KLA Perspectives

School has just ended here in Boston, giving me time to reflect on all that my daughter, Charlotte, learned and accomplished in 3rd grade.

As a planner and sustainability professional working with local governments, I had a “proud mommy” moment visiting her class to check out Box City. A collaborative class project, Box City can tell cities a lot about what their future citizens want. 

It also got me thinking about the importance of two things we talk about with KLA clients often: youth engagement and regenerative thinking. 

The Kids are Alright

As these photos suggest, our kids are big thinkers. Here are some of the ways their ideas struck me forward-thinking: 

Register now for this deep dive into approaches that work.

Local government staff recognize the value of hearing from all members of their community -- or at least their responsibility to pursue it. Yet many of us struggle to effectively reach and/or keep the attention of anyone other than the usual suspects. Whether it's during a planning process, at the implementation stage, or getting feedback on projects and ideas, it can be a challenge to get the quantity and quality engagement that is representative of your community -- and that sets you up for long-term success.

If a disaster -- a hurricane, flood, wildfire or other major disruption -- struck your community tomorrow, how would it fare? The answer to that question doesn’t just depend on the type and severity of the disruption. It has a lot to do with what your community looks like today.

Post-disaster recovery often hinges on community cohesion. What does that look like? Organizations partnering together. Strong leadership outside the local government. Neighbors knowing each other. Spaces where people get together. Meaningful efforts to address ongoing stresses in the community such as racial inequities, affordable housing, jobs and living wages.

That community cohesion can take many forms, but what’s notable these days is the push to give it a home in resilience hubs.

Let's dive in to some resilience hub basics and how some communities -- including our clients Cambridge and New Bedford, MA -- are getting started. 

If you're going to the American Planning Association's National Planning Conference in San Francisco, we would love to meet you! Who are we? Where can you find us in the Moscone Center? And why would you want to? 

 

Our SAS Talk with Kim podcast is back in action, and we're kicking our 2019 run off by chatting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories with my former colleague Mike Steinhoff at ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. 

GHG Inventories are one of the services KLA provides to clients, and Mike, as ICLEI USA's Program Manager for Tools & Innovation, is one of the foremost experts on the topic. If you've ever been involved in a GHG inventory, you know they can feel a little bewildering or overwhelming or tedious.

But here's the thing you also know: they are important. This might be the one millionth time you've said or hear it, but it bears repeating, "You can't manage what you don't measure." 

So I connected with Mike recently to talk about the value of GHG inventories, how our measurement and analysis tools have evolved, and opportunities now and in the future for them to be more of a springboard for meaningful climate action. 

This is part of our ongoing KLA Communications Boot Camp series. We've covered website content (Website Content that Works) and blog posts (Writing Winning Blog Posts) and now turn our attention to where everyone's attention already is: VIDEOS.

If you haven’t considered how video can boost your local sustainability and climate action goals, now is the time and this is the place to get started.

We produced several videos for our local government clients last year (scroll to the bottom watch them) and consider it a critical element of our communications support for them moving forward.

Why?

More and more people are watching videos. Beyond entertainment, that’s how they want to consume information. It’s the key to educating and engaging.

What skills do you need to knock your community engagement, sustainability and climate action goals out of the park in 2019? 

Inquiring minds want to know...and help you reach those goals.  

The KLA team is developing a series of training opportunities -- in person and online -- along with supplemental resources like guidebooks and checklists. These will focus on local governments, sustainability and effective communications and community engagement. 

Answer this one quick question so that we can best meet your needs. 

The KLA Team is beyond excited to welcome Angela Cleveland as Director of Client Services. 

Our CEO Kim Lundgren, who has worked with Angie at both VHB and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, had this to say: "We are thrilled to have Angie on board to help take KLA and our services to our clients to the next level. We have experienced significant growth over the past 18 months and are confident that Angie will be instrumental in ensuring that we can continue to deliver quality services and products to all our clients working to create more sustainable communities."