At a glance
This project, in collaboration with Front and Centered, empowers frontline communities (including Tribal, low-income, rural,… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2025-2026
- Mini
- Awarded
- $4,391
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
Workshop Plan
This project, in collaboration with Front and Centered, empowers frontline communities (including Tribal, low-income, rural, and BIPOC groups) to engage with water and climate justice. Participants will take part in co-designed workshops in which they are treated as experts, learning to collect, interpret, govern, and tell stories about their local water systems and climate challenges. The workshops, held in January–February 2026, will combine embodied practices, hands-on technical sensing, and digital storytelling. By focusing on water justice, an urgent and often overlooked area of climate equity, participants gain skills to exercise agency over data and shape narratives about their lived experiences. Through this project, community members develop technical, analytical, and storytelling skills that strengthen resilience and build capacity to address environmental challenges, while advancing equity-focused climate solutions in Washington State. Funds support the pay of undergraduate and graduate student researchers.
Frontline communities, including Tribal communities, low-income groups, rural communities, and BIPOC communities, are impacted first and hardest by climate change [1], particularly through the disruption of water systems [2-4]. Recent disinvestment from climate programs has further increased the burden of climate impacts, necessitating critical capacity-building for frontline communities [5-7].
At the same time, technologies, data, and maps can play a role in supporting such essential climate capacity-building efforts [8]. For instance, local data on issues including air pollution or maps can support justice-oriented efforts, from prison abolition [12] to environmental activism [8]. We build on these prior efforts and propose a community engaged research project in collaboration with Front and Centered, a coalition of frontline community-led organizations committed to climate justice. We aim to build community capacity around water and climate justice through co-design workshops where participants are centered as experts. Participants will engage in place-based sensing, mapping, and data storytelling of community water-related and climate issues.
While climate issues broadly affect frontline communities, our co-design workshops focus on water-related issues. Water justice is an urgent and often overlooked subset of climate justice. The 2021 Water Futures Project in Oregon [7], for instance, found that rural and low-income communities were concerned about water quality and availability, citing experiences of poor tastes or smells from their drinking water. These water-related challenges were directly linked to limited community capacity [7]. Washington’s frontline communities face similar difficulties accessing drinking water, and being exposed to polluted water [9-10], an issue further exacerbated by increasing wildfires. Prior programs working with frontline communities in Washington and beyond have focused on air quality, neglecting water-related challenges [11].
Through our project, we will empower participants to exercise agency over data through its entire lifecycle–from (1) data collection, (2) sensemaking, (3) governance, and (4) storytelling to shape and craft narratives about their experiences with water- and climate-related challenges. We will run five 1.5-2 hour workshop sessions in January-February 2026, both in-person and virtually, with approximately 40 participants total. Workshops will focus on embodied sensing, technical sensing, data justice, and digital storytelling. The workshops build on pilot workshops from May/June 2025 with community members and iterative consultations with Front and Centered. Sessions will begin with embodied practices through photovoice, followed by hands-on technical sensing for water quality, and conclude with data ownership and counter-narrative skill-building. This final phase draws on Front and Centered’s co-governance model of data and community-led storytelling practices.
Sources:
[1] Maiko Patschke. 2024. How we define frontline communities in policy affects their lives.
[2] Caitlin R Proctor, Juneseok Lee, David Yu, Amisha D Shah, and Andrew J Whelton. 2020. Wildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination.
[3] Caitlin R Proctor, William J Rhoads, Tim Keane, Maryam Salehi, Kerry Hamilton, Kelsey J Pieper, David M Cwiertny, Michele Prévost, and Andrew J Whelton. 2020. Considerations for large building water quality after extended stagnation
[4] MJ Paul, SD LeDuc, MG Lassiter, LC Moorhead, PD Noyes, and SG Leibowitz. 2022. Wildfire induces changes in receiving waters: A review with considerations for water quality management.
[5] Bev Wilson. 2020. Urban heat management and the legacy of redlining
[6] Diana Wasaanangokwe Seales. 2025. Grassroots Climate Justice Innovation Theory. Ph. D. Dissertation. Michigan State University
[7] Alaí Reyes-Santos, Cheyenne Holliday, Stacey Dalgaard, Taren Evans, and Kristiana Teige Witherill. 2021. Oregon Water Futures Project Report: 2020-21 Community Engagement. (2021)
[8] Lillian Flawn and Robert Soden. 2024. Autonomy, Affect, and Reframing: Unpacking the Data Practices of Grassroots Climate Justice Activists.
[9] Jonathan Yoder and Crystal Raymond. 2022. Climate Change and Stream flow:Barriers and Opportunities. Technical Report Publication 22-11-029. Water Resources Program Washington State Department of Ecology, Olympia, Washington.
[10] K.A. Bumbaco, G.S. Mauger, L.K. Colligan, L.W. O’Neill, and D.J. Hoekema. 2025. Pacific Northwest Water Year 2024 Impacts Assessment. Technical Report. A collaboration among the Washington State Climate Office, Climate Impacts Group, Oregon Climate Service, Idaho Department of Water Resources, and NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System.
[11] Amanda Meng and Carl DiSalvo. 2018. Grassroots resource mobilization through counter-data action.
[12] Dashiel Carrera, Ufuoma Ovienmhada, Safa Hussein, and Robert Soden. 2023. The Unseen Landscape of Abolitionism: Examining the role of digital maps in grassroots organizing.
Program on Climate Change - Climate Science Certificate,
Graduate Steering Committee, Researchers in Community,
Computer Science & Engineering,
Campus Sustainability Fund,
CSE Diverse Genders in Research
Amelia Dǒgan
Project lead
- dogan@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 3 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- Information School
Nino Migineishvili
Team member
- ninom@cs.washington.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 4 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- Computer Science & Engineering
Lindah Kotut
Team member
- kotut@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Faculty
- Affiliated groups
- Information School
Isabel Carrera Zamanillo
Community Learning and Innovation Strategist [main contact and workshop co-facilitator]
- isabel@frontandcentered.org
- Affiliation and department
- Front and Centered
Request amount and budget
Plans for financial longevity
Upon the conclusion of CSF funding, our project will maintain itself as follows.
- First, the workshop materials and curricula developed under CSF funding will remain available online on an open-access digital repository, accessible at no cost to the public. This digital resource will serve as a continuous vehicle for dissemination, ensuring the long-term availability of our educational content.
- Second, during our workshops, we will purchase water sensors for participants to use. The cost of these materials will be covered by the Community Engagement Computing Initiative. Thus, participants will be able to maintain the equipment they need for the workshops even after the CSF funding ceases.
- Third, we will have a central website that we will maintain, where we will provide a hub for updates and other materials.
The project timeline (outlined in the attached PDF) began in September 2025. We've started the process of planning and co-designing the workshop sessions. The core of the project, the in-person and virtual workshops, will be conducted in January and February of 2026. In particular our general plan is as follows:
- Develop materials (Sep-Oct): We've started outlining all the activities that we will conduct for the workshops, research materials and resources to shape, and developed a starting curriculum. In the next coming weeks, we will finalize slide-decks that put together all of our workshop content.
- Pilot (Oct-Nov): We will run pilot workshops with the Researchers in Community group to test the speed, content, and flow of our workshops. The Researchers in Community group is made up researchers across UW who conduct participatory research, and are familiar with projects geared towards public and community education.
- GSRA Recruitment (Oct-Nov): We have already started recruiting students, both graduate and undergraduate, but will formalize this more in the next coming weeks. Our goal is to recruit one Ph.D. student and two undergraduate students.
- Finalize Logistics (Oct-Dec): We have already set the dates for the in-person and virtual workshops, and began purchasing materials (such as water sensors). In the next coming weeks, we will determine a good meeting location, food catering options, participant recruitment materials, and so forth.
- Recruit Participants (Nov-Dec): We will begin recruiting participants. This will be done through Front & Centered coalition members, events, as well as through their website. We will follow-up with community members multiple times to allow for several rounds of enrollment in the workshops.
- Distribute Sensors and Pre-Workshop Survey (Jan): In early January, we will ship water sensors to participants who will be joining our virtual sessions. We will also distribute pre-workshop surveys to all participants.
- Run Workshops (Jan-Feb): The in-person workshops will take place January 24 and January 31, while the virtual workshops will take place January 21st to February 11th.
- Surveys (Jan-Mar): We will conduct any outstanding surveys or one-on-one interviews with participants after the end of the workshops.
- Qualitative Analysis (Feb-Mar): During the workshops, we will collect participant artifacts. This will include any notes they take, photos and drawings they produce, and audio recordings of workshops. In February, we will begin transcribing audio recordings, and embark on a qualitative analysis of the data.
- Curriculum Publication (Feb-Mar): We will publish the curriculum that we developed for other educators on OER. This is where previous Front and Centered workshops have been published, and allows coalition members and the public to replicate the workshops.
- Community Dissemination and Manuscript Drafting (Jan-May): Throughout this whole process, we will begin drafting a research paper for publication. Findings from the research paper will be disseminated to community members before publication.
Plans for long-term project management
To ensure the continuity of our project after the current project leads graduate, we are developing several succession strategies. First, we are building connections with frontline communities through our work with Front and Centered. This relationship will remain intact after the graduation of project leads through the continued participation of Lindah Kotut. Second, we will systematically train younger graduate and undergraduate students to build off of our work and continue engaging with Front and Centered. By doing so, we are ensuring a sustainable lifecycle of the project. Additionally, we will publish all curricula created as part of this project openly, ensuring that our methods are accessible to anyone, indefinitely. Moreover, we will publish our research findings in peer-reviewed academic publications. This approach not only contributes to the academic community but ensures that the methodologies we used are available to others post-graduation. Through these strategies, we aim to guarantee the long-term sustainability and continuation of our project's impact.
Problem statement
The project aims to support climate-related capacity in frontline communities. This is in line with UW’s consistent goal to engage with frontline communities, such as work done through the EarthLab, to expand outreach and to support sustainability-related goals in the broader Seattle region. Our workshops are distinct in that they center community members as experts as opposed to centering academics as authoritative knowledge holders. We do this by emphasizing embodied experiences and lived knowledge of community members as valid “sensors”, while also teaching technical data practices as ways of knowing. We seek to expand what counts as climate data, increase community agency and resilience, and support self-determination. Participants will engage with climate and water-related data, collect their own measurements, and develop their own counter-narratives.
This project was inspired both by lived experience, past research, and critical needs. Both Doğan and Kotut, for instance, are part of frontline communities and have committed research partnerships with frontline communities in the past. In a previous study, we worked with frontline communities and asked them about climate technologies. A common theme from participants was that they lacked and requested more technical skill-building activities. We thus designed the present workshop series to address those gaps.
Finally, our project emphasizes education not just of frontline communities, but also of students at UW. We are hoping to recruit two undergraduate students and one graduate student. Throughout this project, we will emphasize mentoring the students in the research design. They will be included in research publications, and will present findings at undergraduate poster sessions.
Problem context
The Puget Sound has been seeing noticeable and accelerated signs of the impacts of climate change. The average annual temperatures have warmed, sea levels have already risen, and large-scale forest fires and flooding has increased [1, 2]. Amidst this backdrop, frontline communities–including those that have long-term partnerships with UW, have lost funding to support their work. Front and Centered, our partner organization and one with ties to UW, recently lost over $15 million in funding due to national climate disinvestment. Despite these challenges, they continue to be deeply committed and involved in this project. Thus, our project fits into the UW ecosystem by extending and continuing UW’s work with local communities. However, we are distinct in focusing on water justice as well as digital literacy combined.
Furthermore, our project is primarily focused on increasing collective action. The idea for the workshop itself has come from the needs and desires of our community members and our community partners. We are building tangible technical and non-technical skills in the community to support overall community capacity and resiliency.
Source:
[1] Biggs, Heidi R., and Audrey Desjardins. "High water pants: Designing embodied environmental speculation."
[2] Guillaume Mauger, Joseph Casola, Harriet Morgan, Ronda Strauch, Brittany Jones, Beth Curry, Tania Busch Isaksen, Lara Whitely Binder, Meade Krosby, and Amy Snover. 2015. State of Knowledge: Climate Change in Puget Sound.
Measure the impacts
| Impact / goal | Metric(s) of success | UW stakeholders impacted |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity-building for frontline communities in Washington | 40 frontline community members will be enrolled in the workshops. We will measure the perceived sense of agency before and after the workshop to determine how effective our sessions were. | Graduate, Academic staff |
| Mentorship for graduate and undergraduate students | We will recruit 3 students (2 undergraduate and 1 graduate) as part of the project. They will be directly involved in the project development and implementation. | Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Public workshop curriculum to be used by UW students, researchers, community partners, and beyond | We will publish our educational curricula publicly for other educators and community outreach planners to use and access for free. | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni, Academic staff |
| Art installation at UW Library | We will apply to create an art exhibit of participant artifacts at the UW Library. | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni, Academic staff, Admin staff |
Communication tactics and tools
In the first outreach stage during which we are recruiting undergraduate students, we will use
- Department-wide DUB, CSE and iSchool Slack channels
- Department-wide mailing lists
- Personal websites
In our second stage of outreach during which we are presenting our research findings to UW and the broader community, we will use
- Art exhibits at the UW library
- Poster sessions at UW
- One-page research summaries for frontline communities
- Websites to publish workshop curricula
- Academic publications
Outreach communication plan
We will do outreach about our project in two stages. The first stage will be to recruit undergraduate and graduate students and bring them onto the project. We will promote our project and advertise to students by: (i) posting about our position in the CSE and iSchool slack channels, (ii) sending our information about our position to mailing lists, and (iii) making a public sign-up form available on our personal websites.
The second stage will be to share the impact of our project with UW and the broader community. Our main form of communication within UW will be through a UW library exhibit that we will put on with maps, projects and stories that we collect from our workshops. Our undergraduate students will also present the research findings at poster sessions in CSE and the iSchool. Beyond UW, we will communicate our research outputs to frontline communities by sharing a one-page research summary of our paper in an accessible way. We will also make our workshop curriculum accessible to the public for those who also want to organize similar educational sessions. Finally, we will share our research findings through academic publications.
Student involvement
Our project includes two undergraduate students and one graduate student. We purposefully focus on quality rather than quantity in that we want to support professional development for the students we recruit. During the recruiting stage, we will gauge where the students are at and what skills they would most like to develop through this research process. They will take an active part in research meetings, in research designs, in facilitating the workshops, and in the paper writing. We will meet with each student one-on-one weekly as well to make sure that their goals are being met and they are engaged throughout this project. Our goal is for the students to have a final research product they can present at poster sessions around UW.