Case Studies
Village of Oak Park LEED
Seven Generations Ahead in collaboration with Village of Oak Park elected officials was the catalyst behind the LEED Gold-certified design of the Village of Oak Park’s new $30 million Public Works Facility (the first of its kind to be LEED certified in Illinois) and the achievement of a $100,000 LEED design grant for the facility. SGA collaborated on the creation of municipal policy incorporating LEED standards into planned unit developments, and provided education on green building incentive programs and policy initiatives that aided the recently-signed 2009 Village of Oak Park policy requiring LEED standards for all public building development. SGA’s involvement has led to over $75 million worth of LEED-certified building development, with several more projects in the planning stages.
Grand Rapids, MI and West Michigan Community Sustainability Partnerships
In collaboration with the City of Grand Rapids, Grand Valley State University, and partner a5 Group Inc., SGA facilitated strategic planning with the Grand Rapids Community Sustainability Partnership (CSP) and five CSPs in West Michigan toward the goal of identifying key focus areas for Grand Rapids CSP strategy development and exploring the potential for collaboration among West Michigan CSPs.
Oak Park River Forest Community Works
In collaboration with the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation, SGA is leading the facilitation of an Environmental Sustainability planning process involving Village governments, townships, school districts, park districts, libraries, volunteer commissions, congregations, business associations, hospitals, and community organizations. The process incorporates baseline data aggregation, comprehensive strategy development, recommendations for fundable projects, resource leveraging, and strategy prioritizing and implementation.
City of Aurora
As follow-up to the GreenTown Aurora Conference, SGA collaborated with the City of Aurora to design a community-wide sustainability plan process and framework to build upon City of Aurora sustainability implementation and broaden its influence among local City stakeholders outside of municipal government.
Metropolitan Mayors Caucus
SGA is collaborating with the Delta Institute and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus to develop a 15-community pilot project focusing on baseline data aggregation for key community resource use, and a subsequent best practices education and planning process that could serve as a template and case study for comprehensive sustainable community planning, implementation, measurement, and reporting.
Midwest Community Sustainability Education
Through presentations at mayors’ conferences to forums highlighting sustainable city models at annual GreenTown conferences, SGA and partners provide elected officials and community decision-makers with models on leading edge initiatives which support the transformation toward sustainable community development.
Zero Waste Planning and Events
SGA has designed and implemented Zero Waste events for local communities and institutions in Chicago, IL St. Louis, MO, Grand Rapids, MI, and Oak Park, IL, ranging from business conferences to community-wide festivals to farmers markets to university-based educational events and conferences. SGA supports Zero Waste community and institutional planning that increases recycling, eliminates waste at its source, and converts food scraps to compost, while supporting delivery of Zero Waste events.
Transforming the Oak Park School Lunch Program
Seven Generations Ahead has worked on building a sustainable, healthy school lunch program within the Village of Oak Park, connecting local sustainable farms and distributors to schools and providing educational programming that teaches children and adults about the benefits of healthy eating and locally grown food. SGA successfully catalyzed the transformation of the Oak Park school lunch program to a healthier satellite lunch program model through parent and community educational forums and workshops, wide-spread implementation of Fresh from the Farm pilot PTO healthy lunches, and district-wide implementation of Fresh from the Farm curriculum and program activities. Through a USDA Community Food Projects grant, SGA brought resources and programming to support the development of the first school organic vegetable and fruit gardens at Hatch and Longfellow, and has worked with other D97 schools to support their garden development. Through individual training, teachers and parents continue to implement food tastings curricula, farm expeditions, and school gardens. SGA has conducted Wellness Policy Implementation Training for all District 97 Wellness Teams, while working with school food service to increase the volume and variety of locally grown fruits and vegetables in the school lunch program.
