News from the past week:
Since the building at 493 Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, collapsed with little warning on Sunday, various businesses, politicians, community members, and friends have been organizing to help put their neighbors’ lives back together.
No one suffered major injuries in the incident, but the residents of the collapsed building have been displaced from their homes and have lost most of their possessions. Adjacent buildings were also damaged, and those residents are not able to return to their homes either, for the time being. Here are a few ways to help out:
If you’ve ever watched NYC’s five-hour, 60-block Pride parade, you’ve probably been blown away by the number and variety of groups marching. Just how many organizations are there in New York that specifically work with the LGBT community? Idealist currently lists 148 organizations that match the criteria, but I’m sure there many others that aren’t yet listed on the site.
Here’s just a sampling of some NYC-based organizations that work hard to support the LGBT community, provide essential services and resources, and advocate for equal rights. We’re proud of them all!
There’s still plenty of progress to be made on LGBT issues, but let’s just take a moment to celebrate the important work that organizations like these do every day. Happy Pride!
Mid-career professionals in the public affairs arena (nonprofit, public, and private sectors) might be interested in applying to be in the 2009-2010 Leadership New York class. The application deadline is this Friday, June 26.
Leadership New York, the mid-career program of the Coro New York Leadership Center, is a civic leadership development program that prepares people to make a greater impact in their organizations and throughout New York City. This nine-month part time program (including an Opening Retreat, ten Issue Days, occasional Saturday and evening sessions, and planning meetings) gives participants a chance to “examine their personal approaches to leadership while going behind the scenes to wrestle with NYC’s complex public policy issues.”
Alumni of the program include City Commissioners, executive directors and CEOs, community activists, journalists, and business and social entrepreneurs. Applicants should have a minimum of five years professional work experience.
For more information and to fill out the online application, visit the Leadership New York website.
In March of last year, Mayor Bloomberg signed a law establishing 1,000 new permits for Green Carts, which are mobile carts that sell fresh fruits and vegetables in selected New York City neighborhoods. Now the Green Cart vendors are hitting the streets in low-income areas of all five boroughs. According to a recent New York Times article, the program is off to a good start, with customers lining up to buy bananas at 50 cents per pound near Fordham University in the Bronx.
At first glance, it seems like a win-win situation: 1,000 new jobs for vendors, plus affordable and healthy food for residents in neighborhoods where healthy food is often hard to find. However, the new permits weren’t gained without some controversy. The original proposal was actually for 1,500 new permits, but the number was reduced after small business owners objected to the way the program was being implemented. To select the neighborhoods where the Green Carts would be allowed, city officials looked at data on fresh produce consumption, rather than availability. According to the New York Times, “Neighborhoods where more than 15 percent of residents said they had not eaten fruits or vegetables in the last 24 hours made the list, regardless of how many area stores offered fresh produce.” In neighborhoods where store owners make a point of supplying raw fruits and vegetables, the Green Carts could be seen as unfair competition. The produce from the Green Carts tends to be cheaper than in storefronts, since the vendors don’t have the overhead that store owners do.
The really important question is whether this initiative will result in a healthier New York City. Will increased access to cheaper produce increase demand? Will obesity and diabetes rates go down? The data isn’t there yet, but we’ll be keeping an eye out, and hoping this turns into a win-win-win situation.
Last year’s Feast conference left me full of creative, inspiring, mind-opening ideas. So I’m happy to announce that All Day Buffet is bringing the Feast back this fall, but this time they’re preceding it with a series of smaller events—dinners, salons, and workshops—all summer long!
Idealist’s executive director, Ami Dar, will be speaking at the salon on July 27. All Day Buffet has been nice enough to offer a ten percent discount off the ticket price for our lovely blog readers and Idealist members: just put in the code “IDEALIST” when you register.
News from the past week:
Nostrand Park (a blog and website dedicated to the community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn) has announced its Day of Service, which is to take place on Saturday, June 27, and is just the first in a series of community service events planned in the neighborhood.
The Day of Service is a partnership among various local organizations, and will engage participants in two main projects: a voter registration drive at the new Franklin at Sterling Flea Market as well as working in the gardens at Weeksville Society Heritage Center.
Sounds like a great way to welcome summer in Brooklyn! You can register for the event on Idealist or on Nostrand Park.
In the “What’s in a Name?” feature, we highlight New York-based organizations and programs that have clever, quirky, mysterious, revealing, or non-traditional names.
We’ve worked with Echoing Green in a number of ways over the years, but I only recently thought to find out the history of the name. At first blush, Echoing Green might sound like an environmentally-focused organization, rather than a 20-year-old fellowship program that provides seed money to emerging social entrepreneurs with big ideas to change the world.
It turns out “The Echoing Green” is the title of a William Blake poem published in 1879, and “green” is meant to connote funds rather than the environment (or golf courses). According to the website, the folks at EG “like to imagine the ‘echoing green’ as the reverberation of seed money in the hands of the right person at the right time, or the multi-player effect of being the first to invest in an amazing person with an outstanding social change idea.” Nice.
By Amy Potthast, originally posted at The New Service, which offers resources, tips, and news for the service-minded.
Photo by Ed Reed, Office of the Mayor
This week, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Diahann Billings-Burford will be New York’s first Chief Service Officer.
Billings-Burford—who’s coming from an external affairs role at City Year New York—will lead an innovative new municipal effort that Bloomberg launched earlier this year called NYC Service.
The initiative promotes volunteering and service, with the goals of making New York “the easiest place in the world to volunteer,” finding ways for volunteers to address the impacts of the economic downturn, and”setting a new standard for how cities can tap the power of their people to tackle our most pressing challenges.”
Billings-Burford’s work will include implementing the agenda spelled out in the NYC Service Report (PDF).
One new project — sponsored by Big Brothers Big Sisters — is a campaign to bring 2000 new mentors into 51 high needs middle schools through Middle School Mentors. Mentors would spend eight hours a month with a middle school student, “being their friend in school and out of school.”
Billings-Burford will also oversee the new NYC Civic Corps that will launch in July. NYC Civic Corps will dispatch small teams of AmeriCorps VISTAs to local nonprofits and government agencies to build “sustainable-impact volunteer programs.” The program recruits college grads of all ages.
According to Bloomberg and to the New York Times, Billings-Burford’s new position is the first of its kind, though California and New York governors have elevated the heads of their states’s volunteering and service commissions to cabinet-level posts.
