Overview

Connecting a federal grant to the community it serves.

When EPA headquarters extended Instagram authority to its regional offices, Region 9 needed content ready for launch.

The Cypress Mandela Training Center graduation in Oakland was the natural story. EPA Brownfields Job Training grants, funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, had directly supported the cohort completing training in hazardous waste operations and environmental assessment. It was the outcome of a federal program working as designed: connecting contaminated-site remediation to the workforce development of the communities living nearest to those sites.

Two videos were produced. One followed Octavia Pruden; the other, Anthony Mc-Clain. Octavia's video was selected for the platform and published March 1, 2024 — Region 9's first day on Instagram. The widescreen versions of both pieces remain on YouTube.

Production 01  ·  Instagram Reel  ·  YouTube

Octavia Pruden:
Environmental justice and economic development

Octavia Pruden was among the first faces Region 9 put forward when it gained the ability to tell its own story on Instagram. The Brownfields Job Training grant funded her cohort's training in hazardous waste operations and environmental assessment, producing credentials that translate directly into employment in the environmental sector. The grant didn't just clean up a site. It put someone from that community to work.

The video was produced in both vertical and widescreen formats. The post was tagged to Cypress Mandela Training Center and EPA national, extending the story into the networks most likely to share it.

Environmental justice and economic development go hand in hand. Octavia and her colleagues received training in hazardous waste operations and environmental assessment funded through an EPA Brownfields Job Training grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and took those skills into jobs in their community.

Production 02  ·  YouTube

Anthony Mc-Clain:
Skills built for the community

The second piece from the Cypress Mandela graduation followed Anthony Mc-Clain through the same program. A second subject meant a second story reinforcing the same through-line: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding wasn't abstract economic policy. It produced a cohort of credentialed workers ready to enter the environmental workforce in Oakland and across the Pacific Southwest.

Anthony's piece was produced at the same time and held to the same standard. It was produced for YouTube rather than the Instagram launch, but it remains part of the full production record, and the fuller account of what one grant cohort accomplished.

Production Approach

Making the policy feel like a person.

Federal grant communications tend toward the institutional: program name, funding amount, and outcome metric. The Cypress Mandela work started from the other end. That framing is more useful on Instagram than any program summary. It's also more accurate about what a Brownfields Job Training grant actually does.

Both pieces were produced in widescreen for YouTube archival flexibility with a vertical version always in mind, keeping the composition compatable with a vertical for Instagram Reels.

The graduation ceremony was the right moment because it's a natural visual endpoint showing the training completed and students moving on to the next chapter. That arc compresses well into a short. It also gave the subjects the context to speak clearly about what the program meant.

Published March 1, 2024. Part of EPA Region 9's Instagram account launch. Both pieces available via the EPA YouTube channel.