This guide will help you navigate the EPA's Web site and find information that can help you improve the environment in your community. The Resource Guide was developed for EPA’s Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) program. In the CARE program, EPA works with communities to help them come together collaboratively to investigate the toxics problems in their communities and ultimately use EPA voluntary programs to reduce emissions of toxics in the community. The goals of CARE are to reduce risks and empower communities to become stewards of their own environment.

The Resource Guide is designed to help communities in the CARE program, but it can be used by anyone interested in any aspect of working with communities. In the CARE program communities go through a multi-step process: getting organized, analyzing risks, reducing risks, tracking progress. The Resource Guide enables you to find the on-line resources that can help communities through every step of the process as they move from getting organized to becoming stewards of their own environment. The first four parts of the Resource Guide track the Community for a Renewed Environment (CARE) process. They are roughly organized in order of the steps a community would go through as it moves through that process: