NYC Tutoring Contributes to a Greener Jersey City by Providing Free Translation Services

Jersey City is ranked the second most diverse city in the United States, according to WalletHub’s latest diversity report. It also ranks #2 in linguistic diversity across the country.

Education is at the core of Sustainable Jersey City’s efforts and we’ve been working to expand our reach by generating content in more languages. To that end, we have partnered with NYC Tutoring to translate content and better serve our multilingual communities.

During the pandemic, Jersey City residents enjoyed a brief period of significant reductions in air pollution and found respite from lockdowns in our green spaces — a trend we see continuing in the coming months. As our communities found their green thumbs and started to look into living more sustainable lifestyles, including caring for their Street Trees, SJC took this opportunity to bring them into the fold with expanded language capabilities. We’re grateful to  NYC Tutoring and its language tutors, who offered pro bono translations to ensure that our residents have all the support they need in making Jersey City a greener, more sustainable place to live and work.

“The preservation of the environment is an issue that touches us all,” says Luke Palder, Co-founder of NYC Tutoring.“Sustainable Jersey City is working toward a noble mission of a greener, more sustainable Jersey City, and we’re proud to help in any way we can.”

NYC Tutoring provides personalized tutoring services in a wide range of subjects including SAT prep for students in the New York Metropolitan area and Northeastern New Jersey, including Jersey City. With the support of NYC Tutoring, we are working on efficiently promoting awareness of our programs and educating individuals in major languages such as Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese,  among others. 

Sustainable Jersey City would like to thank Luke Palder and his NYC Tutoring team for their outstanding efforts. We hope to continue our mission to create a greener Jersey City for us all, regardless of language.

Looking back at a decade of service — and forward to our next ten years !

For SJC’s 10-year anniversary, SJC Founder Debra Italiano and Founding Advisor Ashwani Vasishth look back at SJC’s origins, and a decade of making Jersey City a greener, more sustainable place to live and work. 

What led you two to found an organization like SJC? 

ASHWANI: I came to Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, Bergen County, as an Associate Professor of Sustainability in 2009. All my work to this point had been in an urban setting, specifically, Los Angeles. So, I looked around me for a distinctly urban context to situate my participatory research work, and my gaze fell to Jersey City. I happened to collaborate with Debra on a Washington Park project.

Deb was one of the very few individuals I had encountered in my decades of work in sustainability who thought natively in a systems perspective. She understood the importance of taking a multi-perspective and participatory approach to depicting any given reality.  

DEBRA: I was a Board Member of Washington Park Association when I collaborated with Ashwani on our award-winning Green Infrastructure (GI) project — stormwater management and flooding mitigation using a permaculture approach. After our collaboration, Ashwani and I started to explore opportunities for sustainability projects that had interconnecting systems solutions and a balanced ecological approach across social, environmental and economic considerations. 

We both agreed that Jersey City hadn’t quite caught the sustainability wave despite its proximity to NYC, which was buzzing with sustainability-focused activity. We met with a number of community organizations to share our vision for more such innovative demonstration projects, gained their input, and attracted about a dozen other people interested to work on the initiative. 

ASHWANI: We felt that Jersey City was awash with non-profit organizations, all working in their own turf-constrained and parochial way on narrow slices of the world. We knew that:

• We wanted a city-wide focus for Jersey City  

• We wanted to take an explicitly systems-oriented approach to urban sustainability

• And we wanted to start at the grassroots and work outward from there

 So, we did.  And SJC was born.  The rest, as they say, is history — and historic for us.

What values does SJC hold at its core? 

DEBRA: Collaboration and teamwork, both within our organization and with individuals and organizations outside of SJC, is one of our core values. We believe in the motto “Better Together”. This value allows us to accomplish quite a bit, as we leverage expertise and resources across the city. We always look for multiple community stakeholders that could benefit from our project work, and we never go into a grant proposal without at least one other stakeholder group involved.

ASHWANI: We take a “distributed leadership” approach to how we operate. The organization is made up of a constellation of people who are managing projects and teams independently, yet functioning as part of an integrated set of teams across the organization. It seems to work very well for us.

DEBRA: We are a learning community and constantly look to evolve our understanding of the myriad scientific, academic, market-related, governmental and specialized fields of practice within the sustainability and resiliency movement. We are always educating ourselves within SJC, and make every effort to share this knowledge with our volunteers and the public via our digital communications platforms, our annual flagship Certificate Program In Urban Sustainability, and even at our social events.

How has SJC’s volunteer base evolved over the years?

ASHWANI: The only reason the two of us have managed to get to where we are is because of an amazing and astoundingly diverse and talented group of Jersey City residents, who, over the years, have come to play with us on the perpetually evolving stage that is SJC. You have to understand that running a volunteer organization is a very heavy lift. Most smart people have full lives, and there is a limit to how much time they can give. Initially, our volunteer leaders would burn out within six months. But we have learned to work differently. Folks still come and go — life happens to all of us — but our leadership participation is way more stable than it was in the early days.

DEBRA: We have four tiers of membership within SJC — Honorary Charter Members, Volunteer Team Members, Core Team Leads, and Board Members.  We also have a lot of advisors, and I’d say that we have arrived at a high level of skilled key people who are guiding SJC at both the project level and organizational level. We are blessed with a cadre of really smart and experienced people who are interested in making Jersey City a more sustainable and resilient place to live and work, and everyone teams together really well.

What have been significant challenges that SJC overcame?  

DEBRA: For many years we focused on small but impactful demonstration projects and were not able to scale our activities, primarily due to the lack of funding. Now that we have incorporated as a non-profit, we have been able to seek funding and access tools to ramp up our activities to citywide efforts such as launching research studies and leveraging educational projects into campaigns with institutional partners. This is a huge challenge we have overcome, and we’re looking forward to scaling up our projects and campaigns to serve Jersey City even better.

Another challenge we have, that we are working on but have not yet overcome, is managing a large virtual volunteer network and making sure everyone has a positive experience while getting work done. We have set goals to tackle a variety of value-added programs for our volunteer network over the next year, and I’m confident that SJC will remain a preferred volunteer experience in Jersey City.

ASHWANI: One of the most significant tensions we have had to deal with is fairly well established in urban planning theory — the tension between conventional top-down, expertise-led and bureaucratic planning and a more diverse and robust bottom-up and middle-out participatory planning. There is much to be said for educated expertise, and the average public citizen rarely has the time or opportunity to think through the nuances and complications so inherent in most city and community planning issues.

But a savvy, stakeholder-based model of participatory planning offers an alternative to thoughtless public participation. Most professional planners — who usually are trained in planning theory but not in participatory decision making — think of “public participation” as either an exercise that informs the public about decisions that are being made (perhaps with opportunities for “feedback”), or as a talk session that is actually geared to simply persuading the public that what is being done is the right thing. For us, participatory grassroots planning is something that gives stakeholders the opportunity to make actual and meaningful decisions. We’re working on bridging this divide through more public partnerships, and extensive community education.

What was the most memorable SJC campaign or project in these past 10 years? 

DEBRA: For me, it was the permaculture project in Washington Park. It saw 250,000 gallons diverted from our sewer system annually, and eventually led to the origins of SJC as an organization. To this day Green Infrastructure — be it building-related (Green Roofs and Green Walls), Streetscapes (Rain Gardens and Bioswales) or Trees — remains one of SJC’s three primary focus areas, alongside Emissions Reduction and Waste Streams.  

ASHWANI: As an educator, the most remarkable campaign for me is the Urban Sustainability Certificate Program we offer each year in the spring, where we engage residents at a deeper level on Jersey City’s sustainability issues and solutions at play. For SJC, and residents, I think the most impactful campaign is the Tree mapping census — or the ‘We Can’t Manage What We Don’t Measure!’ campaign for Tree Canopy restoration. 

What’s your vision for SJC in its next decade?

DEBRA: As a homegrown non-profit, I think we are tasked with bringing in the best thought leaders to help us educate, engage and empower community stakeholders to become civic stakeholders-in-action. SJC can offer technical advisory and program leadership, but there needs to be a mobilization of the public on behalf of the neighborhoods we live in. SJC is a catalyst organization, but I would really like to see neighborhoods and citywide organizations embrace a collaborative focus, and self-organize around progressive citizen-led initiatives like participatory planning and participatory budgeting as a new addition to governance in the city — sounds like a referendum to me!

ASHWANI: I think I would like to see three things happen within the next ten years:

• That SJC develops a robust and durable relationship with many of the agencies within the city of Jersey City

• That SJC moves closer to a truly decentralized leadership model that was the founding image of the organization (read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations)

• That SJC gets more and more effective at onboarding, managing and retaining volunteers

Anything you’d like to say to all our supporters, volunteers and partners? 

ASHWANI: You’ve been the reason for our success. Stick with us, keep coming back.  And tell us what we ought to do differently.

DEBRA: Thank you, thank you for all your support! At every turn, there was always a question about how best to contribute with activity that would forward the momentum in Jersey City, given the urgency of climate change. What we have found is that community stakeholders have been very responsive to partnering with us, in action and in learning, so we can all be part of a ramping up of progressive solutions and best practices. I would say we are finally ‘on the move’, and I salute the many, many people getting into the canoe and rowing with us!

The Future of Work: Have You Updated Your Skills For Remote Work ?

Opportunity For Sustainable JC Folks To Consider Job Market Trends With This Second Post Of A Short Series On The Future Of Work And Acquiring New Tech Skills As We Transition In The Age Of COVID !

Submitted by Artur Meyster, Guest Blogger / Founder of Career Karma

After everything that happened this year with the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work is probably here to stay. Even if you don’t decide to become a permanent remote worker, you will probably have to do it a few days a week. These are the skills you will need to be successful in the future of work.

Strong Communication

For remote workers, strong communication is an essential skill to have. Some people may think it is not that important because you are working from home and not around your team. But that is the reason why communication is more important in remote work than in traditional office environments.

Remote workers have to over-communicate with their team because they are all working in different locations. They have to constantly make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to their responsibilities and deadlines. Also, communication isn’t only words—we use body language, expressions, and tone to complement what we say.

When you are communicating through email or a phone call, you have to figure out the message without the help of several components. Thus, remote workers have to be strong communicators to transmit the messages the way they mean with only words. 

Self-discipline

Another skill that only people who already have worked remotely before know is self-discipline. Doing your job even when you don’t have a manager breathing down your neck requires a lot of discipline. 

When working remotely, you know you can cheat the system if you want by spending the day doing other stuff instead of working. That’s why you have to be self-motivated, disciplined, and independent enough to be responsible and do your job even when you don’t have anyone supervising you all the time. However, remote working isn’t for everyone. Some people have a harder time finding that motivation. One of the things you can do is to set up a home office where you can shut yourself off from all distractions. 

Digital Literacy

When you start working remotely, having digital literacy is a must. Digital literacy is when you are familiar with technology like different devices, digital platforms, and tools. Working remotely requires professionals to use different digital tools like computers, smartphones, various programs, and platforms like videoconferencing or document collaboration.

So, if you’ve always had a hard time using technology and digital tools, you should work on this skill right now. You can find many online courses that will teach you the basics in the most common programs. 

For example, the most common tools used nowadays are video conferencing tools like Zoom or Skype, Google Docs and Sheets, and the Microsoft Office package. Knowing how to use email is also important for communication, and for using other tools. In addition, at least the basics on how to do Internet research will be helpful for any other doubt you have in your day-to-day life.

Basic Troubleshooting

Average US workers waste 22 minutes per day dealing with IT issues. Now with remote working, when employees need IT support they probably lose a little more time because the support is also remote. Knowing some basic troubleshooting will help you a lot to optimize time during the day.

Knowing how to do Internet research is a complementary skill to troubleshooting. If you have basic knowledge of how computers work and how to solve basic issues you will be able to follow tutorials and instructions found online. You can go even further and learn more than basic skills. You can learn a programming language, or study an operating system or hardware. This will help you solve many problems you will encounter.

Time Management

Finally, but not less important, you will need to be excellent with time management to be a remote worker. Knowing how to organize your time is essential not only to meet all your work deadlines but to disconnect from work when it’s over. Sometimes, remote workers struggle to disconnect from work and set time apart for their own lives. Time management will help you have enough time for all aspects of your life.

In Summary

To be an excellent remote worker you will need to have your skillset ready. You can take some time to learn or improve the skills you don’t have. You need strong communication, self-discipline, digital literacy, basic troubleshooting, and time management. Make sure you are prepared for the future of work and the new normal after the pandemic.

#sustainable #jerseycity @sustainablejc #futurework #newtechskills @CareerKarmaApp @Career_Karma

75 IDEAS FOR A MORE EARTH-FRIENDLY FAMILY LIFESTYLE

Submitted by Guest Blogger Hazel Baby & Kids

This post was initially published in April 2021 on Hazel Baby & Kids Blog

We asked our community of mothers what they do to lower their family’s environmental impact. Over 50 women responded with answers ranging from simple daily swaps, to favorite sustainable brands, even long term major hauls… we were inspired hearing so many people making an effort, big or small, to reform lifestyle habits for the good of the planet.

At Hazel Baby we’ve been talking about earth-saving swaps all year. We’re all on this planet together, and we’d certainly like to keep it that way! As families grow, it is easy to see how each individual can consume energy and accumulate waste. Even the tiniest humans can contribute diapers to landfills, and leave behind plastic bits and pieces in the ocean. So what can we all do?

We asked multiple nearby communities of mothers what they do to lower their family’s environmental impact. Over 50 women responded with answers ranging from simple daily swaps, to favorite sustainable brands, even long term major hauls… we were inspired hearing so many people making an effort, big or small, to reform lifestyle habits for the good of the planet.

So, in honor of Earth Day, we took their feedback and summarized it into this list. The most popular ideas were around household swaps - like reusable snack & sandwich bags instead of plastic zip bags. Perhaps these ideas are similar to what you’re doing at your home, too! Don’t have those yet? It’s an easy first step to tackle for more eco-friendly meal prep. We hope this list leaves you feeling inspired and ready to take action in your own home. 

1. We’re very disciplined about recycling everything applicable and involve the kids in the process of collecting, triaging and bringing it down to the recycle room that way they’ll grow up knowing no other way.

2. We try to limit plastic as much as possible. It's impossible sometimes, but I like a lot of products from Etee that make plastic-free household goods.

3. Glass containers instead of plastic Tupperware.

4. For toys, I try to get non-plastic options if it's available and feasible

5. I try to do a lot of 'upcycle' crafting with [my little one]. Mostly using packaging and recycled materials first before buying anything at the store! 

6. Anything reusable for snacks, lunches etc. (Think stainless steal containers, glass Tupperware, beeswax wrap, silicone storage bags)

7. Composting

8. Cloth diapers and cloth wipes.

9. Beeswax wraps instead of plastic wrap 

10. I use dish towels or rag clothes for almost everything in house. Wiping, dusting, cleaning..no paper towels.

11. Use muslin cloth / parchment paper to wrap food for my toddlers box instead of aluminum foil. 

12. Switched to bamboo paper towels that can be washed and reused up to 85 times. We cut the bamboo paper towels to different sizes and also use them as reusable napkins. They end up becoming really soft and absorbent over time.

13. Bring back waxed paper or butcher paper & masking tape for sandwiches in lunchboxes

14. Water bottles ~ having a favorite means you will use it more often.

15. Reusing boxes. When deliveries come, have your kiddos use the boxes as a play material. Yes, eventually they will end up in recycling, but in the meantime, they can be used to be a car, castle, cardboard cut out, toy for cats, canvas for art, etc, etc. 

16. My daughter has Replay plates and bowls for meals(they are made from recycled milk jugs).

17. Reusable everything. Cups, lunch boxes, water bottles etc. Refillable soap, shampoo etc dispensers.

18. LEDs everywhere 

19. We even use old t-shirts for wiping furniture - they are soft and last forever. But more importantly kids see how we don't just throw non-donatable items.

20. Crafting with kids can give lots of items new life: melt down crayon bits together in muffin pans/molds and make multi-color fun-shaped crayons, make collages or decoupage boxes with colored paper/pictures/cards.

21. Use plastic egg containers as palettes, or paper ones for storage of beads and such. 

22. Old plastic cups can be used to hold paintbrushes and water for painting. 

23. I use shoeboxes and other pretty boxes for EVERYTHING including shelf and drawer dividers. 

24. Reusable paper towels has been the most seamless swap for me. I get the ones you can re-roll. They're actually better for kid hands/faces and messes and fit on my existing paper towel holder.

25. My one go to is I save and wash all jars I get with groceries - tomato sauce, pickles, roasted peppers, etc. I reuse for myself or when giving away food I make to others. 

26. I cover jars with plaster of Paris and have children watercolor paint them in my art classes. They make beautiful vases. 

27. My kids received a reusable sandwich sleeve in Kindergarten that we still use to this day! My youngest is in 6th grade and my oldest is a HS freshman, so it’s been many years of reusing them.

28. My favorite household planet saving swap is wool dryer balls. I put a few drops of lavender essential oil on them, and they’re so much better than dryer sheets.

29. Here is a crazy one I take the dry cleaning bags and tie a knot on the hanger side and use in my waste paper baskets. They look good too.

30. We have made many swaps over the years, two of our most recent ones have been around not shipping the water that products need. We add it when we use it. This reduces pollution/strain on the earth by not shipping the heaviest part of cleaners, the water.

31. One is hand soap tablets. We use Blueland. I love that they use paper packaging instead of plastics. My son has fun "making" the soap by putting the tablet in the water. Their mission is great. 

32. We do a “community garden” with my parents using our compost, and my kiddos love getting involved. Growing or buying local produce to lower the impact of shipping food.

33. Menstrual cups are life changing! I have the Luna (preferred) and salt. Also have Thinx 

34. Shampoo Bars

35. Cloth Diapers I was late to the game on this and only did one year of cloth with my daughter. But we’re hoping to reuse our cloth diapers when we adopt again. 

36. Gender neutral clothes so next baby can wear hand me downs

37. I LOVE buying second hand clothes and shoes for my toddler. They grow so fast!

38. Teaching and relearning to not support eating factory farmed animals and fished pulled from the ocean helps. There are so many plant based options now.

39. Eating less meat.

40. Meatless Monday

41. Tossing food is a big waste. I love leftovers, but I know that so many others do not.

42. Eat vegan at home.

43. Avoid juice boxes and single serve snack packs 

44. You can have kids help package snacks into reusable containers to help them feel involved in the process while also learning about measuring and sustainability.

45. Public transportation whenever possible.

46. Kohl's recycles plastic packages, I will collect and deposit bags at Kohl's when I'm out for shopping/stroll, without adding another task to my to do list 

47. We do not buy bottled water at all..always carry water from home when we step out 

48. Get our own box for a take out or to-go box for leftovers

49. As a child, I was required to bring home my brown lunch bag to reuse for the entire week! True story. We had lunch boxes but most kids had a brown bag, so if I used one, I had to reuse it.

50. We have metal straws, even portable ones for when we go out 

51. Bring clothes to H&M for them to recycle them (they will also give you a discount on your next purchase). Or you can bring textiles to the recycle boxes locally.

52. Toys etc can be donated in so many places: Swap shop, Goodwill, charities, daycares, preschools, etc or sold on all the local Facebook tag sale pages.

53. Facebook marketplace and buy/sell groups for exchanging perfectly good used stuff.

54. Buying food/household goods in bulk or from local famers markets or CSA,

55. Buying used/swapped items

56. We have limited our online orders to a very minimum, I usually go to a store to buy/place order online and pick it up (even though Amazon may be cheaper by a few bucks). This saves a lot packaging materials.

57. Buy loose/open vegetables/fruits from grocery stores and avoid those pre packaged ones with styrofoam containers and a plastic film wrap over it..

58. If we order from Amazon, I chat with customer service and request them to use a cardboard box, combine multiple items in one order. Request them not to send something in those bubble mailer sealed envelopes (they are the worst for recycling.)

59. Bring your own reusable bags to the store.

60. Shop with B Corporations as much as possible, for everything

61. Buy/gift recycled toys when possible.

62. Buy/gift second hand toys when possible.

63. Buy opened ended toys that can last years.

64. Bring thin mesh bags for produce to the store to avoid cellophane one from the roll at store.

65. Be mindful when shopping looking for non-plastic alternatives such as deodorant, laundry detergent, etc.

66. Create a virtuous circle - Another one that many people have mentioned in one way or other is to create a community of people who have children 1-2 years younger who you can keep in your clothing recycling circle. Every time you do a clean out, they are happy recipients of lightly worn toys, baby gear, shoes, sports equipment, winter clothes, etc. if they don’t want the items, ensure they get into the hands of another neighbor or someone in need 

67. I’d give a big shout out to the Buy Nothing Project. THE best way to get things you need (especially for kids) and to also give when you’re done with items. We’ve been very active giving and receiving the last few months and it’s taught generosity to my kids and now they’re quick to say we should give something away.

68. Look to buy items in glass containers versus plastic, and rinse before recycling.

69. Reusing things instead of buying new stuff to make a big difference both in terms of less packaging and the item itself- there are companies like ThredUp that help and also there is a trend towards local “Buy Nothing” groups on facebook

70. Not throwing stuff out of your car windows or litterin 

71. Planting trees

72. Never supporting boat cruises or that industrial at all. Ever year those companies are fined over and over for dumping waste and polluting the oceans 

73. This amazing company Think Zero Home does really helpful consulting to help you move towards a zero waste home we used them!

74. Turning off the electricity if we are not using it. 

75. Pay attention to the most important R, Reduce! If you don't need it, don't take it.

Thank you to everyone for sharing with us your best sustainable family life tip!

https://www.hazelbaby.com/blogs/blog/75-ideas-for-a-more-earth-friendly-family-lifestyl/