Launched in August 2018, the CESBS Initiative seeks to shift narratives, mobilize resources, empower champions, and catalyze new norms in the building industry.
Communities of color and low-income communities bear the brunt of the impacts of unhealthy, energy inefficient, and disaster vulnerable buildings.
Yet, as one looks around the tables or worksites of the sustainable and regenerative building sector, there is little representation of the populations most impacted by our current proliferation of unsustainable, inefficient, sometimes unsafe, and often unhealthy building stock.
Whether it’s as policymakers, advocates, architects, project managers, contractors, or even in the construction workforce, the most impacted communities are underrepresented in the design, construction, and occupancy of sustainable, regenerative, healthy buildings.
Given the huge import of buildings in reducing the demand on energy production, plus the co-benefits that regenerative design has for building occupants and the community, not to mention the environment, all of this points to the fact that this gap in access/uptake must drastically change and quickly to build a big tent and universalize sustainable, regenerative buildings.
Our aim as the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization is to be a beacon of inspiration and transformation in centering equity in the sustainable building sector. In doing so, we can catalyze the building of a bigger, broader tent for the sustainable building movement, towards the betterment of the building users, the communities, the economy, and the planet.
In actualizing our commitment to ground our operations in the principles and practices of our environmental and climate justice platform, the NAACP will establish its headquarters as an exemplar for an Equitable Living Building Project. Through this effort, we will develop a replicable model of ensuring the centering of equity in all aspects of sustainable, healthy, safe, and regenerative buildings, including access, affordability, co-benefits, cultural resonance, inclusive decision-making, financing, service provision, procurement, contracting, employment, communications, monitoring and evaluation, and so much more.
Learn more about the Living Headquarters Design Competition.
Meet our project-level Equity Committee:
Jacqui Patterson
Environmental & Climate Justice Director
Patricia Pinchinat
Vice President for Human Resources & Deputy Chief Operating Officer
Sadie Harris
Executive Assistant to the Executive Office
India Artis
The Crisis Magazine Business Manager & Executive Assistant to the Board
Nancy Bailey
Member Services Relationship Manager
Mandy Lee
Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector Program Manager
Vanessa Mbonu
Digital Director
