The tools for building community–talking to your neighbors, supporting local businesses, volunteering–haven’t changed much in centuries. Our case in point for today comes from ioby leader Justin Moore (we also awarded him a Hero In Our Backyards Award in 2012 for his work in reimagining vacant space). Together with his mother, Justin started Urban Patch, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit dedicated to making the American inner city better, and they’re starting Mapleton on the North Side of Indianapolis, where his grandfather, Albert Allen Moore worked at the Flanner House.

Below is an except from a brochure on Fundamental Education, circa 1954, developed by the Flanner House, thanks to the digital records at IUPUI.

We’re so excited about this great partnership for healthier communities, we could shout it from the rooftops and we would love for you to join us. 

So, stock up on groceries and know that 5% of your Brussels sprouts and sriracha are going to ioby. Swing by the ioby table in store at all NYC locations, and say hello to our friendly volunteers. And be sure to tell your friends all about this great opportunity to make a big difference for ioby. 

Then, on Saturday we participated in the second annual Philanthrofest and, we have to say, it was an incredible and impactful experience. The event’s organizers brought together over 200 of Miami’s most active and meaningful efforts and organizations alongside music and food trucks in a festival atmosphere, and then drawing thousands upon thousands of greater miami residents interested in becoming more civically engaged. We met so many great people, doing so many great things, in so many places — and are super excited about supporting those efforts.

When we started we really had no idea what to expect in Miami, especially on the heels of a report like The Tale of Two Cities. And while my own experience in Miami the past 2.5 years painted the beginnings of a more positive picture, it is always hard to make a distinction between your own experiences and the overall reality. But, since the announcement of the Miami office I have been inundated with interest and I have learned how deep and extensive the level of desire and action for a better, stronger, healthier and more encompassing greater Miami is.

Faced with as many obstacles, historic and new, to a healthily empowered and engaged citizenry, it is not surprising that every time you turn around there are more citizen advocacy groups working to address the needs of the places and ways they live. What is somewhat surprising — but welcome! — is how their efforts are echoed through the various municipal offices of greater Miami-Dade. There is a strong and growing understanding that the citizen is not the customer of the city/county, but a partner.

Part of my work here is to introduce ioby as a tool to potential project leaders and support them to take that leap into working directly on the problems they can solve. The other part is to partner with municipality and citizen to identify and remove the specific barriers to citizens doing this work. I am already making positive headway on a few issues, but the bulk of this work lays ahead of me.

Miami is no different from any other American City at this time, struggling to get ahold of a governance system and budget that has been warped over multiple generations by the pressures of sprawl development, mass consumerism and ever more questionable federal policy. There is still, and will continue to be for some time, much here that can be pointed out as unacceptable — not worth dealing with. But, Miami is quickly surging to the head of the pack of cities who are, nonetheless, overcoming its obstacles and building a brighter future for all residents.

Photos by Naomi Ross

At ioby, we are particularly excited about this day because, well, we love food.  We see so many leaders and innovators creating stronger food systems, neighborhood by neighborhood.  This is especially important in cities where access to healthy and affordable food can be limited.

And there are two ways that you can help!

1. Help us to spread the word far and wide!  Even if you don’t live in NYC, please take 2 seconds to use Facebook or Twitter to show your support.
2. Shop at Whole Foods on April 11!  Whether you need to stock your fridge or get ingredients for a dinner party, set your sights on April 11.  We will have a table to share information about the work of leaders across the country.  Come by and say hello!

Thank you for helping ioby to support the innovators across the country that make our neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable!

Here is a list of the seven Whole Foods stores in NYC:

Columbus Circle  — 10 Columbus Circle (Lower Concourse of Time Warner Center)

Bowery — 95 East Houston Street

Tribeca —  270 Greenwich Street

Upper West Side — 808 Columbus Avenue

Chelsea — 250 7th Avenue

Union Square — 4 Union Square South

Midtown East — 226 East 57th Street

To ioby, the Jane Jacobs Medal is a huge honor for a number of reasons. First of all, it is very humbling to be counted among great giants in our city — like Ron Shiffman, Rosanne Haggerty and Carl Skelton — who have dedicated their lives to making NYC neighborhoods great places for all New Yorkers, as well as ridiculously important past medalists without whom this city would be very different:  Omar Freilla, founder of Green Worker Cooperatives, Peggy Shepard executive director of WE ACT, Alexie Torres-Fleming from YMPJ, Barry Benepe, founder of the Greenmarkets, Damaris Reyes, executive director of Good Old Lower East Side, Richard Kahan, from Urban Assembly, Robert Hammond and Joshua David, cofounders of the High Line, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers from the Central Park Conservancy, Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal, Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, and Janette Sadik-Khan, the transformational head of NYC Department of Transportation.

Second, Jane Jacobs, her work and her legacy is very much a part of the ioby spirit. Fiercely concerned with the people who make up cities, their role in political participation and planning and their value in the everyday ballet of the city, Jane Jacobs (de)paved the way for a platform like ioby to exist and thrive.

And finally, Jane herself was, compared to the urban planners, real estate owners, developers and architects, not expert. She was criticized for being unscholarly and challenged experts in urban planning. One of ioby’s founding principles is that people who live in a community know what’s best for the neighborhood. ioby’s role is that of a platform for leaders to bring attention to their work in urban neighborhoods — however expert or nonexpert those leaders may be. Sure, many ioby projects are led by professional urban planners or professors of urban planning or practitioners in architecture or design , and many are not. In fact, most ioby projects are led by a person who has lived in a neighborhood for many years and sees the need for positive change. And that’s as expert as you need to be to lead a project on ioby.

So, outside of being one of the greatest thinkers on urban spaces, urban planning and sociology that the world has ever seen, we would also like to call Jane Jacobs an early ioby project leader and count her among our Backyard Blazers and Heroes in Our Backyards.

Thanks to Edwin Torres, Dr. Judith Rodin, the Rockefeller Foundation, MAS, the ioby Board of Directors, funders, project leaders and donors who have been the lifeblood of our work since the very beginning.

But then I see the reality, which is an ever more energized and engaged citizenry, giving of themselves to create, collaboratively, a better place to live.

The goal of a caring and engaged populace is almost universally shared, from municipal official to municipal resident. The mystery is how.

Part of the problem has to do with political will. Part also has to do with the realistic feasibility of the average citizen navigating municipal bureaucracy as a first step in affecting meaningful local change. Each place has its own unique mix of strengths, opportunities and challenges in these regards.

To focus on the greater Miami area, ioby invites you to join us for a day-long interactive civic hacking symposium. A series of discussions and exercises will help us better understand the barriers to civic betterment and how we can overcome them.

“Tapping” Citizen Energy

An example of one of these obstacles to citizen-led efforts to better our city that I’ve recently run across is the difficulty of accessing communally held and funded resources like water infrastructure. In Washington, DC, civic nonprofits run volunteer events planting over 3,000 trees per year. Once the trees are in the ground, volunteers water them, using a temporary hydrant tap that costs for three days or less just $55/day. For periods from three days to one year, a $700 deposit is all that is due to secure a floating meter and permit.

By contrast, in Miami-Dade, civic groups must pay a non-negotiable $2,500 deposit and must use a floating meter described as too large to fit in the trunk of a car and requiring a truck–a far cry from the modern, sleek and inexpensive floating meter many bike around the city and to water trees in DC.

A $2,500 deposit and truck rental are pretty big barriers to engagement. The disconnect is clear: policies and procedures are designed to serve professional building and landscaping trades as the prime doers, rather than the average citizen.

ioby’s interest is in making it easy to get active for people who want to make their neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable. So, as a first step in building and supporting the capacity for citizen led change, ioby+Miami is securing a long-term lease of a floating meter hydrant tap for use by project leaders and partner events requiring on-site water access.

Do you have ideas for what needs to occur to facilitate citizen- and community-led projects? Contribute your stories and ideas to our launch in Miami. For more information on how to participate, click here.

We really, really want to win. The prize will help even more ioby project leaders to bring their ideas to life, making neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable. To win, we need your help! Can you help us?

To vote, follow these three easy steps.

Step 1: Click here

Step 2: Click on one of the icons

You’ll use Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn or Yahoo to sign in. You’ll need to enter in your login (don’t worry, they won’t use it for anything other than counting your vote).

Step 3: Vote

Once you sign in, you’ll see a big, pink button “VOTE FOR THIS PROJECT.” Click on it.

That’s it! You’ll see a pop-up box that says thank you. And if you can share it on Facebook and Twitter to get more people to vote, that would be amazing. The best part is that you can vote every single day. The more people that vote everyday, the better chance we have to win. If you can take 15 seconds each day to vote for us, we will love you forever. Voting ends March 15.

Thank you so much – your support means the world to us!!

Velo City is one such project that raised some of its first funding on ioby and rooted itself in the Brooklyn community with a stall at the Dekalb Market. Photos follow.

To read the article–Crowdfunding + Foundation Philanthropy = Leveraged Community Engagement and Giving–in full, click here.