Grants Newsletter August 2012

Making your giving matter more... since 1924 August 2012 NEWSLETTER

GRANTS

You know that good feeling you get when you help make things better?

This newsletter looks at grants that were made possible in large part by generous New Yorkers who wanted to make a difference—and set up endowed funds with us. To find out how you can leave your own legacy, contact our general counsel, Jane Wilton at (212) 686–2563 or janewilton@nyct-cfi.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 FIERCE Youth Fight for Fairness 3 Local Demand, Meet Local Supply 4 A BRIC House Bursting with Performance 5 Made in Brooklyn 6 Other Grants

Investing in Science Futures

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ome of today’s most interesting and high-paying jobs are in environmental and health sciences, but black and Latina girls from poor communities have little opportunity to explore these fields and almost no exposure to scientists who look like them.

The Trust is helping the New York Academy of Medicine change this. G.I.R.L.S. (Getting into Real Life Science), a program that girls from Harlem enter in 7th grade and complete in their senior year, offers seminars on health topics; coordinates field trips to labs; and provides guidance on research projects and mentoring from minority women in the health and sciences. And the program works.

An 8th grader from New York Academy of Medicine’s G.I.R.L.S. science program talks to Trust donors about her project. Photo by Sean Sime

Hundreds of Trust donors attended the reception, but one woman’s contribution to the evening stood out.

Mildred Anna Williams, who died in 1939, created a fund in The Trust to help disadvantaged girls and young women. It has been through her generosity that The Trust has supported G.I.R.L.S. and made a difference in so many young lives.

FIERCE’s Education for Liberation Program includes a primer on LGBT history, society’s power structures, and social activism.

“I could have completely been diverted off track,” says Leslie Auquilla, a former participant, “but that is where G.I.R.L.S. came in and played a tremendous role in my life.” Leslie is now at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and is an advisor to the program.

Since 2006, Trust grants totaling $510,000 have brought the program to younger girls, helped broaden its offerings, and involved more girls from additional Harlem schools. A recent $75,000 grant will help recruit more than 100 7th graders and help the older girls in the program get on track for college.

“G.I.R.L.S. promotes a ‘college-bound’ culture, supplementing all activities with information to help students think about college planning for careers in health and the sciences,” says Joanne De Simone Eichel, director of the program at the Academy. “The mentors talk about the decisions they made along their own educational and career paths, and share ideas about how to overcome barriers that can discourage young women from pursuing higher education.”

Every year, The Trust invites its donors and their guests to a reception at a different venue in the City. This year the event took place at the New York Academy of Medicine. Guests had the opportunity to talk with girls in the program and learn about their projects. Eighthgrader Vianey did research on how pregnant teenage girls can keep their unborn children healthy—a topic she chose, in part, to help her teenage cousin who is due in September. Crystina, also in 8th grade, did research on the correlation between poverty and child mortality.

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FIERCE Youth Fight for Fairness Walking down the street garnered her constant harassment and it made Jah-dae want to do something about it. A 22-year-old from upstate New York, Jah-dae Ross is black and identifies as gender non-conforming.

She moved to the City because she wanted to become more politically involved. “I tried starting a gay-straight alliance at my community college back home but it fell flat; the students weren’t ready for it at the time.”

Although she now lives in Red Hook, Jah-dae has found her “home” at FIERCE—a group for LGBT young people of color. While applying to transfer to the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, she completed the first part of Education for Liberation—a three-phase leadership development project that explores systemic inequality in society and challenges participants to create their own solutions. A $25,000 grant will help FIERCE involve more people in the program.

“The program is amazing and eye-opening. I learned about the struggles transgendered people have gone through, about the history of classism in our country, and how oppressed communities have a lot in common and can work together for justice,” says Jah-dae.

Working with FIERCE and other organizations, she is also helping to organize two campaigns: the first to stop racially biased stop and frisk practices by the police, and the second to organize West Village businesses to help LGBT people seeking shelter from harassment. Staff at FIERCE are also helping her with practical matters, such as transferring credits and figuring out financial aid.

Other grants helping young New Yorkers be their best • Futures and Options, $40,000 to expand a paid internship program that places high school students in media, advertising, technology, and health care companies.

• Girl Scout Council of Greater New York, $150,000 for a career exploration program for girls from low-performing Bronx middle schools.

• Harlem RBI, $50,000 to expand a sports and academic program for disadvantaged youth.

• Jewish Home Lifecare, $40,000 to add electrocardiography and phlebotomy training to a program that prepares high school students for careers in health care and geriatrics, and fosters relationships between the young and old.

• New York City Department of Probation, $80,000 to study the impact of Neighborhood Opportunity Networks, local one-stop centers with probation and other services, on court-involved youth.

• Rocking the Boat, $50,000 to train black and Latino Bronx high school and college students for environmental careers through paid applied-science internships with the Bronx River Alliance, the NYC Audubon Society, and other groups.

Jah-dae has also been chosen to represent the group at this summer’s Allied Media Conference in Detroit and is excited to apply what she learns there to producing videos.

“I want to make a piece interviewing people as they go through the Education for Liberation program to show how their awareness and ideas transform, and how they put them into action.”

Local Demand, Meet Local Supply Buying crisp apples and juicy peaches directly from the farmer who grew them, minutes away from your apartment, is a pleasure shared by many New Yorkers.

The more than 50 bustling farmers’ markets across the City are proof that demand for locally produced goods is going nowhere but up. In fact, a State-funded study found that institutions, schools, and residents would buy $900 million more local edibles than they already do.

Despite this demand, many local farmers can’t increase production—or survive at all—if they can only sell

Local goods are in high demand, and a wholesale market in the Bronx just for regional producers would help farms thrive and make this fresh, delicious food cheaper and more widely available in the City.

at farmers’ markets, a head of lettuce or a pint of blueberries at a time. Without bulk buyers, it’s simply not financially feasible to expand, and farmland in New York State is disappearing at the alarming rate of 70 acres a day.

The best way to help local supply meet demand? A wholesale farmers’ market in the Hunts Point Cooperative Market in the South Bronx. Governor Cuomo made a pitch for it in his 2011 State of the State Address, and our grant of $100,000 to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) will help make it happen.

Twenty-two million people eat fruit and vegetables distributed through Hunts Point, but only 4 percent of food sold there is grown in New York. The City and State have an opportunity to open a wholesale farmers’ market exclusively for regional producers as part of the overall $350 million modernization plan for the aging distribution terminal.

“A wholesale market could substantially increase the flow of local produce into the City. Our school system alone—which serves 800,000 meals per day—could be the type of major repeat buyer that could make such a wholesale market successful,” says Mark Izeman, director of the NRDC’s New York Urban Program. He goes on to describe why dependable buyers are important. “As one example, we are now working with a farmer who raises grass-fed beef in the Catskill region. He could scale up his production if he knows far enough in advance that he has buyers lined up, as it takes at least a season for him to graze the cattle that have been ordered.”

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Members of the Trisha Brown Dance Company perform Roof Piece on rooftops surrounding the High Line in 2011. The piece was originally created in 1970.

Photo by Kevin Vast

The following grants are also helping to strengthen and market arts groups:

Operated by GrowNYC, the wholesale market would also make local foods more affordable. Not only can farmers tap into a larger economy of scale, but it’s cheaper for a farmer to deliver a truck load of carrots than to spend all day selling them at Union Square, and the savings is passed along to the bulk buyers.

Providing for the impoverished Hunts Point community is also a priority for the project. “With so much produce coming through the neighborhood, it’s unacceptable that residents have a scarcity of supermarkets selling fresh, affordable fruits and vegetables,” says Pat Jenny, program director at The Trust. “Part of the grant will be spent figuring out ways of bringing some of this healthy, local food to the surrounding community.”

A $75,000 grant to the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation will train community leaders to advocate for healthy and sustainable national food and farming policies across the country.

A BRIC House Bursting with Performance If the walls of downtown Brooklyn’s Strand Theater could talk, the century-old structure might hold forth about its vaudeville days when Houdini graced its stage, or its turn as a cinema, print shop, and bowling alley. The building might also belie excitement about its current metamorphosis from hidden, underused gem into BRIC Arts|Media House, a dazzling cultural production facility and showcase.

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• Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, $70,000 to market music classes and the City’s only big-band Latin jazz orchestra.

• Brooklyn Academy of Music, $100,000 for a training program that helps small performing arts groups with fundraising, marketing, communications, IT, production, personnel, and planning.

• Cave Canem Foundation, $34,000 to help this AfricanAmerican poetry collective increase its earned income by expanding its speakers’ bureau, offering more classes, and renting out its space for events.

• Chocolate Factory Theater, $43,000 to help this developer and presenter of experimental plays and dance create an online performance archive to market its work.

• Flushing Town Hall, $60,000 to increase Korean and Chinese audiences at this Queens theater with the help of a local advisory committee of community leaders.

• Harbor Lights Theater Company, $30,000 to market this Staten Island musical theater group.

• Ping Chong & Company, $70,000 to market this AsianAmerican theater group celebrating its 40th year.

• Pregones Theater, $70,000 for a merger with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company.

• 651 ARTS, $70,000 to market African-American dance, theater, and literary performances that will mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement.

• St. Ann’s Warehouse, $50,000 to market this Brooklyn theater as it relocates.

• TeatroStageFest, $70,000 to support this presenter of Latino theater as it forms an alliance with Queens College’s Kupferberg Center for the Arts.

• Thalia Spanish Theatre, $62,000 for a technology initiative and marketing campaign at this Queens bilingual Latino theater.

• Trisha Brown Dance Company, $70,000 to create a succession plan and digitize 105 video and film recordings to be registered with the Library of Congress and made publicly available.

performances via cable and webcast, and make recordings available to artists so they can critique, improve, and promote their work.

Made in Brooklyn The old Strand Theater in downtown Brooklyn will be home to BRIC Arts|Media House and open to the public next year.

Rendering by Leeser Architecture

A $40 million renovation, to be completed next year, will provide current tenants Urban Glass and BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn with larger, improved facilities and invite conversations between the public, working artists, and media producers. Large street-level windows will beckon visitors in to watch live tapings of Brooklyn Independent Television and Community Access TV through a new glass-walled studio, and to view rotating contemporary art exhibitions at the relocated Rotunda Art Gallery (currently next to Borough Hall).

Two new theaters in the space will be filled with performances programmed by BRIC, known for its popular Celebrate Brooklyn series in Prospect Park. A two-year grant of $70,000 will help BRIC staff its team to manage the quadrupling of its programs.

“We will transform from being primarily a summer presenter to being a year-round programmer, with a special emphasis on nurturing new works and Brooklyn artists,” says Leslie G. Schultz, BRIC’s executive director.

“The two performance spaces in BRIC House will be highly flexible, allowing artists to use them in unexpected and exciting ways. The main performance space can be configured for fully staged productions, standing-room concerts, and intimate cabaret-style performances. The smaller space is designed for development, allowing us to offer Brooklyn artists the opportunity to make and test new work, and to connect with audiences for feedback.”

Because the theaters will be equipped with digital recording equipment, BRIC will easily be able to share

Employing 10,000 ship builders in the 1800s, the Brooklyn Navy Yard may once again reach those lofty job numbers. Today the industrial park has 275 commercial tenants that employ more than 6,000 builders, manufacturers, media producers, woodworkers, and desk jockeys. The development corporation that runs the Yard estimates it will add 3,000 jobs in the next five years, growth that reflects a larger trend in Brooklyn.

“While the number of available jobs in Brooklyn has gone up, so has the borough’s unemployment rate,” says Trust program director Pat Jenny. That fact is not lost on the Yard, which needs help training workers to fill its open positions. It has chosen Brooklyn Workforce Innovations to work with Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow and Nontraditional Employment for Women to train military veterans, public housing residents, and other hard-to-employ New Yorkers specifically for jobs in the Yard. GED-prep and English classes will be offered along with career counseling and sector-specific skills training. A grant of $50,000 supports the project.

Pat adds, “Brooklyn Workforce Innovations has the expertise, and now the connections, to make sure that low-income and unemployed New Yorkers, many of whom live near the Navy Yard, can compete for new and existing jobs in this burgeoning industrial park.”

Other grants to improve life in Brooklyn • Community Solutions, $130,000 to help a coalition of residents and community groups dedicated to improving Brownsville build a stronger organization, increase its membership, and plan for the future.

• University Settlement Society of New York, $60,000 to prevent evictions in three public housing developments in Fort Greene.

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Other Grants Preventing Gang Violence Gang violence is on the rise in New York City. The nonprofits that have enough street cred and knowhow to help young people avoid or shed the thug life often run on shoe-string budgets. The Trust is funding the following nine groups to give young people at risk of joining—or already in—gangs better options; develop young leaders; make public housing safer; and apply for government funding.

Brooklyn Blizzards Youth Organization, $35,000 to reduce tensions among youth by running a basketball tournament and two talent shows in housing projects in Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn.

Brownsville Community Development A grant to the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative is helping build a 14-mile continuous Corporation, $35,000 for mentoring and waterfront greenway from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge. The segments that already workshops for boys targeted by gang recruiters in exist are put to good use by bikers, walkers, and runners.

Brownsville projects.

Citywide Council of Presidents of the New York ex-offenders, and domestic violence survivors.

City Housing Authority (NYCHA), $35,000 to improve Graham Windham, $200,000 to help four foster care NYCHA’s anti-gang youth programs. agencies use a proven model that helps parents cope with and Community Resource Exchange, $100,000 to help avoid behavior that triggers child abuse. strengthen these community groups.

Tufts University, $150,000 to work with the Children’s Aid Crown Heights Mediation Center, $35,000 to run anti-gun Society to start a program that helps teenage boys do well in violence events in housing projects in East New York, Brooklyn. school, and to work with the City Department for the Aging King of Kings Foundation, $35,000 to run anti-gun violence to develop systemic ways of reducing social isolation of elders workshops with youth living in Far Rockaway projects. living in public housing.

Man Up!, $35,000 to help young people in East New York leave gangs.

Point A to Point B New York City Housing Authority, $110,000 to improve its Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, $40,000 for development anti-gang programs. of a 14-mile continuous waterfront greenway, which will also New York City Mission Society, $35,000 to involve young reduce the overflow of raw sewage by integrating spillways and people living in central Harlem projects in anti-gun violence landscaping along the path to absorb runoff. workshops.

Smart Growth America, $100,000 to lobby Congress for a transportation bill that supports mass transit, bike lanes, and The Needs of the Poor walkways.

Community Service Society of New York, $100,000 to produce and release The Unheard Third, a report on the concerns Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions of poor New Yorkers.

Environment Northeast, $75,000 to strengthen the Regional Dry bottoms mean happy babies and moms.

Kids in Distressed Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the northeast and link it A grant to K.I.D.S. will help distribute a million Situations, $25,000 for to cap-and-trade programs in California and Quebec. free diapers to agencies that work with distribution of 1 million Natural Resources Defense Council, $75,000 to make the families in need. free diapers (donated by RGGI more effective by lowering the emissions cap, including the National Diaper Bank smaller power plants, and defending the Initiative against legal Network) to agencies that and political opponents. will distribute them to needy families.

A Clean Energy Future Great Plains Institute for Sustainable Development, Social Work that $75,000 to build transmission lines for renewable energy, a Works Better goal of the Midwestern Governors Association.

Fordham University New York State Gas Drilling Protection Project, $150,000 Graduate School of Social to protect New York from the damage caused by hydraulic Service, $86,000 to help fracturing. religious institutions evaluate Tides Foundation, $100,000 to slow climate change by the effectiveness of their stopping new tar sands oil infrastructure from being built or programs for the homeless, expanded in the U.S.

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GRANTS Newsletter

Toxic Chemicals, Our Bodies, and Our Children Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, $100,000 to start the GENErations Biobank, a repository to store and test umbilical cord and placental tissues for exposure to environmental chemicals.

University of California, San Francisco, $75,000 to educate the medical community about the connections between toxic chemicals and reproductive and children’s health.

Looking Out for the Elderly Citymeals-on-Wheels, $50,000 to provide A grant to Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council is supporting planning for conversion of the Andrew poor homebound elders with groceries and Freeman Home in the Bronx, originally a poorhouse for the formerly rich, into a multipurpose emergency food. community space.

HealthCare Chaplaincy, $100,000 to assess whether the addition of chaplains to hospital discharge planning teams reduces readmission of chronically ill elders.

Medicare Rights Center, $80,000 to help more elders get Medicare and other benefits.

Selfhelp Community Services, $70,000 to teach elders and professional caregivers about changes in New York State’s Medicaid home care program.

Preserving the Historic Character of New York Historic Districts Council, $30,000 to help preserve parts of . . . and the Mentally Ill 12 neighborhoods, including Brook Park and Van Cortlandt MFY Legal Services, $40,000 to improve conditions for poor, Village in the Bronx, Victorian-era Bay Ridge and Flatbush in mentally ill people living in illegal boarding houses.

Brooklyn, and beachside bungalows in Far Rockaway, Queens.

National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City, Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council, $50,000 for planning $100,000 to include people with mental illness as part of to adapt the historic Andrew Freedman Home for community treatment teams for high-cost Medicaid patients through uses. newly formed health homes (networks of mental health, health, and social service providers).

Legal Help for Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence Jobs! inMotion, $50,000 to train pro bono attorneys to help New York City Employment and Training Coalition, immigrant victims of domestic violence in Brooklyn obtain $75,000 to provide advocacy for the tens of thousands of legal status. unemployed New Yorkers who need help finding jobs and Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, $50,000 keeping them. to help immigrant victims of domestic violence in Manhattan Solar One, $50,000 to help green industry employers find and the Bronx obtain legal status. workers trained by nonprofit employment programs.

Sanctuary for Families, $90,000 to help immigrant girls and young women who are victims of violence obtain legal status.

Technical Assistance Hostos Community College of CUNY, $100,000 to . . . and for the Five Boroughs support the new Center for Bronx Nonprofits, which will help Legal Services NYC - Bronx, $55,000 to help residents get strengthen local community leaders and nonprofits. public benefits.

Manhattan Legal Services, $55,000 to represent residents in Public Education consumer debt cases.

Donors’ Education Collaborative, $110,000 for a joint Queens Legal Services, $55,000 to provide representation in foundation effort to support advocacy for public education reform. housing cases.

ReServe Elder Service, $120,000 for a program in which South Brooklyn Legal Services, $55,000 to represent tenants retirees are paid a stipend to help students return to in housing court. school after extended absences resulting from suspension, Staten Island Legal Services, $30,000 to provide legal homelessness, or foster care placement. representation for poor residents.

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909 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022 www.nycommunitytrust.org Address Service Requested

August 2012 NEWSLETTER

GRANTS

Inside: Local Demand, Meet Local Supply, A BRIC House Bursting with Performance, Made in Brooklyn and More ...

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 5013 New York, NY

The grants described in this issue were approved by The New York Community Trust’s governing body at its June 2012 meeting. For grantee contact information, or for more information about the grants, please call The Trust’s receptionist at 212.686.0010, ext. 0.

This issue and past newsletters can be found at www.nycommunitytrust.org.

If you’d prefer to receive our newsletter by e-mail, write to newsletter@nyct-cfi.org.

At Mount Sinai Medical Center, Drs. Stone and Lambertini describe the goals of the Trust-funded GENEerations Project: Pregnancy Biobank to a patient. The repository will store and test umbilical cord and placental tissues for exposure to chemicals.

Most of the grants in our newsletter are made possible through the generosity of past donors who established permanent, charitable funds with us during their lifetimes or through their wills. To learn more about setting up a fund, now or in the future, please contact our general counsel, Jane Wilton, at 212.686.2563.