Brooklyn Greens

 The Brooklyn Community Foundation's first strategic grantmaking initiative to align with its Green Communities field of interest area.

Brooklyn Greens uses customized approaches to help make three key Brooklyn communities greener by engaging young people, adults and community institutions in taking action to improve their local environment by employing energy efficiencies, training and placing under- and unemployed young people in jobs weatherizing homes, community facilities and businesses, and by applying conservation and environmental principles to affordable housing developments. 

Initiative Launch Announcement: Brooklyn Community Foundation Launches 3-Year Initiative to Plant the Seed for a Healthier, More Sustainable Brooklyn

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In 2010, the Foundation began a three-year $750,000 investment in targeted grants to seed model environmental initiatives in Bedford Stuyvesant, Cypress Hills and the Southside of Williamsburg — low and moderate-income communities with serious environmental problems and poor community health indicators.

In addition to creating many specific improvements within each neighborhood, BROOKLYN GREENS will demonstrate a powerful model for sustainable community development.

The neighborhood program partners are three of Brooklyn’s oldest and most accomplished neighborhood organizations: Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation and El Puente.

The Pratt Center for Community Development, which has already been instrumental in helping these groups plan and develop their green programming, acts as the convening partner and plays the lead organizing, capacity building, progress monitoring, outcomes measurement and reporting role.

BROOKLYN GREENS will foster several impressive outcomes, including:

  • Adoption of long-term action plans and “environmental road maps” for each neighborhood, developed with large numbers of community members.
  • Energy-efficient retrofitting of approximately 480 homes, apartment buildings, community facilities and small businesses, in a comprehensive “block by block” approach.
  • Construction of approximately 130 units of new, green residential housing.
  • Training of at least 140 community residents to fill green collar jobs, and placement of at least 70 in green collar employment. Part-time internship opportunities will be provided to at least 190 more.
  • Planting of 750 street trees and the creation or improvement of 12 neighborhood green spaces and community gardens.
  • Innovative community outreach, education and organizing engaging hundreds of community residents in substantive activity.

Read more: Download our Brooklyn Greens report here.