RESILIENT CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

Urban Forestry and Community Greening - we partnered with 3 neighborhoods, the Minneapolis Health Department, MPRB and Birch Tree to organize tree education workshops and tree planting events with parents and kids working side by side with trained foresters to plant trees at child care centers, schools, parks and nonprofit affordable housing locations. We offered the tree education sessions in both English and Spanish to engage Latine community members to learn about the benefits of trees, how to correctly plant trees and care for them, how to manage tree pests and about opportunities for careers in Forestry. We're supporting 4 neighborhoods to increase their tree coverage from 15% up to 40% by ensuring that all new trees are planted correctly and are watered weekly for the first 3 years to get well established to provide benefits for decades to come. https://rccmn.co/trees Through our Growing Communities outreach with Hennepin County we engaged community members to help plan a new pollinator garden that is being developed on a vacant lot in an industrial area in Eden Prairies that is adjacent to a regional bike trail. RCC is partnering with Landbridge Ecological and Hennepin County to transform a formerly overgrown lot near 7690 Corporate Way in Eden Prairie into a native pollinator habitat. The project aims to restore biodiversity, with planting scheduled to follow invasive species removal, and will be maintained to create a sustainable ecosystem. https://eplocalnews.org/2025/05/22/from-blight-to-bloom-overgrown-lot-to-be-transformed-into-pollinator-garden/ Through this project RCC, Hennepin Co. Northern Gardener and Project Sweetie Pie hosted a Community Garden Leader's Fall Harvest Celebration that brought together 70 urban garden leaders and nonprofit, city and county partners to reflect on this growing season and plan what we wanted to work on over the winter to get ready for next summer. RCC and the MN State Horticultural Society are planning to Co-launch a city wide community garden leaders network in the spring of 2026 to organize garden hubs in South, SE, North and NE Minneapolis to distribute more seeds, plants, compost and mulch to support 50 community gardens to grow and share more fresh prorduce https://rccmn.co/gardens-food-pollinators/

Healthy and Energy Efficient Homes - Through home energy workshops and door to door outreach we supported more than 200 households to make home energy and health improvements in partnership with neighborhoods. the Center for Energy Environment, Frontier Energy, SRC, cities and utilities. Hennepin County Green Partners supported our Corcoran & Phillips home energy efficiency workshops and community dinners to support home owners who had received energy audits to get projects done with encouragement from neighbors and connections with quality contractors. https://rccmn.co/corcoran-saves-energy/ With support from the MPCA RCC partnered with the 14 cities active with the Ramsey Co League of Local Governments and metro CERTS to organize successful home energy outreach with residents of a manufactured home park community in Vadnais Heights and Shoreview volunteers organizing a similar campaign. https://rccmn.co/manufactured-homes/ With support from Hennepin County Climate and Energy, RCC's Program Director co-organized monthly Indoor Air Quality Peer Learning sessions with 20 families at Little Earth of United Tribes. Residents learned from resource speakers steps they can take to create healthier homes. We're following up to support the Little Earth Housing Corporation and partners to maximize the energy efficiency and health improvements of their campus wide renovation with 220 town homes. https://rccmn.co/indoor-air-quality/