These multilingual resident leaders from across North-Central, East, and South Austin, represent a powerful network of parents, neighbors, caretakers, and educators who have been trained as Climate Navigators in Spanish- and English-language preparedness curricula to better prepare themselves and their communities in times of extreme weather (heat, flooding, freezing temperatures, and fire). They collaborated with the University of Texas to create an online “resilience portal” to guide people, organizations, and networks in times of climate emergencies, and provide data for longterm policy decisions.

After many generations of families along East Williamson Creek watched their greenbelt suffer from flooding, invasive species, and dumping, a network of neighbors began formally adopting the creek and collaborating with GAVA to beautify and steward the area into a nature trail for the whole community.  Donde corre el agua/Where the Water Runs is a Spanish speaking resident-led creek adopter project that has brought four City departments, dozens of residents, and the University of Texas School of Architecture together to develop a trail enhancement project to support creek health, reduce erosion, improve connectivity, and protect this wild space for Dove Springs with a goal to complete implementation by the end of 2026. Creek adopters host regular creek clean ups in order to maintain the space until the City formally installs the trail on site along with signage, seating, and a decorative entryway sign and mural on the flood detention wall, to make the green space more welcoming.

For the past decade, resident leaders have championed GAVA’s food access work over the years in a variety of community and school-based efforts to increase access to healthy food. Since 2023, a steering committee of nine residents and two organizational representatives from across Austin’s Eastern Crescent worked on behalf of GAVA—in partnership with the Austin Cooperative Business Association and the City of Austin Economic Development Department—to launch the Austin Community Owned Food Retail initiative to form a cooperative grocery store that serves communities with a variety of multilingual and multicultural backgrounds. The steering committee held meetings in English, Arabic, and Spanish. After collectively learning about cooperative business models and how to create a feasibility analysis with robust community engagement, they have now assembled a board of Directors for the co-op and have developed a business plan with a pilot program to start early 2025.

These local home-based child care providers, early childhood organizations, parents, and other allies in GAVA’s advocacy initiatives are rooted in improving all childcare providers’ economic well being and in turn, the health outcomes of our city’s youngest residents. They advocate for provider and family needs that impact the entire childcare sector while simultaneously acting as a major support network for working families in our communities. Their recent campaigns and successes through the ATX EC Grassroots Coalition include the passage of an expansion in childcare subsidies including the 2024 ballot initiative to expand childcare subsidies in Travis County as well as the complementary City Council initiative to allocate city funds for a childcare relief fund.

CCNS is a group of resident leaders from various refugee communities in north and south Austin who have established their own nonprofit organization (recently granted 501(c)3 status) to serve the diverse needs of refugee households. Their activities include leadership development, healthy and culturally relevant food distribution, and long-term anti displacement and housing strategies. They are currently pursuing status as a community development corporation to start a community land trust (CLT) and are now participating in the city’s two-year CLT Accelerator program, developing skills to implement their vision of acquiring land and creating multigenerational affordable housing.