To drive action, education and outreach on solar development and procurement in Oak Park, River Forest and surrounding low and moderate income (LMI) communities toward meeting PlanItGreen’s goal of 25% renewable energy procurement through newly created projects by 2020 and toward influencing and catalyzing similar efforts in other Chicago metro area counties and communities.

Lessons learned about tools and tactics through the project that other sustainability directors could use to advance their work.

The key lessons learned from this project have been:

• Recognize the efforts of all partners, share ideas and successes, and foster a spirit of collaboration and mutual support.
• Establish a sense that everyone is working toward the same goal and affirm efforts through meetings, forums and events for all the stakeholders.
• Work toward getting institutions to act – as opposed to head nodding in agreement. This was the biggest challenge and drove the development of other strategies to spur action.