Confront polluters, seed solutions.
At Community Action Works, we believe that environmental threats are big, but the power of well-organized community groups is better.
Since 1987, our team has worked with diverse groups in more than 1,000 communities and trained over 20,000 people from all walks of life across the Northeast.
About us
There’s no shortage of environmental problems. That’s why we offer training and other resources to help people to confront local environmental threats and the polluters behind them. We can help you get started, get organized and get resources. We’ll even work side by side with you.
You are not alone. You can stop and prevent pollution in your community. We’re here to offer you the support you need.
Our mission & story
Community Action Works empowers people and local organizations, offering training, organizing and other resources needed to stop and clean up pollution at the local level.
Since 1987, our team has worked with groups in more than 1,000 communities and trained over 20,000 people across the Northeast to confront these local environmental threats and the polluters behind them.
To empower local activists and groups, Community Action Works:
- provides training in gaining media attention, persuading decision makers, crafting a winning strategy, and other means of making a difference for local communities;
- offers funds through our Emergency Relief Grant Program, which enables community groups from Durham, N.H., to Cape Cod to quickly and nimbly tackle new challenges as they arise; and
- gets out there and does the work, side by side with local residents, providing the spark and people power it takes to prevail against tough-to-beat interests.
Taking on well-connected landfill operators or pipeline builders can be tough. But nobody has to go it alone. In more than 1,000 diverse communities of people from all walks of life throughout the Northeast, Community Action Works has been an ally to help people make a difference.
We don’t just believe in the power of well-organized community groups. We help groups prove their power and use it to make a positive difference in the lives of thousands of people, whether it means closing down a toxic incinerator in Massachusetts, cleaning up a leaking landfill in Maine, blocking a dangerous pipeline in New Hampshire, preventing pesticide contamination in Vermont, or shuttering dirty power plants in Connecticut.
Are you facing a pollution problem in your community? You can start getting the support you need to win.
A brief history
In 1986, MASSPIRG worked with 1000s of citizens across the state to qualify and pass a ballot measure to establish the ground-breaking Hazardous Waste Hazardous Waste Cleanup Initiative. The initiative, which passed with the approval of 74% of the voters, required the state to meet concrete deadlines for identifying, assessing, containing and cleaning up toxic waste dumpsites. It also involved thousands of citizen volunteers. That 1986 ballot campaign was the genesis for what we now know as Community Action Works.
In 1987 MASSPIRG launched the Massachusetts Campaign to Clean Up Hazardous Waste — a new organization designed to invite thousands of volunteers from the ballot campaign to stay involved and help even more people organize successfully to clean up local pollution problems. Rob Sargent, later the energy program director for PIRG and Environment America, and Matt Wilson, who became the long-time director of the new group, were the first staff.
The organization has rebranded itself twice: first in 1997, as Toxics Action Center, when the group expanded throughout New England, and most recently as Community Action Works, in recognition of the group’s expanded environmental agenda.
Organizing to win
Since 1987, Community Action Works has helped groups in more than 1,000 communities and trained over 20,000 citizens in the skills of organizing to clean up and prevent local environmental problems.
Here are some of these local success stories, for which we’re proud to have done our part.
Community Action Works is part of The Public Interest Network, which operates and supports organizations committed to a shared vision of a better world and a strategic approach to social change.