Environmental Leadership through Campus Project Teams: Green Structures for Linking Students, Faculty, and Staff

Traditional leadership models and organizational structures are an impediment to the full realization of the mission of most campus sustainability offices. At the University of South Carolina, applying green values across the campus has gone beyond transforming the curriculum and the daily lives of students, faculty, and staff. Recent efforts have focused on transforming the leadership, structure, and culture of campus sustainability organizations themselves, following green principles of decentralization and grassroots democracy and incorporating an extensive leadership training program based on the social change model of leadership development (Komives & Wagner, 2009). The result has been the creation of Sustainable Carolina, a campus sustainability organization that provides a model of a “green structure” for the kind of environmental leadership and organizational culture ultimately necessary for a sustainable campus and society

Degrowth for transformational alternatives as radical social work practice

Historically, and in modern times, social workers have been culpable in perpetuating the very systems of oppression that we seek to eliminate. This happens as we are part of cultures and economies that operate out of the growth ideology. Acting in accordance with the growth ideology does not lead to the outcomes that we strive for as professional social workers. Rather, the growth ideology results in growing social inequalities and increasing ecological injustices around the world. Social work can, instead, embrace an ecosocial lens and promote degrowth approaches for transformational alternatives. Rather than reinforcing the existing systems of injustice and oppression, radical social work can take an activist role and bring about urgent and radical changes to promote ecological justice through social and ecological well-being. Examples from radical social work in local and international communities demonstrate the possibility of degrowth for transformational alternatives as radical social work practice

From Snapshot to Civic Action: A Photovoice Facilitator’s Manual

This photovoice facilitator’s manual is a product developed to help research facilitators design and implement a comprehensive photovoice research project in collaboration with community stakeholders. Photovoice is a popular technique used for community-based participatory research (1). Photovoice uses a combination of photography and critical group discussions to engage participants as experts in the analysis of research topics and then use this knowledge for social action. This manual was developed after nine months of design and implementation of a photovoice project entitled “From Snapshot to Civic Action Photovoice Project,” which was conducted in Columbia, South Carolina during the summer and fall of 2010. This manual includes information on how to design, plan and implement a photovoice project, as well as helpful tips and resource documents that could be used as examples for other photovoice projects.This manual is intended to be used by academic or community researchers attempting to utilizethe photovoice technique as a way to engage communities in community-based participatoryresearch. It was designed to help researchers think through all aspects of a photovoice project design to promote successful implementation. This manual is designed to be generalizable and applicable to any community setting or population with any research topic. Researchers will benefit from this manual’s thorough discussion of each step of a photovoice project from design and implementation to analysis and dissemination of findings. The potential audiences for this manual include academic as well as non-academic research facilitators who are new to the photovoice process, or those who have experience with photovoice but would like to refine their process

Transforming the profession: Social workers’ expanding response to the environmental crisis

With mounting scientific evidence about the global environmental crisis, an urgent call to action exists promoting sustainable environmental practices that enhance the wellbeing of humans and the ecological systems in which they live (Besthorn 2002, 2013, Coates 2005, CSDH 2008, Dewane 2011, Dominelli 2012, Gray, Coates and Herrington 2013, Hoff and McNutt 1994, Humphreys and Rogge 2000, IPCC 2007, Weber 2012). As ecological degradation occurs, it disproportionately affects vulnerable, marginalized, and oppressed client populations, making it an issue of social and ecological injustice (Besthorn 2013, Bullard 1994, Coates 2003, Dominelli 2012, Hoff and Rogge 1996, Norton, Holguin and Manos 2013, McKinnon 2008, Weber 2012, Zapf 2009). Due to this, social and ecological justice issues related to the environmental crisis are increasingly becoming of great concern to social workers, as evidenced in national and international professional agendas (e.g., The Committee on Environmental Justice for the Council on Social Work Education in the United States of America (USA); the tenth Grand Challenge of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, ‘Create Social Responses to a Changing Environment’, see Kemp and Palinkas 2015; the third agenda item in the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development: Commitments to Action, ‘Working Toward Environmental Sustainability’, see IASSW, ICSW, and IFSW 2012)

Ecosocial work and social change in community practice

This special issue entitled, “Ecosocial Work and Social Change in Community Practice,” focuses on an array of contexts, policies, practices, and challenges as well as successes related to an emerging vision for ecosocial work. Ecosocial work is social work, with all its depth and breadth, but it approaches the analysis of social problems, issues, and concerns with an ecosocial paradigm or lens, rather than an anthropocentric lens (Matthies & Närhi, 2016). Thus, ecosocial work is not a specialty within social work, rather all social work can, and we argue should, be ecosocial work

Establishing a professional career that addresses the environmental crisis

Some of you may be wondering how you could focus your future social work career on environmental issues. Others may not yet see the connection between environmental issues and social work; I hope to clarify this for you in this essay. Wherever you are, it’s a great place to start, and I’m glad you are pursuing a professional career in social work

Social Work Promoting Community and Environmental Sustainability: A Workbook for Social Work Practitioners and Educators (Volume 1)

Incredible work is being done all over the world by social workers addressing issues at the nexusof community and environmental sustainability. Whether you are a longtime supporter of socialworkers investing in social and environmental sustainability work, or you are new and curiousabout the topic, we hope this resource will inspire and equip you. It is formatted as a workbook,with short lessons accompanied by exercises that help you apply the lessons theoretically and inyour own practice.This book is intended as a tool for international social work practitioners, students, and educatorsto help advance the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development theme of “workingtoward environmental sustainability”. The four themes of the Global Agenda are interwoven andall equally important; there is no way to help those in social, economic, and/or political perilwithout also looking at their physical environment, both natural and built. It is imperative that wesee the bigger picture and acknowledge these inextricable links as we engage in work at all levelsto address global injustices by promoting community and environmental sustainability

Using Photovoice to Develop a Grounded Theory of Socio-Environmental Attributes Influencing the Health of Community Environments

In this study, we used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) method, ‘photovoice’, to engage eighteen residents living in public housing in an examination of person-in-environment factors perceived to facilitate or hinder health and well-being. Five socio-environmental constructs emerged as key factors that contribute to the health and well-being of public-housing community environments: (i) place attachment, (ii) collective efficacy, (iii) social capital, (iv) community development and (v) collective action. Our findings provide a grounded person-in-environment theory for developing community-level interventions for promoting healthy community environments. Implications are discussed in terms of pathways for researchers and social work practitioners to develop and evaluate efforts aimed at enhancing health and well-being through community-level change

Applying a Social Justice Framework to Photovoice Research on Environmental Issues: A Comprehensive Literature Review

The need to address the environmental crisis is becoming more urgent. The consequences of unsustainable environmental practices are detrimental to the wellbeing of people globally as well as the environment. This is of concern to social workers as they recognize their role in responding to the environmental crisis and resulting social injustices. This literature review explores how the photovoice technique is being used in environmental research. By applying a social justice framework in a content analysis of the literature (N=17), we describe how photovoice is being used to promote environmental and social justice through its research processes and outcomes

Social work promoting community and environmental sustainability: A workbook for global social workers and educators (Volume 2)

Incredible work is being done all over the world by social workers addressing issues at the nexus of community and environmental sustainability. We hope this book will inspire you, whether you have been involved with these issues for decades, or you are new to and curious about the topic. This volume of the workbook series focuses primarily on Indigenous voices and knowledge, ecotherapeutic practices, and the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability in social work. As allies with Indigenous peoples, we aim for this workbook resource to make space for those working to decolonize, especially within the social work profession in education, research, and practice. This book is formatted as a workbook, with short lessons accompanied by exercises that help you apply the lessons theoretically and in your own practice. It is intended as a tool for international social work practitioners, students, and educators to help advance the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development theme of working toward environmental sustainability. We hope that by making this workbook available, we are enabling climate justice issues to be acknowledged as urgent and repositioned as central to social work in particular, and to life in general