Miami-Dade County in Florida is a leader in addressing urban heat island effect and extreme heat, which causes more deaths than any other weather-related hazard. At the 2022 Grantmakers in Health conference, a learning tour through Miami — the Dade County Street Response Clinic, local parks, worksites, and public space — focused on the intersections of climate, heat, and health equity from the perspective of community leaders. Catalyst Miami, Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, We Count!, the South Florida Housing Link Collaborative, the Solar and Energy Loan Fund, and the County’s Chief Heat Officer highlighted their work to address extreme heat and displacement due to climate gentrification while sharing about the unique history and culture of the county.

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With increasing urgency of local and regional climate adaptation, there is a growing need for governments to identify and respond effectively to the concerns of communities they serve and to align investments. Researchers designed and piloted a novel hyperlocal method for urban adaptation planning combining two social science tools that have been widely but separately used to foster community engagement and strategize solutions. Not-for-profit community partners Catalyst Miami and the Cleo Institute facilitated multi-session online workshops with participants from two communities in South Florida with whom they have well-established relationships and in which socio-economic conditions and climate risks represent notable vulnerabilities. The workshops first employed photovoice to elicit individual narratives about climate change impacts; participants then followed a design thinking protocol to critically evaluate the leading concerns they identified and propose adaptation solutions. Geospatial mapping and data tools were provided for participants to gain additional tools and further knowledge. Local planning and resilience officials attended some or all of the workshops as observers and interlocutors, dialoguing with participants. Comparative analysis revealed differences in risk awareness and primary concerns between communities, and further demonstrated that concerns and solutions proposed by members of at-risk neighborhoods do not always align with geospatial data that often drives infrastructure adaptation planning in the region, suggesting that more widespread use of community engaged methods could enhance government climate adaptation responses for local communities.

Find the full pilot study here.

Implementing a community-wide clean energy transition is an ambitious, long-term undertaking that requires leadership and collaboration. Neither municipal government nor community leaders can succeed on
their own. These documents that Catalyst Miami and partners contributed to help community leaders and municipal staff collaborate to establish and manage a task force, committee, or group to manage a long-term accountability process.

Read the accountability framework for community implementation of 100% clean energy goals.

Read the shared accountability guide.

This in-depth case study examines Catalyst Miami's work over two decades, evolving to meet the needs of Miami-Dade County's low-wealth communities. The case study was developed for the Kresge Foundation’s Next Generation Human Services Initiative in collaboration with Harvard Business School.

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Catalyst Miami is part of a 30+ organization coalition urging local elected officials to utilize vacant public land for affordable development.

Read the document here.

This strategy is greater Miami's strategy to address resilience challenges prioritized through inter-governmental and community collaboration as part of The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities. Catalyst Miami served on the steering committee and remains deeply involved in implementing this work.

Resilience, for us, means providing the opportunity for every person and every community to bounce back after large-scale flooding events, hurricanes, or economic hardships, and to not only survive, but thrive in the face of sea level rise, expensive housing, challenging traffic, and uncertain labor markets.

Read the document here.

These are the recommendations to  help  shape  the  update  of  the  Southeast  Florida  Regional  Climate  Action  Plan, or RCAP 2.0, with special concerns for under-­resourced   communities  in  Miami-­‐Dade,  Broward,  Monroe,  and  Palm  Beach  Counties.  The  four  counties  and  their  municipalities  will  use  the  RCAP  2.0  for  the  next  four  years  as  their   guide  to  reduce  the  region’s  climate  change  pollution  and  build  resilient  communities.  The   recommendations  that  emerged  from  the  summit  offer  strategies  for  county  and  city  leaders,  advocacy   groups  and  residents  in  underserved  areas  to  strengthen  capacity,  leadership  and  resilience  in   overburdened  communities  at  the  front  lines  of  climate  change  effects.

Read the document here.

The Prosperity Miami (PM) pilot initiative - a collaboration of Catalyst Miami, New Florida Majority, and South Florida Voices for Working Families - was an effort to build on the philosophy and practices of the groups mentioned above. Working collaboratively across organizations to blend services and community organizing rather than through a singular organization, the partners sought to meet the bottom-line needs of individuals, while also moving them into political organizing for broader social change. This paper highlights the lessons learned from this attempt at social innovation and provides implications for future similar collaborative efforts.

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The Miami Social Justice Table was a 4-year exercise in building networks of organizations across Miami working on different angles related to lessening poverty and increasing rights and access for under-resourced communities and populations. Network members regularly shared information to support each other in having a bigger collective impact together. This paper highlights the research completed in the second year of the initiative and was written by the University of Miami.

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In an environment where community based organizations are asked to do increasingly more to alleviate the effects of complex social problems, networks and coalitions are becoming the answer for increasing scale, efficiency, coordination, and most importantly, social impact. This paper highlights the formation of a developing coalition around poverty reduction in Miami-Dade County and the role of one organization acting as lead to the initiative. The findings offer a picture of the inter-organizational relationships in the community using social network analysis and identify the organizational capacity factors that contribute to and inhibit the formation of a cohesive and effective coalition in this context. This study was written by the University of Miami and published in the American Journal for Community Psychology.

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