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Growing Sustainable Communities Together Via the Calumet Collaborative

“Nature doesn’t have jurisdictional boundaries,” said Sarah Coulter, Executive Director of The Calumet Collaborative as part of her address at an event that focused on the Calumet Collaborative. Ms. Coulter continued, “Illinois and Northwest Indian should coordinate our efforts strategically,” when she referred to the Calumet Region whose boundaries extend across county and state lines. On Thursday, May 2, the Prairie State Regional Sustainability Network (PSRSN), a program of the South Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium (SMHEC) held the Growing Sustainable Communities Together Speaker Series event hosted by SMHEC Member Institution, Prairie State College. Twenty guests attended the event to learn more about the Calumet region and how the Calumet Collaborative addresses a number of consensus goals as outlined in the Greenest Region Compact (GRC).

Allessandra Kummelehne, Executive Director of SMHEC welcomed guests to Prairie State College and offered a brief history on the PSRSN, its formation, and goals moving forward, before inviting Ms. Coulter to the podium to address the audience. Ms. Coulter spent the next 45 minutes providing the audience with a remarkable presentation where she defined the Calumet Region and provided an overview of the various sustainability initiatives occurring at the Calumet Collaborative and in the region.

The morning continued with a workshop style session designed to engage attendees in the GRC Framework, contribute to an online asset database being developed by Jacquelin Knox, an Americoprs Member for SMHEC, and provide networking amongst peers.

According to Allessandra Kummelehne, Executive Director for SMHEC, “The results of the work in the Prairie State Region are the essence of SMHEC's link and leverage initiative - connecting people, communities and resources to make lasting improvements to our local economy, ecology and social equity.”

The event was sponsored by Arena, ComEd, Constellation, Nania Energy, Inc, and Wight & Company.

The South Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium (SMHEC) is a unique partnership between two-year and four-year, public, private and for-profit higher education institutions in the south metropolitan area, extending south from the city of Chicago to the western border of Joliet, the southern border of Kankakee and east to the Illinois-Indiana state line. The mission of the Consortium is for its members to collaborate to enhance educational services and programs in the region.

In 2014, SMHEC launched a regional effort to “link” and “leverage” community resources to make the Chicago southland the “greenest region.” Communities within SMHEC’s boundaries began meeting regularly to share success, identify areas of opportunities and leverage resources. In 2016, our key stakeholders made the decision to create three distinct sub-regions, identified through community college boundaries, to begin and expand sustainability efforts and thus the Prairie State Regional Sustainability Network was created. Through these groups, this event and many other initiatives, have been launched.

For more information about SMHEC or Link and Leverage, please contact Allessandra Kummelehne at akummelehne@prairiestate.edu.

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