About CREATE Praxis
Community Research and Education in Action for True Empowerment (CREATE) Praxis advances actionable solutions for more resilient communities grounded in lived experiences and learning by doing. CREATE Praxis is a fiscally sponsored project of Empowerment WORKS, Inc.
Our Approach
CREATE Praxis partners with community-based organizations and coalitions to center directly impacted residents in the decisions that affect their everyday lives through participatory action research and popular education approaches. We believe that creativity, imagination and embodied knowledge are at the heart of personal and collective transformation. We often draw on arts-based research tools like photo-voice, digital storytelling and community mapping to encourage participants to tap into their diverse ways of knowing and being in the world. Below are the principles that guide our work.
Centering lived experiences
Learning by doing is a valued source of knowledge and ancestral wisdom
Community ownership of data
Those most impacted hold the greatest insights into the solutions
Community co-authorship
We lead with our visions for solutions and we speak for ourselves
Tending of spirit
Caring for community means creating spaces to care for our whole selves
Intergenerational collaboration
Seven generations guide our decisions about our way forward
Research to action
We reflect on our past actions in setting intentions for future action
What We Do
We provide project development, management and evaluation support to community-based organizations and multi-stakeholder collaborations for environmental health and justice. Below are some of our current partnerships.
OYACA: Oakland Youth Advancing Climate Action
- Partners: California State University East Bay, Ceres Policy Research, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, East Bay Academy for Young Scientists, Frontline Catalysts, San Francisco State University
- Goal: Develop, pilot and evaluate a youth climate action leadership curriculum
- Role: Project management, curriculum development & implementation support
- Funders: University of California Office of the President & Strategic Growth Council
Resilient Roots/Frontline Voices
- Partners: Frontline Catalysts and StoryCenter
- Goal: Pilot and integrate a digital storytelling curriculum into youth climate action programs
- Role: Project management, curriculum development & implementation support
- Funders: Switzer Foundation
HEATED: Homegrown Experts Aiming to Transform Emergencies and Disasters
- Partners: Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice & Ceres Policy Research
- Goal: Develop a community heat resilience plan with systems-impacted youth and families in the Fruitvale District and West Oakland CA
- Role: Project management & community resilience planning support
- Funders: Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation
Coachella Prospera Evaluation & Tracking
- Partners: City of Coachella, University of California Berkeley, Alianza Coachella Valley, Bound, Center for Employment Training, Chelsea Investment Corporation, Desert Recreation District, GRID Alternatives, Kounkuey Design Initiative, LEAP Institute, Pacific Southwest Community Development Corporation, Southern California Mountains Foundation
- Goal: Track and assess the impacts of a comprehensive community climate resilience initiative in Coachella CA
- Role: Community & partner engagement in evaluation planning and implementation for Coachella Prospera
- Funders: Strategic Growth Council
Who We Are
Catalina Garzón-Galvis, Principal Practitioner
Catalina (Andean/Andina) brings over twenty years of experience with facilitating collaborative planning, curriculum development, media arts and participatory action research projects for environmental and climate justice with community-based organizations and coalitions. Her past collaborative planning projects include conducting a social vulnerability assessment of local climate change impacts to create a community climate adaptation and resilience plan with Oakland Climate Action Coalition members and a health impact assessment of selected strategies in the Alameda County Goods Movement Plan with the Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative. Her past media arts projects include developing a foto-novela on gentrification and the school-to-prison pipeline with youth leaders from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice and coordinating a digital storytelling project with Indigenous and women farmworker leaders on heat-related illness and wildfire smoke with Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, Lideres Campesinas, Public Health Institute and StoryCenter. Catalina has a BA in Environmental Sciences and a Masters in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.
Jacy Bowles, Participatory Action Researcher
Jacy (Diné/Xicana) brings nearly ten years of experience with arts-based storytelling, program planning and outreach for social justice and philanthropy-based organizations. Most recently Jacy worked to indigenize the climate justice storytelling curriculum at Climate Advocates Voces Unidas (CAVU) and facilitated curriculum sessions with high school students in Santa Fe NM as a Fellow with the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. With the Obsidian Collective, she led community-based participatory research to understand the individual and collective decolonizing journeys of frontline activists and co-led diverse community events including powwows, art shows and film screenings. She also previously worked with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland where she conducted know-your-rights presentations and coordinated post-release accompaniment support for immigrant detainees and asylum seekers. Jacy has a BA in Sociology from San Francisco State University and an MA in Community, Liberation, Indigenous and Ecopsychologies from Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Upcoming Events
March 19 2025 (Webinar) Digital Storytelling for Environmental and Climate Justice with StoryCenter and the Switzer Foundation
September 2025 (Online Training) Participatory Research and Digital Storytelling with StoryCenter
