How Toxics Action Center Can Help You:

Group Training and Assistance
Events/Conferences
Networking
Information
Dirty Dozen Awards

Group Training and Assistance

Toxics Action Center offers seven group consultation sessions that your group can choose from to develop and implement strategies that effectively address local pollution issues. A staff person will come to your neighborhood and meet with you and your neighbors on a weeknight or weekend to help you develop a plan specifically tailored for your community.

• Planning a Winning Campaign. The first and most essential step to addressing any problem is to develop a campaign plan. Your group will clarify goals, figure out the process for solving your problem, brainstorm specific steps to take and develop a timeline for action.
• Effective Message and Materials. Your group will develop a simple and compelling message and materials that can be used when talking to other residents in your community, the media, as well as government officials.
• Building Your Group. Your group will develop a plan to start, build, and maintain an effective and efficient neighborhood organization.
• Making the News. Your group will develop a plan to publicize your issue in the media through events and building relationships with reporters.
• Fundraising to Win. Your group will develop a plan to raise money through building a membership, holding fundraising events, and/or grant writing.
• Winning Community Votes. Your group will develop a plan to get the right question on the ballot, identify supporters and get out the vote, and create a buzz that peaks on election day.
• Winning at Public Hearings. Your group will develop a plan to win at an upcoming public hearing through galvanizing public support and preparing compelling testimony.

Events/Conferences

Our conferences in Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont annually attract more than 650 activists for a day of workshops and speakers. Our annual spring Leadership Retreat brings together twenty of the top activists in the region to discuss advanced neighborhood organizing strategies and principles. Our issue summits bring together three to five community groups that are working on the same issue throughout the region.

Toxics Action Center’s conferences, trainings, and summits equip residents with organizing skills; educate them on environmental issues; provide them with a forum in which to share their successes and strategies; inspire them for another year of preventing and cleaning up pollution in their neighborhoods; and bring them together with experts.

Networking

The goal of our network is to both reinforce local campaigns and to help local groups see themselves as part of a larger movement for environmental health and democracy. We help connect neighborhood groups with other activists fighting similar battles to build confidence and share lessons, ideas and information. We also maintain an expert referral list with legal, public health and environmental professionals who help local groups pro bono or at a reduced fee. Key parts of our network are:

• Expert Referral List—Toxics Action Center maintains a referral network of legal, technical, and public health experts that provide neighborhood groups with essential information for a reduced fee or pro bono. At times, groups need environmental engineers to help evaluate a cleanup plan, a public health expert to help them evaluate the risk of exposure to a particular chemical, or a lawyer to pursue compensation for health or property damages. The experts in our network have experience working with neighborhood groups. Please call 617 292-4821 for a list of experts who might be able to assist you.
  
• Database of citizen activists (by state)
  
• Email Listservs
  
• History of former campaigns in each town
  
• Reference to New England Grassroots Environment Fund and grant writing assistance

We also work to bring together different neighborhood groups fighting the same problem through coordinated statewide campaigns, where we serve as campaign coordinators. These campaigns help impact the issue by providing additional resources, such as organizing new conferences or publishing reports, which put additional pressure on state government decision-makers. These campaigns have included: cleaning up power plants in CT (Sooty Six), sludge spreading in ME, school pesticides in MA, asphalt plants in CT, and increasing recycling in MA.

Information

We maintain a database and reference materials that detail environmental threats throughout the region. In addition, we provide information about public health and environmental laws and regulations, both what they say on paper and how they work in practice. Resources include:

• List of hazardous waste sites by town
• Fact sheets and reference books on toxic health threats
• Summaries of toxic threats and helpful contacts on our website
• List of soil and groundwater standards
• Copies of state laws and regulations
• State maps showing pollution threats

We publish guides to help groups understand the complexities of issues as well as laws and regulations. Guides include:

• Cleaning Up Hazardous Waste Sites
• Sludge
• West Nile Virus
• TruGreen ChemLawn
• Aerial Spraying of Blueberries
• Medical Waste Incineration
• Technical Assistance Grants
• Pesticides In Schools
• Casella Waste Systems
• Recycling in Boston

Dirty Dozen Awards

A special category all their own, our annual Dirty Dozen awards help publicize the toxic threats to communities in New England . Every fall, a committee of experts chooses the “worst of the worst” sites from nominations sent in by community groups. We then coordinate twelve media events with local groups during one week in early December. The Dirty Dozen spotlight alone has lead to victories for local groups. Click here to read our report reflecting on ten years of the Dirty Dozen.