Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs

Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs is the fiscal sponsor of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, a core group in several California and national coalitions advocating for zero-emission freight systems to improve the health of residents living near ports and along freight routes; it also works to curb global warming. This renewal grant would allow the organization to continue its community organizing, policy advocacy, and coalition-building work in pursuit of emission reductions in and around the Los Angeles ports, and its work with a new Clean Freight Coalition linked to California’s global warming emission reduction program.

Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs is the fiscal sponsor for East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ), a long-time Hewlett grantee. EYCEJ has been a leading group in a coalition that has worked for years to limit the 710 freeway expansion planned to accommodate growth of goods movement through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, in an effort to curb increases in toxic, smog-forming, and global warming pollution from diesel trucks and trains. The Draft Environmental Impact Report (more than 10,000 pages long) has been published after five years of work, and despite requests for more time, the public has been given only 60 days to comment. In order to fully understand the report, respond in a meaningful way, produce materials to sway decision-makers to adopt the best scenarios contained in the draft report, and lay a comment record for possible future legal action, EYCEJ and its community-based coalition allies are seeking funds to hire technical consultants to help review and comment on the report.