AzLand

This week, the AZ(LAND) Community Academy partnered with the City of Phoenix Parks & Recreation at Desert West Community Center in Maryvale to bring environmental and climate justice education directly into the community. While we’re a hyper-local grassroots organization rooted in South Phoenix, our work reaches communities across Arizona wherever we’re invited because every neighborhood deserves access to culturally grounded environmental and climate justice education.

Together, we explored the Indigenous teachings of the Three Sisters that include corn, beans, and squash and how these plants represent resilient and sustainable solutions for today’s needed food systems. We connected these teachings to the realities of food apartheid, examining how historic policies like redlining continue to shape access to healthy food today while highlighting why climate resilient, culturally relevant foods remain essential for building stronger communities.

To help prepare youth for the new school year, the youth also created maize worry doll keychains to accompany their free backpacks. We were able to support local artist Stephanie Verdin who was Inspired by the tradition of corn husk dolls found across Indigenous cultures including the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), where corn husk dolls carry teachings of humility, gratitude, and the sacred relationship between people and maize. These teachings remind us that environmental and climate justice cannot be separated from culture, story, and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Thank you to the City of Phoenix Parks & Recreation team and all the families who joined us in Maryvale. Here’s to a school year rooted in culture, community, and care.

Recap of our River Walk with /Arizona Community Foundation: From restoring the Rio Salado to reimagining what environmental justice can look like in South Phoenix, this coalition is proving what’s possible when organizations work with community and not in silos. Together, we are building pathways toward environmentally resilient, culturally grounded, and community-led futures in our barrios.

Through this multi-sector partnership, AZ(LAND) Fund is helping elevate environmental education, community capacity, culture, and ecological restoration by creating opportunities for residents to engage in stewardship, storytelling, and climate learning rooted in place. The Galleria is contributing sustainable and resilient design practices that center cultural relevance, public space activation, and community healing. continues leading restoration and stewardship efforts along the Rio Salado organizing volunteer restoration, protecting native habitat, and reconnecting people to the river through Indigenous and community-based care practices.

Together with Indigenous leaders, educators, youth, artists, researchers, and residents, we are advancing a shared vision for watershed restoration, environmental education, and climate resilience that honors the history, culture, and ecological knowledge of our communities. This work is not just about restoring or conserving land it is about bringing JUSTICE, restoring relationships, memory, stewardship, and collective power for future generations.

Read more here: https://archive.is/20260504150959/https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2026/05/04/community-groups-look-for-ways-to-protect-arizonans-from-extreme-heat/89828085007/

📸 thank you to .phx.photographer for the beautiful photos.