Environmental Justice

• Goals
• Background
• Strategies

Goals

• To develop an efficient and effective system for delivering financial and technical assistance to communities to empower them to improve their health and environment.
  
  
• To achieve an inclusive work environment by developing an efficient system for the outreach and recruitment of potential employees.

Read the implementation plan on resources tools development (PDF) (17 pp, 725K, About PDF).

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Background

Under Plan EJ 2014, the Resource Tool Development focuses on two components:

1. Grants and technical assistance to support community-based programs, and
2. Workforce diversity.

EPA seeks to develop an efficient and effective system for delivering financial and technical assistance to empower communities to improve their health and environment.

EPA’s efforts advance the Administrator’s priority of Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice. They establish a new paradigm for the delivery of EPA assistance to minority, low-income, tribal, and indigenous peoples to promote equitable development and create healthy and sustainable neighborhoods. They also respond to the Cross-Agency Focus Area under Plan EJ 2014 of Supporting Community-Based Action Programs.

EPA also seeks to achieve an inclusive work environment in its outreach and recruitment of potential employees. When EPA recruits and retains an inclusive workforce — one that looks like the America it serves — and individual differences are respected, appreciated, and valued, diversity becomes an organizational strength that contributes to achieving results.

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Strategies

• Grants and Technical Assistance Component:
  
  
  1. Increase transparency and efficiency in providing community-based grant opportunities.
     
     
  2. Improve delivery of technical assistance to communities.
     
     
  3. Strengthen grants training for communities.
     
     
  4. Improve community awareness of grant competition process.
     
     
  5. Revise grant policies that are unduly restrictive.
     
     
  6. Encourage Office of General Counsel, Office of Regional Counsel, and Program Office dialogue on community-based grant opportunities.
     
     
  7. Improve timeliness of Brownfields Grant Awards.
     
     
• Workforce Diversity Component:
  
  
  1. Increase the diverse pool of qualified applicants.
     
     
  2. Operate under a One EPA approach for recruitment and outreach.

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