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Lighting the Way to Sustainability: A Materiality Assessment and Action Plan for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Events

Description
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fund research for cures and treatments for blood-related cancer. Light The Night is one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising events, with approximately 1 million participants in 140 locations throughout the United States and Canada. Participants…

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fund research for cures and treatments for blood-related cancer. Light The Night is one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising events, with approximately 1 million participants in 140 locations throughout the United States and Canada. Participants walk with illuminated lanterns to commemorate survivors, friends, family, and supporters. Sustainability has become a recent concern for the organization's corporate partners and participants. LLS has shown an increased dedication to sustainability by creating an Environmental Social Governance (ESG) council and has started taking steps toward creating a national plan for sustainability at its Light The Night events. In order to extend sustainability efforts to all Light The Night events, the client requests the Sustainable Light Knights team to: 1. Perform a materiality assessment for the Light The Night event, accounting for the recent changes that seek to minimize sustainability practices. 2. Rank the event's most material activities, considering food and beverage, waste, lanterns, and t-shirts. 3. Assess the best practices for managing the highest material impacts. 4. Identify short, medium, and long-term goals to help LLS plan for the next steps. The Sustainable Light Knights consist of four Arizona State University graduate students from the Masters of Sustainability Solutions program. The team undertook an analytical approach to understand P2P events, including conducting a landscape analysis, identifying best practices, and completing a TOWS (threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths) analysis. This served as the foundation for the materiality assessment for Light The Night, which guided what impact topics were most relevant. To bring the findings of the materiality matrix to life, The Sustainable Light Knights created a sustainable event planning checklist, procurement guidelines, and a vendor pledge for use by Light The Night staff. We grouped the recommendations for sustainable actions into low, medium, and high priority and short, medium, and long-term goals. While this assessment focused on Light The Night, the recommendations outlined in this action plan can extend to other fundraising events organized by LLS. The design of the action plan is to help LLS leadership and staff take steps to lower the impact of Light The Night events nationwide and transform LLS into a leader within sustainable events that can serve as an example for other nonprofit organizations to follow.
ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
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Lighting the Way to Sustainability: A Materiality Assessment and Action Plan for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Events : Action Plan

ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
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Lighting the Way to Sustainability: A Materiality Assessment and Action Plan for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Events : Planning Checklist

ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
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Lighting the Way to Sustainability: A Materiality Assessment and Action Plan for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Events : About the Guide

ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
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Lighting the Way to Sustainability: A Materiality Assessment and Action Plan for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Events : Procurement Guidelines

ContributorsGreathouse, Madelynne (Author) / Guerrero, Morgan Leon (Author) / Rodriguez, Rebeca (Author) / Skoric, Kirby (Author)
Created2023-04-26
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Living in a Wounded World: Sustainability and Psychological Trauma

Description
Greater cross-disciplinary collaboration between the fields of sustainability and clinical psychology could lead to improved outcomes for both. Moreover, some forms of mental disorder, such as PTSD and Moral Injury, constitute serious challenges that require the attention of sustainability’s interdisciplinary, systems-focused, solutionsoriented approach. My research frames the impacts of combat-related…

Greater cross-disciplinary collaboration between the fields of sustainability and clinical psychology could lead to improved outcomes for both. Moreover, some forms of mental disorder, such as PTSD and Moral Injury, constitute serious challenges that require the attention of sustainability’s interdisciplinary, systems-focused, solutionsoriented approach. My research frames the impacts of combat-related psychological trauma on military veterans as a sustainability problem according to criteria put forward by Arnim Wiek’s Transformational Problem Solving framework. I also provide a review of studies demonstrating the treatment benefits of agricultural therapy for veterans diagnosed with PTSD or symptoms associated with Moral Injury. I then describe my own efforts investigating the connection between trauma and sustainability using survey measurements, interviews, and participant observation onsite at Growing Veterans farm in Mt. Vernon, Washington. The results strongly suggest that sustainable agricultural can be of powerful clinical benefit to traumatized veterans and that sustainable behaviors and values in general increased as trauma symptoms decreased. More broadly, the project indicates that slight shifts in how we approach solution formulation and how we articulate and disseminate sustainability messages could have profound positive effects on the sustainability’s success.
ContributorsGabriele, Adam (Author) / Hirt, Paul (Contributor) / Cloutier, Scott (Contributor) / Valdez, Herendira (Contributor)
Created2018-03-27