Over twenty years of fighting for healthy homes, schools, and neighborhoods.
The idea for the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project was seeded in 2002, when neighbors and researchers gathered with the Pacific Institute to create the seminal Neighborhood Knowledge for Change report, which defined 17 indicators of environmental and community health, from asthma rates to voting power to housing affordability.
Neighborhood residents Ms. Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge founded the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project to build from the foundation of community-driven, participatory research.
Our work for healthy air, water, and soil took us from the streets to board rooms and government agency collaborations, and we began to notice that even well-meaning initiatives fell flat without meaningful community leadership. Our Collaborative Problem Solving model helps government agencies and communities share power and make decisions as partners. In 2005, we used this model to win new protections from dirty diesel trucks in the West Oakland Toxics Reduction Collaborative, a first-of-its-kind collaboration with the EPA.
In 2008, we launched our first hyperlocal air monitoring project, because regional measurements didn’t reflect our experience on the ground. We trained neighborhood residents to carry around air monitors in backpacks and measure pollution block to block. Over the next several years, we worked with community members and researchers to prove what our neighbors had suspected for decades: air quality can vary up to eight times in a single block.
In 2017, a new California law called AB 617 gave us our biggest opportunity yet: co-designing a clean air plan with community members, local leaders, and government regulators. The West Oakland Community Action Plan contains over 80 strategies for cleaner air, from raising the bar for freight and shipping to adding air filtration to new construction.
This is the first community-led clean air plan, but it’s not the last: environmental justice communities around California are now designing their own plans. And we’re getting results: cancer risk as a result of exposure to air pollution has gone down 54% across West Oakland since 2017. This is democracy beyond the ballot box: community members are with us along every step, from collecting data to setting goals, designing solutions, and tracking the results.
Through it all, our co-founders Ms. Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge built relationships at every level of government and brought community health to the forefront.
In 2025, after over two decades of tireless advocacy, our co-founders Ms. Margaret Gordon and Brian Beveridge stepped down to make opportunities for new leadership. Executive Director Veronica Eady’s 30+ years of expertise in environmental justice, air quality policy, and racial justice are setting the tone for our next chapter: transformative collaboration, community-based research, and deep accountability to West Oakland residents.
Our methods
Collaborative problem-solving
WOEIP’s Collaborative Problem-Solving model is a blueprint for how local communities can bring diverse stakeholders together to drive on-the-ground change. Using partnership agreements that define goals, roles, and responsibilities, we ensure that everyone sits at the same table with equal power. This creates accountability and common ground among stakeholders who otherwise might struggle to work together. By sharing the process and the power, we ensure community voices have a say in the decisions that impact their daily lives.
Participatory research
The historic drivers of public policy, public decision-making, and data storytelling have historically been from the academic, scientific, and business perspective. WOEIP has a long tradition of upending this paradigm through our Participatory Research methods designed, conducted, and analyzed by those with lived experience in the communities impacted by these policies.