By CBE Blog Staff, Contributions from Ashley Ding '28 and Simona Letizia '28
At the end of the Fall 2024 semester, then-Director of Sustainability, Erica Choe '25, launched a new initiative aimed to connect sustainability and professional development for the members of CBE. This initiative, called the ESG Fellowship Grant, would allow CBE members to undertake a short, sustainability-based internship throughout Winter Break, and would provide the fellows with a small grant for their hard work.
For the first ever cohort of the ESG Fellowship, freshmen Ashley Ding '28 and Simona Letizia '28 were chosen, both of whom worked with non-profits throughout their Winter Break on projects related to sustainability impact. Read more about their experiences and reflections of the fellowship below!
Ashley Ding '28 interned with Central Florida Jobs with Justice, where her work focused on climate justice for underprivileged populations living in Florida.
Central Florida Jobs With Justice’s (CFJwJ) mission is to empower working
communities resonate with me, especially its focus on climate justice and
uplifting, energy-burdened individuals.
Growing up in Orlando, I’ve seen the compounded struggles of low-income families
facing rising energy costs and inadequate protections during increasingly frequent and
intensifying hurricanes. These challenges are exacerbated by policies like the Energy Omnibus Bill, which removes renewable energy goals and limits local regulation of natural gas infrastructure.
For the past 3 weeks, I interned with Central Florida Jobs with Justice on 2 top
organizing priorities: Climate Justice for Working People and Uplifting Energy Burdened
Communities. I contributed to CFJwJ’s PAUSE Act initiative, which aims to protect vulnerable households by implementing safeguards during extreme weather and public health emergencies, including halting utility disconnections for nonpayment when the heat index is forecasted to reach 90°F or higher and during declared states of emergency. I organized research on the Act’s economic, disaster resilience, extreme heat, health disparities, and violence prevention impacts into structured dockets for meetings with elected officials.
Additionally, I compiled a report highlighting the economic importance of language justice in Florida, emphasizing how multilingual emergency communications during disasters can reduce economic losses, protect industries like agriculture and housing, and improve disaster preparedness and recovery for the state's diverse population. I included data and sources on funding opportunities and impacts on vulnerable populations like farmworkers and non-English-speaking households while highlighting examples of effective language access programs in other states.
With the Department of Labor recently authorized $5 million in funding for
recovery-related jobs in Florida, CFJwJ is interested in creating a Disaster Jobs program that can get unemployed individuals into recovery jobs quickly. I researched Texas's clean energy transition, highlighting the use of Disaster Recovery Funds to drive job creation, workforce development, and the economic advantages of renewable energy as a framework for how CFJwJ can structure Florida’s program.
Simona Letizia '28 interned with both PeaceJam International and Sankofa Empowering Women in Ghana (SEWING) on a project connecting environmentally-friendly start-ups to emerging market economics around the globe.
Combining my newly learned skills in research, business strategy, and social impact consulting from my first semester at CBE with my past experiences in education advocacy was incredibly rewarding. Over the 5-week winter break with CBE’s ESG Winter Fellowship, I worked with PeaceJam International and Sankofa Empowering Women in Ghana (SEWING) to create a guide for environmentally friendly start-ups in emerging market economies.
PeaceJam Foundation is an international non-profit that works with 14 Peace Laureates to support 1.3 million youth in 41 countries, creating long-term community-driven change. SEWING was founded with support from PeaceJam as the first organization to address the exploitation of Kayayei. Ghanaian female head porters, known as Kayayei, are girls as young as eight years old who are forced to leave their homes in Northern Villages, abandon their education, and migrate to the capital, Accra. Earning $4 a day for their 12-16 hour days, Kayayei is vulnerable to health challenges, human rights violations, and sexual assault.
As an international organization, SEWING advocates on the global stage to address these gender inequalities and locally supports education scholarships and entrepreneur fellowships for young girls at risk of becoming Kayayei. My goal for the ESG Fellowship was to create a business start-up guide focusing on integrating environmental sustainability—not just as an add-on but as a core principle of entrepreneurship. Initially, I envisioned a straightforward guide tailored to SEWING’s programming. However, as I worked with my mentor, Michelle, and learned from PeaceJam how to make a versatile yet effective program, my vision shifted. When I searched for existing guides, I couldn’t find one that addressed the unique challenges of starting a business sustainably with the availability of resources in mind. This gap inspired me to expand my initial idea into something that would have a broader impact: a 30-page guide designed to be practical, scalable, interactive, and adaptable for entrepreneurs in diverse economic situations around the world.
Topics in the curriculum include sustainable supply chains, waste management, renewable energy options, and cost-effective environmental practices. Research I’d done with CBE the previous semester played a role in developing my specific environmentally-conscious solutions. However, when searching for existing guides, it was uncommon to find data-driven solutions that could be tailored to individual local communities and be resource-conscious all in one place.
This fellowship enabled me to address a need that was apparent in my former Ghanaian community and a gap in education resources for aspiring entrepreneurs. This eye-opening experience showed me that merging environmental policy, business strategy, and social impact in my future work is more attainable than I once thought. As we enter the second semester, I look forward to applying what I learned over the break to contribute to CBE’s ESG-focused strategies in casework and direct service initiatives.
If you have any questions about CBE's commitment to sustainability or any other of our sustainability initiatives, reach out to our Director of Sustainability, Anh-Thu Le '26, at anhthule@hucbe.org or email info@hucbe.org with any general questions.