The Southwest Santa Rosa Extreme Heat Project had a kickoff event at Latino Service Provider’s annual Winter Celebration held on December 12, 2025. With the Southwest Santa Rosa Extreme project website being live, and the newsletters ready to go, the team was excited to gather with LSP staff, family members, and other Youth Promotores alumni to get our project introduced. The event had an amazing turnaround with almost 100 people coming in and out of the community celebration

Youth as Experts Who knows a community better than the residents who live there? That's the question that the Climate Impact Innovators set out to answer during the December 9th community asset mapping workshop. The belief that community members, including youth, are experts of their own community is the foundational idea of asset mapping. A tool used by planners and community engagement practitioners, asset mapping allows residents to identify the resources that strengthen t

Youth Heat Monitoring Results The November 18th meeting kicked-off with a dive deep into the results of last month's heat monitoring activity. Cesar Estien from Second Nature presented the findings, which confirmed what many had suspected: impervious surfaces like pavement trap heat, – increasing temperatures – while tree and shaded areas have a cooling effect.  These maps show the average temperature, amount of vegetation (NDVI), impervious surface, and canopy cover in Sou

Youth Led Heat Monitoring In Action In October 2025, the Climate Impact Innovators reconvened for a hands-on community heat monitoring workshop. Greenbelt Alliance and Latino Service Providers, working with Second Nature , hosted a workshop to allow the youth to explore their neighborhoods and observe how different environmental features, such as tree canopy and impervious surfaces, such as driveways, roads, and parking lots, influence how we experience heat.  Using hand held