Making for Good: Empowering Girls to Improve Air Quality in Their Community
‘Making for Good’ is a DIY Girls initiative that implements the design thinking process to empower girls to identify and prototype solutions to issues encountered in their communities. We will expand our ‘Making for Good’ project to investigate air quality using open-source technology and propose solutions for a Los Angeles with clean air by 2050. This project enables girls and others to become advocates for the change they want to see in their communities.
In what areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
San Fernando Valley
City of Los Angeles
LAUSD
Pacoima, San Fernando, Panorama City
How do you plan to use these resources to make change?
Conduct research
Engage residents and stakeholders
Implement a pilot or new project
Expand a pilot or a program
Advocate with policymakers and leaders
How will your proposal improve the following LIVE metrics?
Access to healthy food
Exposure to air toxins
Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (Dream Metric)
Percentage of tree canopy cover (Dream Metric)
Please explain how you will evaluate your work.
We will gather data using pre and post surveys and interviews. The pre and post assessments include information about the girls in our programs and workshop participants’ experience and measure knowledge of air quality issues in their communities. Data will be analyzed at the end of each program cycle.
Our evaluation instruments will be designed to measure our objectives:
1) Girls will demonstrate understanding of technical concepts and skills related to the project
2) Girls will share findings and propose solutions
3) Community members will commit to take at least one action to improve air quality as a result of attending workshops
We will also track specific actions taken to improve air quality based on the environmental data that is collected and shared. We want to know if these actions made a difference in the community such as increasing public awareness, identifying causes of poor air quality, and reducing health problems related to not having clean air.
How can the LA2050 community and other stakeholders help your proposal succeed
Money (financial capital)
Volunteers/staff (human capital)
Publicity/awareness (social capital)
Education/training
Technical infrastructure (computers, etc.)
Community outreach
Network/relationship support