Documentation Fellow

by stevie | February 16, 2021 16:52

February 16, 2021 16:52 | Tags: documentation , air-quality , jobs , fellows , fellowship , community-organizing , fellow

• Starting: February 28, 2021 or ASAP
• Commitment Period: roughly 15-20 hours per month March-November
• Fellowship Stipend: $3,000.00 in total over the commitment period.
• Where: This fellowship is open to anyone and is remote; phone in team meetings will be held on Los Angeles PST and be grounded in community efforts in Val Verde, California.
• Requirements for the position: This fellowship will require remote work abilities, comfortable working across diverse stakeholder groups, and strong communication skills (verbal/written). Bilingual speaking and writing abilities in Spanish/English is strongly preferred.

About Public Lab:
Public Lab is a community, supported by a 501(c)(3) non-profit, that develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible do-it-yourself techniques, Public Lab creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively reimagine the human relationship with the environment.

A large landfill has been operating in the community of Val Verde in Los Angeles County, CA since 1972. Throughout the history of the landfill’s operation, there has never been a local ambient air testing program, despite grievances from the community and multiple violations issued by South Coast Air Quality Management. In the community’s fight against the landfill, residents have conducted preliminary air monitoring results, collected, shared, documented and reported their concerns to every accessible body including to government agencies and the company itself.

They have appealed permits and reported civil rights violations to the State of California. Still no changes or legal enforcement have come from this work and now the County and the City are suing each other, further complicating the need for meaningful regulation and data. Having long since established local networks and organizations of support to address these challenges, only one or two people locally are versed in the pilot monitoring program.

The data has been challenging to obtain and communicate, and community members who are conducting the air quality monitoring do not have proper support to continue the work. The intent behind this project is to share existing knowledge regarding the landfill air quality issue with more local community members, train them on how to conduct ongoing monitoring and have an air quality monitoring program that can be effectively shared to the broader Val Verde community.

The Documentation Fellow position will work remotely with the Val Verde based community on the air quality monitoring project. This position will support the documentation efforts of the team to obtain, catalog, document, and creatively share progress on the collective project efforts.

• Regularly meet with the team, working closely with the Community Organizer, to elevate the project team’s questions and progress to the Public Lab.org website. You will support the team in making sure the project data is shared in a centralized location on Public Lab.

• Design and publish the project page, ensuring that the information is high quality, free of jargon, and visually appealing to reach others who may also be facing air quality environmental concerns. With emphasis on sharing air quality monitoring data to grow the body of evidence on existing air quality and related community concerns. This will require being able to both review and write…