In 2024, the City of Cleveland Mayor’s Office of Sustainability retained Sustainable Economies Consulting to facilitate community engagement for their Climate Action Plan Update. The consulting team was tasked with engaging communities who had been previously underrepresented in past engagement processes. The team sought to integrate “co-creation” principles throughout the community engagement process. Co-creation is a collaborative approach where community partners have more direct input on the design and structure of the process as well as the outcomes.

According to a presentation by the EPA on their Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, meaningful co-creation also means:

• People have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may affect their environment and/or health
• Decision makers will seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected

Working collaboratively with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, the consulting team designed six community roundtables. The roundtables focused on:

• Cleveland residents previously underrepresented in past Climate Actin Plan engagement, and
• Cleveland neighborhoods ranking high on the climate vulnerability index

More information on the community engagement process can be found in this blog post, “How Co-Creation Drives Inclusive Community Engagement.” There were a total of 109 roundtable participants and the team collected 616 comments. The team is grateful for support from many community partners, who helped organize the roundtables and recruit participants. These partners include:

• Brian Siggers at Ohio Environmental Council
• Jesús Sanchez and Camila Fox González at Young Latino Network
• Ms. Toni Johnson at H.E.A.L. Buckeye
• Whitnye Long Jones at Organic Connects
• Jamel Rahkeera at Village Family Farms
• Erika Hood at SYATT

Also with significant collaboration and support from the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and community partners, the team hosted four educational workshops to raise awareness of the climate action plan. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability then had a multi-step process to ensure that public feedback was incorporated into the final climate action plan.