Strive toward equitable engagement of all stakeholders

Bridging the gap between government capacity and community needs

Our Vision

We seek to accelerate equitable stakeholder engagement and management and empower underserved communities to address major societal challenges such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, food systems, biodiversity, and pollution.

We address two key challenges for government agencies

  1. technical infrastructure by transitioning from ad-hoc, fragmented processes that rely on coarse data or individual staff knowledge to scalable and enduring institutional knowledge

  2. relationship building by overcoming historical relational challenges between government and community by providing consistent and effective community connection and continuity.

2023 Roadmap

Using the NSF SBIR Phase I grant we will:

OBJECTIVE 1

Engage community representatives and governments in a dialog to surface their needs and co-create a tool that can meet the need of both

OBJECTIVE 2

Test the feasibility of a technology infrastructure that can connect governments and communities, and surface the needs of the communities.

We invite you to take a four-minute survey to help us better understand the challenges that you have been facing during the engagement process.

Whether you represent a government agency, or a community based organization (CBO) ,i.e, none-profits, local and neighborhood organizations, etc, we would love to hear from you.

Agencies face many challenges in implementing
Environmental Justice Policies

Through our research and interviews, we understand agencies could use support in implementing environmental justice policies to help address:

  • A need for deep knowledge of underserved communities

  • Staff capacity and turnover

  • Training needs in inclusive stakeholder engagement

  • A need for easy use of technology tools.

In addition, the success of such engagement activities is scattershot and often not monitored, creating inconsistencies in the agencies, and frustration and confusion in communities. By creating a fully integrated platform for communities, we have the opportunity to connect similar projects across the community, share resources, and reduce burdens to community organizations, while advancing support for effective technical assistance and funding.

Origin story

In 2021 Calm Waters Group LLC, founded by Marcus Griswald, and Climate Data Hub, founded by Sumeet Sandhu, joined forces to tackle the lack of proper support infrastructure to do equitable stakeholder management at scale. After talking to several government agencies, we found a strong partner in Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

In 2023, after receiving an NSF SBIR Phase I grant, we grew the team and continued work toward building and understanding of community needs and creating a platform to connect governments and CBOs.