Community Voices

Vivienne has over two decades of expertise in public library program development, partnership building, community engagement, and outreach. She serves as Librarian III in the Exploration & Creativity Department at the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL). She leads the LAPL Full STEAM Ahead and Neighborhood Science initiatives, leveraging her extensive experience to advocate for open science, environmental literacy, participatory/citizen science, and sustainability in public libraries.

Patti has over four decades of community work with low income, immigrant and refugee communities (in Colorado, California, and Texas) and over a decade doing CBPR (community-based participatory research) addressing health disparities and organizing communities of practice. She has been blessed to teach over 3 decades at DU’s Graduate School of Social Work, do research with a longitudinal study of government workers in England, and work on the first Environmental Justice Advisory for the City of Denver’s Climate Action Sustainability & Resilience Office. Promoting food justice & food sovereignty is her current “jam.”

Grandmother Rabiah Nur is a mixed Indigenous medicine woman whose mission is to reconnect women to their roots in the Divine Feminine and all peoples to moving in respect for the Earth and each other through ritual and ceremonies through her writings, retreats and active listening to the voices of all beings.

Links to learn more about me:

Website: https://rabiahsol.wixsite.com/mysite

Instagram: @SpringofLight30

Fred Tutman is a grassroots community advocate for clean water in Maryland’s longest and deepest intrastate waterway and holds the title of Patuxent Riverkeeper, an organization that he founded in 2004. Prior to Riverkeeping, Fred spent nearly 25 years working as a media producer and consultant on telecommunications assignments all over the globe, including a long stint working with and advising traditional healers in West Africa and coverage of the Falkands conflict in Argentina on assignment by the BBC. After a late life sojourn into law school, in addition to his duties as a Waterkeeper, Fred has also taught classes in Environmental Law and Policy at various Colleges in Maryland. In his spare time he does trail maintenance on the Appalachian Trail when not exploring the Patuxent River by kayak. Fred is the recipient of numerous regional and state awards for his various environmental works on behalf of communities. He is the longest serving Waterkeeper in the Chesapeake region and the sole African-American Waterkeeper in the nation.