Rebuilding our green spaces, healing our connections with each other and with the land
Leader
Kofi Thomas
Location
50 Goodwin Place Brooklyn, NY 11207
Our mission is to transform and unite 4 Green Spaces on neighboring blocks in Brooklyn. We are going to support and activate A historic artist community garden, A small farm, a school's garden and a Senior Citizen garden. Our neighbors have suffered physically due to the pandemic, a lack of access to healthy food and an inability to be mobile. We have suffered traumas due to isolation, fear and loss of loved ones. We need change, we need to heal.
We are going to unite in a collective effort to rehabilitate our green spaces and in the process reunite our community. We will build the spaces together, bridging people from different streets and cultural backgrounds. The spaces will then serve the public good in a number of ways including Workshops, Access to healthy locally grown organic food, Art therapy through music and painting, and providing a safe place to share our stories and find strength in each other.
One of our initiatives is clean energy to reduce our carbon footprint. The energy system will be an educational resource for local schools, Benefit the air quality in our area that causes high rates of childhood asthma and hopefully inspire other spaces to move away from fossil fuels.
Form union of youth artists and contractors to reimagine and reshape a schooll's garden. Next step is building and planting.
At the Seniors Garden neighbors with the guidance of seniors will get their planting beds ready and accessible.
Neighbors will plant and build structures at the small farm to enable more food production and distribution.
We will hire instructors to lead workshops to make us a more sustainable community full of gardeners.
We will work with a contractor to purchase and install solar energy and make the setup transparent and a teaching tool for all.
Curate Music nights and paint festivals to bring neighbors together to express themselves, be together in solidarity and heal
Our project will have a generational impact on the future of the blocks by learning from our social, economical and environmental past. Socially we are a diverse neighborhood with many of us coming from cultures with big families that took care of each other. Got together socially for a good time, and when we needed each other's help. Economically we've had to pay a high price for fresh food that many of us cannot afford. We will give people free food as well as the knowledge and resources to grow their own food making us more financially independent. Our neighborhood has been a victim of overdevelopment by large corporations at the cost of the environment and our health. We will preserve our green spaces, plant more vegetables, flowers and trees. And what we do, the example that we set, the energy that we generate, is contagious and more people will become environmentally conscious and change their environment.