We are committed to best practices in equity, accountability, and transparency. This commitment exists at all levels of the organization. Green Era deeply values the trust that has been placed in us. Our partners trust us to carry out joint projects, the community trusts our ability to create solutions that serve the environment and their own well-being, and donors trust us to use their funds responsibly to execute our mission.
100% of the partner entities that make up Green Era are Black- and POC-led. Green Era is inclusive, multi-racial, and multicultural. We are working to alleviate the impacts of poverty on our community, and our approach counters many of the primary forces that make and keep people poor. Green Era has committed to hiring locally, and from high-need populations, including those formerly incarcerated. We also commit to hiring at all skill levels; the initiative fosters opportunities for construction and permanent jobs as well as hundreds of contracting opportunities. Green Era will create lasting careers, build a local food economy on the South Side, and have an impact that endures long past the initial campus construction.
Located at 650 West 83rd Street, the Green Era Campus sits on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. On August 29, 1821, the first Treaty of Chicago was signed by representatives of the Council of the Three Fires the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi and Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass and Solomon Sibely for the United States. The 1833 Treaty of Chicago forced the migration of the Odawa, Potawatomi and Ojibwe to drastically smaller lands west of the Mississippi River. We acknowledge and honor where the land we steward comes from and embrace our commitment to Indigenous rights and racial justice. As an organization that seeks to offset a community legacy of inequity, we commit to continue our growth into an intentionally anti-bias, anti-racist organization that actively aligns with community priorities.
We intentionally partner with grassroots community organizations, Black and Indigenous leaders, and community members as co-creators of the future they want to see. Our Campus design process included five years of visioning meetings and partnership-building with the community. We collected and listened to feedback through a large-scale planning effort engaging more than 1,500 local stakeholders. When it comes to racial equity, we believe the proof is in the process.
We’re an open book. Green Era is open and direct about our organization, procedures, and outcomes. We believe this level of transparency is a requirement of any organization that works on behalf of community stakeholders and hope that it drives conversation, innovation, and positive change in our community. We are committed to engaging in ongoing efforts to openly convey information to the public about our mission, activities, and decision-making processes.
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