Franklin Elementary School which signed a sister school agreement with JianAn Elementary School in New Taipei, Taiwan to collaborate on sustainable education initiatives.

On hand to welcome the Taiwanese visitors were U.S. Representative Rush Holt (Democrat-Hopewell Township), Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, and officials of Lawrence Township’s school board and administrators, teachers, staff and students.

Minister Shen and his delegation seemed very pleased with the day. As he accepted the bag of peaches, he said, “the Sustainable Jersey program is admirable. New Jersey and Taiwan are similar places with a lot to learn from each other.”

In the short-term, we hope to apply the Sustainable Jersey certification with pilot Taiwanese communities and develop a sustainable schools certification.

Sustainable Jersey has had a whirlwind exchange with Taiwan and learned so much. But we are equally inspired after listening to the stories of our friends and communities in New Jersey.

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Join us for the third annual Sustainable Jersey awards luncheon at the New Jersey League of Municipalities annual conference on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. For information visit the Sustainable Jersey events page.

For more about Sustainable Jersey: Website | Facebook

Photos courtesy of Ideal Image Consulting

Sustainable Jersey staff and partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog.

Building a Sustainable Future for New Jersey’s
Coastal and Ocean Economy

Friday, February 11, 2011
8:30 am – 1:30 pm
Monmouth University
Wilson Hall Auditorium

Although it may seem a long way away, February will be here before we know it, so save this important date on your calendar now.

“Building a Sustainable Future for New Jersey’s Coastal and Ocean Economy” will bring together leaders from business and industry, communities, state and local goverments, academia, and nonprofits to explore a sustainable future in light of rising sea levels, climate change, ecosystem damage, aging infrastructure, budget constraints and shifting priorities.

There will be roundtable presentations on travel and tourism, fisheries, ecosystem services, recreation, renewable energy and maritime trades, as well as a town hall dialogue moderated by NJN’s Michael Aron. The keynote speaker is the Dodge Foundation’s President and CEO Chris Daggett and the luncheon speaker is Caren Franzini, the CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

For more information, please email:
Margot Walsh (mwalshjspf@gmail.com) or
Tony MacDonald (amacdona@monmouth.edu)

Host Organizations:

Edgewood Properties
Jersey Shore Partnership Foundation
New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Rutgers Climate and Social Policy Initiative
Stevens Institute of Technology
Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute

Image: The Nature Conservancy of New Jersey

David Grant, President and CEO

I had one of those trains of thought last week that come, at least to me, in repose.  It began with pride in a colleague and ended with pride as a father, and along the way, I was reminded about something I have treasured in my time at Dodge.

I was on vacation on the island of Vieques, which is as quiet and laid back as northern New Jersey is energized and in your face.  I took a break from reading and checked the Dodge website – not to work, mind you, just to see what was going on.

It was the day of my colleague Wendy Liscow’s blog entry, “When I Put On These Shoes,” which I read admiringly.  As part of Leadership New Jersey’s Class of 2010, Wendy had spent a day in the shoes of “Miriam,” a harried mother and victim of domestic abuse, and through this simulation, she glimpsed what it is like to negotiate the health care and social service systems as a poor, battered, and frightened woman.

As Wendy pointed out, no day-long exercise can approximate the full realities of Miriam’s life, but it was an admirable exercise in empathy.  I got to thinking about empathy, and where it comes from, and how we can create more of it.

Ironically, I had put down my book for a few minutes to take a break from it.  I was deep into Colum McCann’s novel, Let the Great World Spin.  (If you stop here and order the book, I will have done you a favor today.) I don’t usually take book jacket blurbs too seriously, but I think Dave Eggers got it right on this one when he wrote, “There is so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”

I had in fact been feeling overwhelmed: fighting back tears over a mother who had lost her son in Vietnam; feeling confused and unsettled as an Irish monk in the Bronx struggled with his vow of chastity; holding my breath as a man walked out onto a tight rope suspended between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  (Yes, the actual walk of Philippe Petit in August, 1974 provides the back drop for all the action.)  I thought to myself if you don’t have a Leadership New Jersey to create an experience of empathy for you, reading literature ain’t bad.

But what comes of all this?  Experiential education works, and great art works, to expand our sympathies and understanding.  But what changes as a result?

Here my train of thought took me to the other part of my bookshelf I love – the much nerdier section of books on organizational development and change.  The latest page-turner there is called Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath, and the subtitle is How to Change Things When Change is Hard. It doesn’t have the prostitutes and judges and cops and man on a wire a hundred and ten floors off the ground of Let the Great World Spin, but it has its own excitement if you’re in the change business.

And it has its own metaphor for how change happens: a human rider on an elephant going down a path.  The Rider is the analytical part of our brain – the part of us that plans for the future and thinks through all the alternatives.  The Elephant is the emotional part of our brain – the part that loves routines and familiarity and comfort.

It’s an effective metaphor right off the bat because it reminds us who is in charge.  We can know intellectually what we should be doing and pull on the reins, but if the Elephant decides to go in another direction, that’s the way we are going.  It’s what happens when we decide we should lose a few pounds but there are Oreos in the house.

You can see both the dangers and the possibilities inherent in this metaphor.  The Rider can think long-term, but can also get overwhelmed by choices and spin his or her wheels through endless analysis.  The Elephant is not thinking long-term – in fact is not thinking at all.  It tends to go for instant gratification if it is there for the taking, or it hangs out in the comfort of the status quo.

But the Elephant is what moves us – literally and figuratively.  It is motivated by love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty.  It is motivated by empathy.  It can provide the energy if the Rider can provide the direction.

So the Heaths simplify the complicated terrain of change – social change or personal change – down to three simple suggestions: 1) Direct the Rider; provide crystal clear directions to a destination we can understand; 2) Motivate the Elephant; engage people’s emotional sides; and 3) Shape the Path; do what you can to create the conditions for change, given the situation you are operating in.

Not a bad way to think about what empathy does – it motivates the elephant.  No wonder Leadership New Jersey engages the emotions of Wendy and the rest of her LNJ cohort: because changing the lives of the Miriams of the world is hard indeed.

I think this is what the “phil” in philanthropy is about, too – the emotional commitment that leads us to tackle things that are hard. What a daily privilege that has been for me here at Dodge since the fall of 1998.  It is why we have been such a steadfast supporter of the arts, and of experiential education.  It is why we tell stories, here on the blog and elsewhere. It is why, when we talk about a more Creative and Sustainable New Jersey, we don’t just analyze the problems as the Rider; we try to motivate the elephant by envisioning, and feeling, what is possible.

One final thought finished my musings on empathy.  Dodge co-sponsored a conference in 2000 called Learning and the Arts, where one researcher reported she had found only one significant correlation between life experiences and observed empathetic behavior – many of the “high empathy” people had had experience in drama.

I won’t have my first-hand daily experience with empathy at Dodge after June, but I look forward to a vicarious one over the next three years. My younger son Rob was just accepted into the MFA program at Yale School of Drama, as an actor.

Today is the final installment of the New Jersey Learns series, in which we have had the pleasure of hearing from teachers and community leaders who have completed The Cloud Institute’s unique leadership training program “New Jersey Learns: Schools and Communities Learn Together for a Sustainable Future.”

We give our thanks to the contributors to this series:
Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith
Winnie Fatton of Sustainable Jersey
Caitlin Wargo of Far Hills Country Day School
David Hallowell of Sustainable West Milford

As well as to Jaimie Cloud and Leah Mayor of the Cloud Institute.

Today, we’re happy to hear from Angela Clerico of Banisch Associates, a community planning and design firm in Flemington, New Jersey, about her New Jersey Learns experience:

In a profession where the goal is to plan better communities it seemed to me that we were going about things the same way we had been for decades. Sure, over time the focus shifted away from sprawling communities and toward “smart growth” – building homes near major transportation corridors, protecting the environs. But, there had to be something more… a better way, still, to create more livable communities and communities that thrive, not just survive.

When I was introduced to the NJ Learns program, I was interested because I had an interest in the topic of sustainability. It has been called the largest social movement this planet has ever seen – only you don’t actually “see” it happening. Millions of people all over the world in town halls, school libraries, and community centers are getting together to implement their visions for change. They’re organizing events to inform their local officials and the community-at-large. It’s a movement alright, and I wanted to learn how to better communicate the concept. I learned more than that!

Participating in the NJ Learns program, I had many “aha” moments. From learning how to teach the concepts about and the data for sustainability to a better understanding of how people perceive sustainability and their concerns for changing behavior, I could see how the shift would not only have to come from the community, but that the local leaders would have to set the example. The lone planner in a room full of educators, I began to see how educating my audience would be a little different since I am not a teacher, per se, but that it could be just as powerful. Now, every time I walk into a planning board meeting the topic of sustainability is on my mind and is communicated through my work.

The hard part is that it is a process and results may not be seen overnight. In the NJ Learns program, we participated in a simulation where, in groups, we were fishermen. We had to fish the ocean in a manner that, with an average replenishment rate, the ocean would remain sustainable. The ocean would continue to produce fish for us to catch to maintain our livelihoods. The problem, however, was the same all around: everyone “crashed the system” by overfishing. It took many of the groups several tries, if not more, to figure out that we just had to make it through the down times in order to remain sustainable. Instead, different mentalities took over. “Everyone else was taking more than their share, so I should too!” “I could see this was not going to work, so I jumped on the bandwagon.”

These mentalities translate right into our communities and it is hard for residents and local leaders to see the benefits, when it is such incremental change.

There are a few popular phrases in local government that tend to set the tone for creating sustainability strategies. One is “How can we get the biggest bang for our buck?” Local leaders want to do right by their taxpayers, providing quality of life, but they don’t want to enforce practices that may cost money. The other is “Let’s look at the low-hanging fruit.” This is a good strategy for getting something off the ground. It is a quick way to get a project done and shows that the local leadership is doing something for the community. It also provides momentum for a larger-scale project that may take more time. However, it often doesn’t take into account the bigger picture.

The topic of sustainability is a tough web to untangle and make sense of. Land use planners are typically the ones to break down these issues and present them in a meaningful way so that local leaders can make decisions. Planners guide the development of ordinances, policies, and regulations, at the same time, supporting community-wide campaigns for residents to become more aware of how they can green their lifestyles. If all planners were speaking a shared language of planning for sustainability, we could create a paradigm shift toward sustainability and livable communities from the top-down and the bottom-up.

My NJ Learns training and practice of the program continues every day I am working to create more livable communities in NJ.

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Thanks again to Angela and to all of the New Jersey Learns guest bloggers.

New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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Dodge has teamed-up with the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education for a Monday blog series that is sure to help beat the February blues! The reflections and stories from K-12 teachers and community leaders who have completed Cloud’s unique leadership training program “New Jersey Learns: Schools and Communities Learn Together for a Sustainable Future” will show that it is possible to lead the shift to a sustainable future.

From innovative instructional partnerships to curriculum design, NJ Learns is building capacity among educators, parents, community members, and, ultimately, our youth, to “live responsibly and well within the means of nature.” Join us for this February journey – and join Cloud for the learning journey to understand the “core content, competencies and habits of mind” to educate for sustainability (applications for the next NJ Learns training are due on Feb. 19 – see the Dodge homepage for details).

Kicking off this series is Stacey Kennealy, the Director of Sustainability for GreenFaith, New Jersey’s interfaith coalition for the environment. Stacey also directs the GreenFaith Certification Program.

GreenFaith’s mission is to inspire, educate and mobilize people of diverse religious backgrounds for environmental leadership.

By Stacey Kennealy

I live, eat, and breathe sustainability. As sustainability guru at GreenFaith, it’s my daily work, and what I believe to be my life’s work. I can talk ad nauseam about environmental problems, and I know every “green” solution under the sun. And those two areas—problems and solutions—used to be the central focus of every workshop and class that I led.

After enough of these workshops, I began to sense that I was missing something. The reactions from the audience consistently suggested this—and were completely different reactions from those experienced when GreenFaith’s Executive Director, an Episcopal priest, was at the helm. With me, the audience would walk away informed, mildly satisfied and quickly forgetting what they heard; after an environmental sermon, they’d walk away deeply affected, and with energy and motivation.

This left me seriously questioning my teaching style. Was being ordained a prerequisite for changing people’s hearts and minds? Then the NJ Learns opportunity came across my desk. As I filled out the application, where I was asked to describe my perceptions of “Educating for Sustainability,” I sensed the same uneasy feeling I did after my workshops. I realized that I wasn’t quite sure what “Educating for Sustainability” meant. Did I really know how to educate for this issue that I cared so deeply about?

A New York Times article last week, “Is There an Ecological Unconscious?” discusses the idea that each of us is experiencing “solastalgia”—a subconscious homesickness as our home, earth, is being degraded—and other experts report that “nature deficit disorder” is rampant in our society, particularly among children. These ideas capture my uneasy feeling: environmental problems are just an indicator of larger, much more deeply rooted issues. No amount of “greening” advice will cure us of these maladies. Educating for Sustainability must dive as deep as these maladies run.

Artwork by Kate MacDowell; photograph by Dan Kvitka for The New York Times

This concept was my NJ Learns “aha” moment. I realized that it takes a complete reworking of our mindset to change our wildly destructive consumption habits. “The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that we used when we created them”—wise words of Albert Einstein, and the driving mission of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. NJ Learns not only awakened me to this idea, but provided me with the tools and community support to help make these powerful theories a reality.

Do I use the Cloud Institute material in my presentations now? Yes. But the training gave me so much more. It shifted my own thinking to such an extent that everything I do is reflective of the ideas we learned. Every time I craft a document, build a curriculum, give a talk, or guide a congregation or school through the greening process, I educate for sustainability and not just about problems and solutions.

The most significant result was the way in which the training influenced the design of GreenFaith’s Certification Program—the first interfaith environmental certification program for houses of worship in the country. Similar to other certification programs like Sustainable Jersey or LEED, our Program provides a process and set of requirements that houses of worship must fulfill to be designated as leaders. Many of the concepts learned in the NJ Learns training—backwards design, systems thinking, and viewing sustainability as an opportunity to tell a different, more powerful story—laid the foundation for the overall process that GreenFaith asks institutions to follow. As Jaimie Cloud (founder of the Cloud Institute says, “It’s not sustain guaranteed, but sustainable.” The GreenFaith Certification Program embodies this vision, by teaching institutions how to create the conditions for sustainability that will guide them well into the future.

The first progress reports from these institutions arrived a few months ago. We are on target for our goal: environmental stewardship is becoming a living, breathing program at these institutions, with congregations taking on sustainability as a way of life, similar to alleviating poverty. This is what Educating for Sustainability is all about; if we can shift people’s underlying thinking about environmental issues, they will walk away empowered, more easily making the choices that will help to redeem this planet.

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New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities. Want to participate? 2010-2011 NJ Learns applications are due on February 19th. Apply now.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook