Join the Center for Civic Innovation as we recognize our 2019 CCI Fellows, a group of incredible civic entrepreneurs with ideas, products, and services focused on improving the lives of others in the city of Atlanta. These amazing leaders work in the areas of education, health, workforce development, housing, and social services. Over the past six months, they've been designing stronger solutions, testing the effectiveness of their interventions, and strategizing the opportunity to grow their impact.

This graduation will feature three-minute pitches from each leader, focused on the problem they are solving, their unique product or service, and their long-term growth strategy.

Thank you to our fellowship sponsors: Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, The Kendeda Fund, MailChimp, Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation,United Way of Greater Atlanta, Equifax, and Chick-fil-A

2019 Civic Innovation Fellows

Rachel Willis | Elevating Equity: Seeks to create a fellowship for Metro Atlanta educators to create and sustain anti-racist, culturally responsive classrooms and schools.

Carol Bowman | Learning In Color: Seeks to support APS' School Turnaround Strategy by raising the awareness of the impact that color has on learning and by using community resources (ie. volunteers, in-kind gifts of products and services and funding from corporate sponsorships) to paint the interior walls of classrooms and school buildings using research-based color theory.

Max Blau | The Atlanta News Project: Wants to create a digital-first newsroom that publishes stories exposing abuses of power, examining systems that uphold injustice, and enlightening Atlantans about potential solutions to our region’s most urgent problems.

Tamara Coleman | Co-LaB: Address the lack of affordable housing for low-income working individuals by creating access to affordable housing near transit and creating opportunities for residents to save more and increase their overall quality of life.

Mamie Harper | Carrie’s Closet: A mobile clothing closet that meets the immediate needs of children removed into care utilizing clothing donated from the community and working with DFCS and community agencies to offer clothing, car seats, strollers, diaper, and other items for free.

Kavi Vu | Wake Up Atlanta: Seeks to civically educate and engage Asian American millennials in Georgia through fun and digestible videos that are focused on local issues and elections.

Starr Davis | The Starr Institute: Creates safe homes that will provide girl Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) victims ages 7-17 with safety and stability by providing comprehensive victim's services, including court advocacy, crisis counseling, trauma-informed counseling, mentorship, education support services, support groups, life skills such as building/maintaining healthy relationships, empowerment and nutritional wellness.

Sourabh Jha | Mini City: Addresses the issue of long-term homelessness caused by lack of identification and vital records by streamlining the administrative processes for legal identification, vital records, and employment forms. Mini City is a resource hub that provides identification and employment opportunities to the homeless citizens of Atlanta.

Kristina Smith | Hope for Youth, Inc: Seeks to address some of the root causes of lack of minority female representation in tech through coding education, exposure to leadership opportunities, mentoring, and training our scholars to bring coding education to others around the world.

Mark-Anthony Mitchell | Greater Works: Seeks to break Southeast Atlanta’s epidemic of recidivism by utilizing new and existing resources to combat, unemployment, homelessness, and inadequate life skills of former offenders and by developing reentry programs that fight recidivism by providing leadership, advocacy, and empowerment to offenders and former offenders.

Quyionah Wingfield | Cool Moms Dance Too: Addressing depression, stress, anxiety and cardiovascular-related issues that Atlanta’s families and local communities with children aged 5 to 17 face by providing cultural dance wellness programs proven to be a powerful solution to improve mental, emotional and physical well-being. CMDToo incorporates proven dance movement therapy strategies and mental health awareness programming via classes, training, workshops and summer camps.

Join us as we round out our celebration of Earth month with the official launch of the Clean Energy Civic Dinners series, sponsored by the Georgia Sierra Club, and in partnership with the Partnership for Southern Equity, and Environment Georgia. 

Over the next three months conversations will be happening in coffee houses, at dinner tables, in living rooms, and across Greater Atlanta, about how the city of Atlanta is planning their transition to 100% clean energy by 2035. Learn how you can be a part of a local solution to climate change and ensure a just and equitable transition to a clean energy economy. 

Following the panel discussion, we will screen Reinventing Power, the groundbreaking documentary that will take you across the country to meet people whose lives were changed by clean energy.

Produced by the Sierra Club and Transit Pictures, this film takes us across the country to hear directly from the people making our clean energy future achievable. These individuals are working to rebuild what’s broken, rethink what’s possible, and revitalize communities.

Over the film’s 50 minutes, you’ll meet people in eight states whose lives were changed by the renewable energy industry while exploring various aspects of the clean energy industry from innovation to installation.

We will be serving light snacks, gourmet popcorn, beer, and wine.

Panelists

Coming soon!

About Our Partners:

Sierra Club - Georgia Chapter

Founded by legendary conservationist John Muir in 1892, the Sierra Club is now the nation's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. What makes the Sierra Club unique is that we have the grassroots power to win with 3.5 million members and supporters, 64 Chapters, and over 400 groups. Our successes range from protecting millions of acres of wilderness to helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. More recently, we've made history by leading the charge to move away from the dirty fossil fuels that cause climate disruption and toward a clean energy economy.

In the summer of 2018, the Georgia Sierra Club celebrated 35 years of protecting Georgia’s beautiful unique landscape. Our chapter is the largest grassroots environmental organization in the state of Georgia. Georgia Sierra Club members and supporters are more than 75,000 of your friends and neighbors. We have a robust outings program and have active committees working on forest and coastal protection, transit expansion, and clean energy. Inspired by nature, we work together to protect our communities and the planet.

Sierra Club Mission

To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth;

To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources;

To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment;

And to use all lawful means to carry out those objectives.