Antioch New England's Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Launches New Partnerships With Activist Groups

This Fall, two classes of Antioch New England's Environmental Studies
students will work on a new case study evaluation project for the New
England Grassroots Environmental Fund--a major player in the grassroots
environmental movement in the region. Based in Montpelier, Vermont,
NEGEF provides training and small grants to community-based
environmental activist initiatives that are frequently overlooked by
traditional funders.

According NEGEF Executive Director Cheryl King Fischer, "We've long
felt the need for a comprehensive evaluation of the groups we support.
Having this information at our finger tips in a well-organized way
would help us make more effective funding decisions, help publicize the
victories and successes of regional citizen action groups, and make an
even stronger case for philanthropic support for the Fund. We just
haven't had the staff time to devote to this project." Notes Fischer,
"For us, it just seemed like a natural next step to turn our contacts
with Antioch New England's new Environmental Advocacy and Organizing
Program into an active partnership." Both Steve Chase, the founding
director of Antioch's Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program,
and Abigail Abrash Walton, the newest faculty member in the program,
quickly agreed with Fischer.

To carry out this project, Antioch graduate students in Chase's
"Patterns of Environmental Activism" class and Abrash Walton's
"Supervised Advocacy Fieldwork Clinic" will each be assigned a
community organization to evaluate. Each evaluation will involve an
orientation by NEGEF staff, site visits, interviews, document analysis,
and other kinds of research to develop a better understanding of how
NEGEF's financial and moral support have made a difference in the
grassroots environmental group's work and if the group has made a
difference in their community's progress towards sustainability. Each
student's findings will be written up for Chase, Abrash Walton, and the
NEGEF staff, who will then analyze the evaluation findings. Chase and
Abrash Walton will present their initial conclusions at a Funders
Briefing for NEGEF on December 10th in Boston.

Through this partnership, says Abrash Walton, "NEGEF gets important
research done that is beyond the resources of its current staff and
Antioch students take part in a practical, real world research project
that can directly help the grassroots environmental movement in New
England." As Chase adds, "This partnership project allows our students
to make a genuine contribution to the environmental movement now, not
just prepare for making a contribution after they graduate. Indeed,
that is a hallmark of Antioch's new Environmental Advocacy and
Organizing Program. We see such partnerships as our way of fulfilling
Antioch New England's mission to support scholarship, activism, and
service."

The Antioch/NEGEF partnership is just one of the university-community
partnerships being developed by the Environmental Advocacy and
Organizing Program, currently the only Environmental Studies master's
program in the country focused on training public interest advocates
and grassroots organizers working on issues of environmental
protection, corporate accountability, and social justice. Starting this
September, the Antioch New England Graduate School's Department of
Environmental Studies launched an Advocacy Clinic project for second
year students under Abrash Walton's supervision. This project is
designed to offer practical advocacy work on behalf of clinic clients
-- organizations at the local, state, national or international level
working for environmental protection, corporate accountability, and
social justice.  The clinical program provides Antioch masters students
with the opportunity to work in teams with these organizations on
research for reports, public policy critiques and analysis, strategic
planning, issue and corporate campaign materials, and on other
initiatives related to proposed legislation and administrative
decisions affecting the environment. The Clinic class is open to all
Environmental Studies students, but it is a requirement for the
Environmental Advocacy and Organizing students.

Antioch New England's Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program was
launched with its first cohort of students in Fall 2002. The other
programs offered by the Department of Environmental Studies include
Conservation Biology; Environmental Education; Science Teacher
Certification; and Resource Management and Administration. The
Department itself is one of the oldest and largest Environmental
Studies graduate programs in the country.

For more information, contact:

Steve Chase
Program Director
Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies
Antioch New England Graduate School
40 Avon Street
Keene, NH 03431
603-357-3122  x298
603-357-0718 (fax)
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For information about the Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program:
http://esdept.antiochne.edu/advocacy/default.html

For information about ANE's Environmental Studies Department:
http://esdept.antiochne.edu/