River Network is excited to announce the publication of a new, free, self-paced, online training series based on Community-Centered Solutions for Green Gentrification and Displacement, a toolkit we published in September 2024. This new resource is now available through River Network’s Online Learning Platform.

The training series is designed to help community leaders work closely with their local partners to ensure that green investments to improve local waterways, water infrastructure and community resilience directly benefit all community members. The training series can be easily integrated into a one-day or multi-day workshop where leaders from multiple sectors in a community can learn together and begin to chart a course for local, collective action.

We initially published the Community-Centered Solutions for Green Gentrification and Displacement toolkit in response to many communities’ experiences. “Green investments” in communities that need them the most – e.g., for projects to restore waterways, build parks, trails, greenways; or to install green infrastructure projects to manage stormwater – don’t always benefit whole communities. In fact, multiple studies show that much-needed greening projects can lead to a reduced sense of belonging among long-time residents of a neighborhood, coinciding with an increase in property values and followed by the displacement of those very residents.

The toolkit was developed with community partners and highlights four underlying values that are also the foundation for the new online training series:

1. Understanding community history and making preservation of that history and culture a priority.
2. Creating community-driven processes and valuing community members as experts by listening to and integrating community voices.
3. Recognizing and sharing power by providing access to resources, funding, and decision-making.
4. Balancing multiple community needs, including environmental sustainability and stewardship, economic prosperity and resilience and social well-being.

The online training series is organized into three separate modules made up of written and video training materials, case studies, exercises and discussion boards. It also includes an accompanying Training Series Workbook. All of the learning material within each module is also accessible via audio recording of the written content.

With this new resource, River Network wants to support members across our network in establishing local, multi-sector partnerships to drive investments that support healthy waterways while also generating broader community benefits in sectors such as housing, economic and workforce development, culture and the arts, and public health. We have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past, and to create practices that give communities opportunities to lead, share their community priorities, and create policies that allow them to stay in place.

We hope you will dive into this online training series and look forward to seeing you in the discussion boards!

This training was developed with funding from Wells Fargo.