Social Impact

During one of our meetings, leadership led staff through an exercise called the fishbowl, in which five people most involved in each pillar sat in a smaller inner circle whilst the rest of staff sat surrounding them. The inner circle would work on defining each pillar in regards to the work we do. If compelled to share their ideas as well, anyone from the outer circle could switch places with someone from the inner circle and take their turn to speak. Although a relatively small role, I felt very excited about being selected as one of the initial five to discuss the Community pillar.

Through my recent work managing the Build-A-Garden program—where we install raised garden beds for Boston residents and support them through growing their own food—I have become especially involved in our community engagement. Regularly interacting with residents via installations, workshops, seedling sales, etc., I observe ways in which our organization can improve our collaboration with the community, even as I am a relatively recent introduction to the organization. Thus, having the opportunity to share my perspectives on our community engagement not only empowered me to have a voice amongst our staff, but also gave me the opportunity to reflect on the genuine connections with the community I’ve made, and to recognize ways to positively influence my host organization’s future community collaborations.

Further, I see how our contributions to this discussion have since been integrated into organization-wide changes. In defining what community is at The Food Project, we generally found difficulty in determining a single, all-encompassing answer. While our organization creates its own immediate community, especially amongst the youth in our programs, we also engage with the broader community—sometimes in fleeting but meaningful one-time interactions, and sometimes with community members who work with us throughout their life. Recognizing this, through the reflections from our fishbowl and all-staff meetings, The Food Project has begun assessing the different kinds of community interactions we are involved in. The organization has also begun restructuring our programs, hoping to best leverage those community interactions to spark meaningful change.

I feel grateful to be working for an organization that considers the practice of honest reflection and focused revision so significant. While working in the nonprofit sector, I find it essential to regularly reflect on how our work must change alongside our changing communities. With springtime on the horizon, I look forward to further engaging our organization’s reflections and implementing them to support a flourishing community around gardening and food.

Imagine a Times Square where Red Maples and American Chestnuts grow nearly a hundred feet tall, providing shade, sustenance, and habitat for the critters below. Gray Wolves, Bobcats, and Mountain Lions survey the old-growth, deciduous forest floor for prey, like Eastern Cottontails and White-tailed Deer. The occasional Snapping Turtle wanders from the river to lay her eggs in the warm, rich earth; she’s careful not to become dinner for a lucky human. Though much of the biodiversity that once made up pre-1609 Mannahatta, the adjacent mainland (in the Bronx), Wamponomon (Queens and Brooklyn), and on the south side of the harbor (Staten Island) has been lost to colonial ecocide and aggressive urbanization, a group of warm-blooded vertebrates continues to remind us of the City’s wildness.

New York City is home to over 400 species of birds living in or stopping over its 193,700 acres of urban, wetland, forest, and grassland habitat. Every spring and fall, millions of birds repeat their ancient cycle of migration through New York City, journeying along the “Atlantic Flyway” in search of food and breeding opportunities. As the birds follow a promising, blue haze on the horizon, they’re no longer met with a forested island of Maples and Chestnuts; rather, choice green oases amidst a maze of reflective glass. According to New York City Audubon’s research, up to a quarter of a million of these migrating birds are killed in the City each year in collisions with building glass. Nevertheless, the birds return again to remind us, despite rapid habitat degradation and fragmentation, that this wild city was once – and still is – their home.

As the FAO Schwarz Fellow at NYC Audubon, I am most interested in the intersectional challenges we face as an island megapolis in a time of global, anthropogenic change. Environmental pressures – like urban development – disproportionately affect urban wildlife as well as communities of color, illuminating a clear relationship between issues like habitat loss and gentrification. In a time of global climate crisis, it must be understood that the outcomes for New York City, its human and non-human dwellers, and its bioregion are undoubtedly entangled. To best address this looming pan-ecological disaster, we must work to address the living truth of our home and our neighbors. We must reconfigure and reimagine the nature of the City, and develop intimate knowledges of this place and its critters. Though much of this place is covered in a concrete veneer and many of its critters scarce or destroyed, the birds lead us to little pockets of something different. The birds take us to the rooftops, the beaches, the cemeteries, and the parks. They announce their continued survival in soaring melodies over sirens and car horns. When we listen, we can no longer see our City as a triumph over nature or a testament to masterful technology. No longer protected by arrogant presumptions of human superiority, we become curious about the land we inhabit and our fellow City dwellers (human animals and non-human animals alike).

Riding the train home from Coney Island, I watch the vast, blue Atlantic fade behind new construction along the tracks. Rock Pigeons balance on the edges of the half-finished buildings’ harsh, modern design — I wonder who will live there, and I wonder who lived there before.

Sources:

McCully, Betsy. City at the Water’s Edge a Natural History of New York. Rivergate Books, an Imprint of Rutgers University Press, 2007.

“NYC Audubon,” https://www.nycaudubon.org/.

“The Welikia Project.” The Welikia (“Way-LEE-Kee-Uh”) Project, https://welikia.org/.

Hunt, Christian. “The Second Great American Extinction Event (1600s to 1900s).” Wild Without End, Defenders of Wildlife, 18 Nov. 2018, https://medium.com/wild-without-end/the-second-great-american-extinction-event-1600s-to-1900s-d6e07985116e.

Chaudhuri, Una. The Stage Lives of Animals: Zooësis and Performance. Routledge, an Imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

When I thought about what I wanted to study in college or choose as my career I always knew that I wanted to work in youth education, so I chose to study human development and community engagement. My experiences with community education spaces growing up taught me that there is always something more to discover in life. Community spaces, especially free or low-cost spaces encourage families, friends, and strangers to come together in collaboration to have a new experience, meet new people and ultimately feel safe. Starting work with my Fellowship at The Clay Studio this July showed me a new type of community education experience in the arts.

My special project work at The Clay Studio involves the creation of an after-school ceramics art program. The coordination of this program includes curriculum development, communication with schools, networking/marketing, enrollment, and registration. The age group is currently third through fifth grade and students come after school dismissal to the studio to hand-build, wheel throw, and make claymation films. This program is the first of its kind in this organization, giving us the ability to work with the same students for a long-term residency in our studio. The arts and ceramics, in particular, teach important skills to students such as patience, persistence, imagination, and play. Being able to create a space in our organization for this type of community to exist means that students get to practice their craft, engage with other children in their age group, and be welcomed with open arms.

In addition, the role includes community partnerships, and this has allowed me to contact local arts and culture organizations to collaborate with our after-school program and incorporate other forms of education in the program. One of the pillars of community education is simply offering a space that is available for people to spend time in without the expectation of spending money or working. Being able to spend time in this environment and create a program for children has been so rewarding because I have experienced the benefits of programs similar in my childhood.

As we as a city, country, and world are engaging with challenges related to social equity, safety, and isolation, I feel that the creation of community engagement and education programs will act as a protective factor for all. Social impact work has a goal of systemic change, and I believe that the prioritization of community spaces that encourage exploration is essential to that journey.