Historically, Groundwork Somerville, founded in 2001, has engaged in environmental sustainability efforts that address the Somerville community as a whole – school yard gardens at every elementary school in the city, participating in an urban tree survey as well as tree plantings in environmental justice communities. The Green Team program at Groundwork Somerville (GWS) began in 2007 as a youth jobs program, and has since grown to be a youth driven leadership and organizing program. The Green Team program employs 8-10 youth organizers at 10 hours per week during the school year. Youth participate in youth-led organizing campaigns, leadership development, city wide advocacy around green and open space, and outreach at community events. Youth also travel to and present at relevant environmental conferences. In 2008, Groundwork Somerville began participating in the Community Corridor Coalition (CCP), an effort to address the impacts of the Green Line Extension that is proposed for Somerville. For 2011-2012, GWS aims to build a program that fosters youth leadership development and focuses on a specific project to address racial and health equity issues in Somerville. With this project, Groundwork Somerville will provide leadership development, training, and stipend support to at least 6 youth leaders as well as 2 community members from environmental justice communities that seek to address racial and health equity issues in their neighborhoods. These youth and members leaders will provide the base of an effort to address health equity issues in Somerville through a bottom-up, resident-led approach. In order to do this, Groundwork has been consulting and working with a number of organizations in the Boston area that are engaged in similar work including Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center’s health/racial equity group as well as the T Riders Union and Alternatives for Community and Environment. To be clear, this is a shift for Groundwork which has historically focused on community-wide efforts to promote environmental sustainability without directly tackling the racial and economic inequalities that exist in our community. This funding will allow Groundwork to deepen our commitment to racial, economic, and environmental justice as it relates to the health and the environment in Somerville. The Groundwork Somerville Green Team, working in partnership with other local organizations, will seek to develop a group of resident leaders who will participate in the park planning and re-development process so that recent immigrants, English language learners, low-income people and people of color have access to the decisions that are being made about their community. We will work with the Welcome Project and their Liaison Interpreter Program of Somerville, a youth-led interpreter training program, to provide interpretation at trainings and community meetings as well as assisting with translation and interpretation during community outreach. This past spring, the Groundwork Somerville Green Team participated in outreach for a community design meeting related to North Street Park in the Clarendon Hill area of West Somerville. As a result of this Groundwork has been included as a partner on the landscape agriculture firm’s design proposal for North Street Park to engage resident participation in future meetings. Beyond this, a youth-led presentation to the Parks and Green Space Committee of the Board of Alderman led to an official city resolution that Groundwork Somerville participate in community outreach for future parks re-development plans As a result, Groundwork Somerville and the Green Team are in an ideal position to engage residents in the park planning and re-development process. Though there are many areas to examine and work on, the project goals are to organize residents around key city parks in the Environmental Justice communities of Clarendon Hill and East Somerville including North Street Park, Harris Park, and Otis Park. North Street Park is located next to the Clarendon Hill State Public Housing Development and is scheduled for re-development in the coming year. In addition to this, Harris Park and Otis Park represent significant environmental and public health risks to park users (especially families and children) as they are located directly next to major highways including Route 93 and McGrath Highway, where air quality is poor. Recent studies of fine particulate matter conducted in Somerville and Boston link mobile sources of pollution with excess deaths due to heart attacks and lung cancer and with impaired lung development of children. The project will accomplish these goals by completing the following objectives: 2. Develop a series of workshops for a core group of community members that focus on identifying health disparities and learning principles and practices of health equity including workshops on air quality, transportation, racial justice, green and open space, power mapping key city and state decision makers, and community organizing. 2. Implement the workshops using multilingual strategies to bring community members together to strategize about how to take action to reduce health disparities. 3. Create a strategy for reducing health disparities by engaging with City officials and representatives around park redevelopment and other issues of environmental health and equity. 4. Take action (i.e meet with city officials, hold rallies and press conferences, outreach to community members, etc.) to implement the strategy and move toward health equity.