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MI Healthy Climate Corps welcoming its second cohort

Lansing street with sign that says "food scrap drop off"
Sophia Saliby
/
WKAR-MSU
The city of Lansing's first MI Healthy Climate Corps member helped develop a new food scraps and compost drop-off program.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy is launching its second cohort of the MI Healthy Climate Corps.

Members of the first cohort helped the city of East Lansing evaluate its properties for solar panel installations and worked with the city of Lansing to create a food scrap drop-off program among other projects.

Angel Squalls is the program manager. She says this second cohort of 31 members will dedicate the next 11 months to supporting local communities with climate action initiatives.

“The goals is just to add added capacity to these different organizations to help us reach carbon neutrality by 2050 as laid out by our governor. ”

Corps members are placed with municipalities, utilities, state agencies and community organizations.

Squalls says some of the new projects include putting together watershed management plans, tracking energy and water usage and implementing energy and solar installations.

“Community service is the most important way to build connections throughout the community, establish important relationships with our community members that are needed to help actually implement successful programming and new initiatives throughout the state and locally," she said.

She says the program is also helping develop the state's green workforce.

Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

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