Greenbuild's 2025 Legacy Project

Greenbuild's 2025 Legacy Project was titled: Resiliency Studio for Sustainable Recovery. The Resiliency Studio is a welcoming, community-centered space designed to support families recovering from the Eaton Fire and residents of Pasadena and Altadena’s most impacted neighborhoods. This includes Altadena’s North Lake Avenue business district, where the fire destroyed key community staples such as a local hardware store, grocery stores, and the historic Charles S. Farnsworth Park is hurting a largely working-class community, where families already face systemic barriers to sustainable rebuilding and recovery. In Pasadena, the affected areas coincide with census tracts federally recognized as disadvantaged under the Justice40Census Tract Map Initiative. This space served as a climate resilience hub, providing hands-on tools, workshops, and sustainable resources to help community members rebuild with confidence, creativity, and care.

The studio offered resources that reduce household costs while promoting low-carbon lifestyles, such as sewing machines for clothing repair, bike maintenance stations, gardening and composting education, and induction cooking demonstrations. It also provided access to basic tools and equipment, available to the community, especially day laborers, many of whom lost essential job-related items in the fire, helping them get back on their feet and supporting their long-term recovery and livelihood.

Pop-up workshops, speaker events, and hands-on skill-sharing ensured the space is active, empowering, and culturally relevant. Inspired by both the urgent need for climate adaptation and the enduring strength of communities displaced by wildfire, this project aimed to restore a sense of belonging, agency, and hope.

Our vision was to create a replicable model of resilience through self-sufficiency, one that not only fills an immediate recovery need but also strengthens long-term environmental justice outcomes. By activating a currently underutilized storefront in a walkable, transit-accessible corridor, the Resiliency Studio brought visibility to sustainable rebuilding, makes resources tangible, and ensures that wildfire recovery is community-led and enduring, not just reactive.

Day One has 38 years of experience working alongside residents, young people, elected officials, and other stakeholders to strengthen and build vibrant, healthy communities. Our efforts focus on advancing public health, advocating for inclusive policies, engaging youth, igniting community-driven behavioral change, and fostering climate resilience.

Throughout the years, Day One’s dedication has earned numerous awards, increased grant funding, and, most importantly, significant public health policy victories. These accomplishments help address systemic inequities, promote social justice, combat bias, dismantle tokenism, and tackle social determinants of health, particularly within vulnerable, underserved communities.

The agency and its team are recognized leaders in youth advocacy, community engagement, coalition building, policy development, and environmental health across the San Gabriel Valley. Our team excels in outreach, facilitating community meetings, forming coalitions, and leading the charge in implementing community-driven strategies. By prioritizing evidence-based public health approaches and sustainable urban planning, we work to prevent chronic disease, promote healthy, active living, and build climate resilience in cities and neighborhoods.

Our recent accomplishments include:

• Partnered with the City of Pico Rivera to create and adopt a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan
• Collaborated with LACI, The Energy Coalition and the State of California to implement an induction stove retrofit and air quality monitoring pilot in Basset and Avocado Heights
• Served as the LA County Safe Clean Water Program Watershed Coordinator for the Upper San Gabriel Valley
• Bike Month Pasadena 2023 and 2024, featuring an array of events such as bike rides, social gatherings, and bike repair workshops.
• Organized Pasadena Walktober in October 2023 and 2024, which consisted of 24 unique walking tours throughout the city.
• Trained over 160 community members to administer Naloxone.
• Hosted 18 Rx Drug Take Back events.
• Organized and conducted “Project Sticker Shock” which is an outreach effort to off-sale alcohol retailers by distributing prevention campaign materials to raise awareness of the penalties of providing alcohol to minors.
• Tobacco Retail Licensing policy campaigns in Pomona and San Dimas aim to reduce youth access to tobacco products and change social norms surrounding tobacco use.
• Spearheaded community engagement for the Pomona ACTS Direct-to-Renter program, which provided renters in Pomona with energy-efficient appliances designed to help alleviate heat and other environmental challenges.
• Awarded the EPA Community Change Grant for GREEN (Green, Resilient, Energy Efficient Neighborhoods) San Gabriel Valley, a regional collaborative, led by six community-based, non-profit organizations: Day One, Active San Gabriel Valley, Sustainable Claremont, Tree People, GRID Alternatives, and the Council for Watershed Health.
• Awarded the Transformative Climate Communities Grant in partnership with the City of Pomona