popular education methods.
Nicole Fabricant (associate professor of anthropology), Greg Sawtell (lead organizer at United Workers) and Meleny Thomas (youth organizer at United Workers) teamed with Albina Joy, environmental science teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School, to create a multi-year participatory action research project on environmental injustice in Curtis Bay, which has a long history of industrial development and subsequent toxicity. The research project uses qualitative research and local sources of secondary data as vehicles for change. Through intensive meetings with high school students (five days a week for one hour) we forge student-led and student-based research teams on food access/availability, trash and pollution, crime/safety, and vacant housing. Towson University offers three credits to each Benjamin Franklin High School for participating in this year-long course.
Every academic year, youth come up with the research questions, methodology, and collect data that will advance the work for Fair Development in their community.
curriculum
We are building a new sector of community-owned and community-created development in Baltimore City that is centered around our basic needs and a belief in our power to solve problems collectively. Our Fair Development sector will place land, homes and resources - as well as the development process - in the hands of residents. In order to build the foundation for this Fair Development Future - we need to create a mix of tools and education both old and new - to develop leaders equipped to build out this new sector. We envision this curriculum as beginning a process of identifying the core concepts, skills, and practices we will all need to lift up, grow, and sustain our new economic and development sector.
Our curriculum has evolved out of United Workers curriculum on Human Rights
For more on Fair Development, read the report by United Workers
For more on Zero Waste, read the report