Partnership for the Goals:
Creating a Resilient and Thriving Community
through 17 Rooms

In early May 2022, more than one hundred regional leaders from different organizations came together as part of the region’s first Partnership for the Goals event. The two-day summit was a partnership between the Brookings Institution, the RPC’s East Central Florida Regional Resilience Collaborative, the Central Florida Foundation, the University of Central Florida’s Center for Global Environmental and Economic Opportunity, Orange County, the City of Orlando, and Florida For Good.

The theme of the Partnership for the Goals was to break from business-as-usual and leverage the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a tool for common conversation across government, philanthropic, academic, business, and civic society that often struggle to connect across professional vocabularies and organizational reference points.

The event yielded more than two dozen actionable ideas. Explore the top action items from each Room below.

Room by Room:
Actionable Ideas

Hold a Fiscal Cliff Summit.
Create a pipeline of readiness to employment for the underemployed and unemployed (e.g., due to lack of transport, childcare, GED attainment, and criminal background barriers).
Fund- Expand universal broadband access in certain regional areas of poverty.
Convene an asset-based community development initiative in specific pockets of poverty in the 8-county region.

Youth Think tank to create a Community Campaign for generational change like the truth campaign on healthy eating.
Find ways to use social media to inform and educate people– create recipe books, classes, and demonstrations for healthy eating.
Invest in small/local farms and food growers in areas identified as food deserts to double agricultural productivity (illustrate the true cost and value of food).

Monetize savings with clean energy to level the playing field, including equity into affordable and clean energy. Catalog existing resources to figure out gaps analysis. Partner with community groups.
Develop and institutionalize “ready for renewable” policies and building codes - solar, EV, battery storage, energy efficiency, and Wi-Fi.
Catalyze systemic change to transition by changing rules for underwriting loans to take into account saving of energy and improvements- more buying power for homes.

Create a marketing effort to leverage sustainable/green emerging industries that encourage economic diversification to comprehensively elevate the public attentiveness and awareness of the common good.
Pilot a program focusing on places and assets in location of innovation (green) cluster; invest in talent development within the local community and develop ad hoc “workforce development” matched with individual needs for economic mobility.
Change the political landscape - enable boldness/encourage political courage.

Convene community leaders and develop a steering committee that is representative of all sectors to establish goals and outcomes and data search on disparities. Reduce inequalities with the support of data, focus groups, and research.
Build and gather consistent baseline equity data for a regional equity profile that connects to other systems.
Create continuous funding sources and the acceleration of existing initiatives for BIPOC (marginalized) organizations for contributions toward leadership development.

Develop policymaking 101 courses on sustainability for educating the community and elected leaders- with the eventual goal of educational curriculum inclusion. This educational effort should be achieved through a specific partnership with a non-partisan trusted source and distribution method to teach “how to advocate” efficiently, how the government works, and how policies are made.
Develop an SDG dashboard- based on the resilience action plan.

Encourage climate pledges supporting regional GHG inventories, 54.3% emissions reduction science-based target, and high impact actions.
Create a standard resolution for cities, counties, and businesses from Orange County and use it throughout the region.
Encourage remote work days for vehicle miles traveled reduction.
Accelerate SolSmart Designation programs, 100% solar by 2030 pledge, establish a goal with Solar United Neighbors and Builders.

Promote best practices for biodiversity in all landscapes, sustainable agriculture, tree canopy, and storm water/LID.
Train (with template and model) HOA for paradigm shifts in more sustainable practices.
Create an East Central Florida Land Trust.
Promote living shorelines and other ecosystem services that provide natural security.
Connect more diverse human communities to natural environments utilizing tree canopy and other tools. Understand the amount of green space per capita.

Reduce human traffickin
Increase the understanding of ACEs in police work and other community efforts. Continue to ascend the “Creating a Resilient Community Network- Purposeful in the recruitment of sectors and representation, ambassadors, sustain leadership and quantum leadership.
Expand the communication strategy to make the network work more accessible and understandable.
Encourage more help from universities to undertake data analysis and research.

Our Current Work in a Partnership For the Goals

The R2C has engaged in agricultural projects across the East Central Florida Region.

The work centers around:

Food systems mapping
Partnering with small and local farms
Bringing investments to partners in order to grow operations.

The East Central Florida Region is no stranger to heat - especially in the summer time.

Heat and health are inextricably linked together.

Answering the regional call to work with heat and health together, rather than separately, in January 2023 the R2C...

Established a Technical Advisory Committee dedicated to Heat and Health.
Aims to develop a regional framework for action.

The R2C is furthering the work called for from the SDG 6 Room through projects like:

The Second Regional Greenhouse Gas Inventory which will continue efforts to evaluate data from water/wastewater treatment plants.
The Critical Assets - Waste Facilities project which is examining the regional waste system as a whole, including capacity and vulnerability, aiming to increase the rates of waste diversion throughout the system.
Working with partners to identify and prioritize conservation land for water retention.

The R2C is furthering the actionable ideas out of the SDG 9 Room by:

Secured funding through the Economic Development Administration to conduct an asset based inventory.
Utilizing the identified innovation clusters throughout the region to strengthen the related assets and community, amplifying economic output and community resilience.

Beginning in January of 2023, the R2C began working on a project that focuses on the waste system, hierarchy, and facilities throughout the region.

This project aims to understand through a bottom-up approach:

The best-practices from stakeholders on how to effectively increase rates of waste diversion and recycling.
The capacities and future expansion of available facilities, addressing the actionable ideas from the SDG 12 Room.

The R2C has furthered work under SDG 13 by:

Completed the region's first regional GHG inventory, verified by CDP.
Set a science-based emissions reduction target of 54.3% from the 2019 baseline.
Recorded business as usual forecasting and developed high impact action scenarios.
Developed a tool to capture momentum by partners around the region.
Building external support through formalized pledges, increasing innovation and collaboration, economic competitiveness which will reduce long term uncertainty.
Developing a regional integrated climate action plan.
Signed a regional letter of intent with SolSmart to accelerate solar installation in the region.
Conducting the second region-wide greenhouse gas inventory.

The R2C has worked on a variety of projects addressing SDGs 14 & 15 like:

Making 2023 the region's year of biodiversity.
Working with local land trusts to achieve conservation objectives.
Engaging with partners to establish consistent measures for open space, green space, and tree canopy cover.

The R2C has been an active participant in the Creating a Resilient Community Network (CRC). The CRC is a network to collaborate across sectors and communities to transform our region into one of prevention, healing, and resilience for all.

The R2C will align our work with the appropriate SDG and encourage to build our network. Develop new implementation and collaboration opportunities with the SDG community network.

Past Events

Benefits Cliff Summit

Thank you to those who joined us to gain an understanding of the Benefits Cliff and the impacts of the minimum wage increase on the most vulnerable. Employer assistance, tools, and ideas to avoid the cliff.

JOIN US

Fiscal Cliff Speakers

Ray Larsen, Heart of Florida United Way, www.HFUW.org
Dr. Brittany Birken, CED Director & Principal Adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, www.AtlantaFed.org
Alexis Tsoukalas, the Florida Policy Institute, www.FloridaPolicy.org
Annette Brown, Circle Leader, Poverty Solutions Group, www.PovertySolutionsGroup.org

Resources

Leap Fund's benefitscliff.com

UnitedForALICE.org

Federal Reserve Board of Atlanta CLIFF calculator - floridacliffdashboard.com

Post-Event Survey - https://forms.gle/MtZ3Bad6r7spxP3A8

Fleet Transition Series

The Alternative Fuel Life-Cycle Environmental and Economic Transportation (AFLEET) tool, developed by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities coalition network, estimates the environmental and economic costs and benefits of alternative fuel and advanced vehicles. Using simple inputs, AFLEET lets fleet managers estimate and compare petroleum use, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), air pollutant emissions, and cost of ownership for conventional and alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). These types of estimates and comparisons will assist in developing an informed fleet transition plan that further prepares our local governments to receive federal funding.

Resources

U.S Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center- https://afdc.energy.gov/tools

Inside the 17 Rooms

Links and Resources

Central Florida Foundation

East Central Florida Regional Resilience Collaborative (R2C)

City of Orlando

Orange County Government

University of Central Florida

Florida for Good

Brookings Institute

Steering Committee Kit

R2C Goals by UN SDGs

This document presents each of the R2C’s established goals identified in the Strategic Resilience Action Plan. These goals have been organized in accordance with each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals' relevance, enhancing and further guiding R2C efforts. Each goal listed also indicates the advisory committee from which it has been selected.

17 Rooms Concept

17 Rooms offers an efficient way of convening natural allies, ideally promoting enough familiarity to enable collaboration and enough diversity to spark new ideas and pathways to action led by organizations around the region. Each Room is a high-level working group.

Agenda

We cordially invite you to actively engage in 17 Rooms, a process for stimulating bottom-up awareness and cooperation across the many perspectives and interests that make our region thrive, are pertinent to sustainable development, while also creating a bridge between local activities and traditional stakeholders.

EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA

REGIONAL PLANNING COUNCIL

Partnership for the Goals:
Creating a Resilient and Thriving Community
through 17 Rooms

Room by Room:
Actionable Ideas

Our Current Work in a Partnership For the Goals