1Photo by J. Pellgen.

BROOKLYN COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONSUMMER NEWSLETTER 2012

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Three summers ago, we were deep in the planning stages for the launch of the Brooklyn Community Foundation, both thrilled and a bit terrified to be stepping into new territory as the first and only charitable foundation for Brooklyn.

But we were fueled by a strong belief in our mission—to connect Brooklyn’s burgeoning prosperity and brand power with a new phil-anthropic ethos that builds a stronger, better Brooklyn for all.

Media coverage of Brooklyn increasingly focused on luxury condo development, new boutique hotels, and artisanal cheese and pickles. The bigger story—that Brooklyn is home to more poor people than Detroit; that 40% of its students drop out of high school; that it has more people on Food Stamps than any other borough; and a quarter of its seniors live in poverty—remained largely unexamined.

But we were not content to live out this tale of two Brooklyns.

We all live in the one Brooklyn: known for its colorful characters and get-it-done attitude, which also welcomes people from all over to live out their dreams here, whether you’re an artist from Idaho or an entrepreneur from Ecuador. It’s a spirit that links all 2.5 million of us, from Brownsville to Brooklyn Heights.

Our borough is a hotbed of talent and new ideas, which when applied to our greatest challenges, can breed substantial progress. We know that change for Brooklyn comes not from the top down, but from within, led by individuals who know their neighbors and love their com-munity.

OUR RED HOOK SUMMER Over these three years, we’ve invited you to join us in making change happen here.

Your generosity has boosted the work of people dedicated to seeing this difference. Like Ian Marvy and Jill Eisenhard who have spent 10-plus years improving their Red Hook neighborhood and the lives of young people growing up there. Through their work at Added Value Community Farm and the Red Hook Initiative, respectively, they’ve been a force for good, bringing about unmis-takable change.

The Brooklyn Community Foundation is proud to be a part of their success stories, told in this newsletter, and to be the spark that lights the blaze of change.

You can see it for yourself this summer in Red Hook. And you can see the effective work driven by nonprofit leaders taking hold in Sunset Park, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Crown Heights, Cypress Hills, Flatbush, and other communities across the borough.

We’re rising up, Brooklyn, to take on our challenges. But we need more believers in our cause, to bolster our fight.

Brooklyn is changing. Let’s make it a change we can all be proud of.

Marilyn Gelber, PresidentBrooklyn Community Foundation

BrooklynCommunityFoundation.orgFacebook.com/DoGoodBklynTwitter.com/DoGoodBklyn

Brooklyn Community Foundation improves the lives of people in Brooklyn by strengthening communities through local giving, grantmaking and community service.

Alan H. Fishman, ChairmanHildy Simmons, Vice ChairmanMartin M. BaumrindRobert CatellRohit M. DesaiDonald ElliottEdward F. Gentner, Jr., Esq.Ralph HerzkaSister Elizabeth A. Hill, C.S.J.Malcolm MacKayRichard W. MooreMaria Fiorini RamirezConstance R. RooseveltMichael ShermanClaire SilbermanRev. Emma Jordan Simpson

Marilyn G. Gelber, PresidentMichael J. BurkeAnna FrenchDiane JohnStuart PostLiane StegmaierAlex VillariToya Williford

BOARD OF DIRECTORSMISSION

STAY INFORMED

STAFF

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Brooklyn Community Foundation Helps Ignite a Red Hook Renaissance by Investing in Local Leadership and Fresh Ideas

With Community Foundation support, Added Value is now partnering with the NYC Housing Authority and Green City Force to create a new farm on NYCHA property in Red Hook with an emphasis on job training.

RED HOOK ON THE RISE

Under the shadow of a tower of one the country’s largest public housing developments, garlic is growing.

No run-of-the-mill bulb, this is Red Hook Red Garlic, a variety born and bred in Brooklyn.

For five years, the Added Value team has saved this seed, planting it each season into the rich dirt on one of the city’s most successful urban farms. The root has taken hold, feed-ing and fostering a neighborhood once synonymous with urban blight.

This garden did not grow alone. Since 1998, the Brooklyn Community Foundation has supported organizations in Red Hook developing innovative approaches to youth empower-ment, community development, the arts, elderly care, and environmental issues.

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The germ of this partnership began even before the cre-ation of the Community Foundation. In 1997, heeding a call from the neighborhood, Independence Community Bank opened a branch in Red Hook—the first in over 60 years. The following year, the bank planted the seed for bolder philanthropy in Brooklyn, with a gift to create what is now the Brooklyn Community Foundation. Naturally, Red Hook became a proving ground for its work.

“We focused on economic development and education, with the understanding that you can’t make a neighborhood stronger by just writing checks,” says Brooklyn Community

“By adding a bit of financial fuel and being a good listener, the Community Foundation was able to help people within the community to

find fresh approaches to meeting local challenges,” adds Gelber.

Since receiving a $500 micro-grant in 2003, Added Value has been awarded more than $100,000 through the Green Communities Fund.

Community Foundation InvestmentNearly $150,000 from the Education & Youth Achievement Fund has been designated to the Red Hook Initiative.

RED HOOK

Foundation President Marilyn Gelber. “You need to empower people.”

Red Hook is a picture of Brooklyn’s assets and challenges. It is a creative and tight-knit community that grapples with enduring social issues, making it the ideal place for the Community Foundation to cultivate its unique grassroots approach to community development, which aims to iden-tify leaders and offer them the tools to make change.

“By adding a bit of financial fuel and being a good listener, the Community Foundation was able to help people within the community to find fresh approaches to meeting local challenges” adds Gelber.

Added Value is one example of how seeds planted in Red Hook have grown to become models for programs through-out New York City. First, they reclaimed a vacant asphalt playground. Then they married sustainable urban agricul-ture with community development to train local youth to run a farm to help them gain job skills and better engage with their neighborhood.

Red Hook Homes, the largest mixed-affordable housing development in Red Hook’s history, opened in 2011.

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The Brooklyn Community Foundation’s support dates back to 2000, when urban farming was still an exotic idea. Co-founder Ian Marvy, who is now working with the Com-munity Foundation to create farms in local public housing complexes, says “this support has helped us develop pro-gramming that’s been on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the city.”

A decade later, many fledging projects in Red Hook have become institutions. Like Red Hook on the Road, a program that assists residents in getting their commercial driver’s license to put them on the road to a new career. It is now one of several job training programs at Brooklyn Workforce Innovations, an affiliate of the Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC).

FAC, a premier community development organization and a long-term grantee, is the force behind Red Hook Homes, the largest affordable ownership housing development in this neighborhood’s history. The Community Foundation backed construction of the mixed-income co-ops through a returnable investment that helped 40 low-income families,

some from public housing, buy their first home.

“They’re embracing their new experience as homeowners, investing their time and energy into making the building and the community a better place,” says FAC Executive Director Michelle De La Uz.

Red Hook residents embrace that sense of ownership in institutions as well, including the Red Hook Initiative (RHI).

For 10 years, RHI has provided support and counseling to young people growing up in the Red Hook Houses, the largest and oldest public housing project in Brooklyn. By offering innovative programming that mixes education and confidence-building with real world job skills, RHI has succeeded in helping teens find a path toward college and a career.

“The issues going on in Red Hook are still very serious,” said RHI Executive Director Jill Eisenhard. But there’s hope “coming through the young people.”

In 2008, RHI had lost its lease, and thought it might have to shut down. Eisenhard proposed that RHI would fundraise

Neighborhood StatsThe median annual household income is $15,000.Unemployment is 60%.

Red Hook Houses is Brooklyn’s largest NYCHA development, with 2,878 units.

Youth advocates at the Red Hook Initiative, a long-term grantee through our Education and Youth Achievement Fund.

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for a new center. To encourage local participation, the Community Foundation committed to match every dollar. RHI youth helped collect over $10,000 from their families and neighbors.

Now RHI’s light-filled building is open 12 hours a day and its 62 Red Hook employees can serve a growing number of their teenage neighbors. The high school graduation rate among children growing up in public housing is abysmally low, but RHI saw 100 percent of its high school seniors graduate and be ready for college or careers.

It’s an example of how the Community Foundation can spark a community to realize a vision of what it could be. Eisenhard remembers one grandmother who regularly stopped to look through RHI’s free clothes. During the cam-paign, she arrived at RHI’s temporary space “and handed us $5,” says Eisenhard. “That speaks as much as $500.”

Students from Dance Theater Etc. rehearse at South Brooklyn Community High School.

Program AchievementsMore than 150 neighborhood teens have gone through Added Value’s long term training program.

Last year 35% of Red Hook Initiative’s (RHI) youth secured paid employment beyond the RHI program.

“You can ask, ‘what’s needed here?’ Then you create something that works elsewhere, too,” says Martha Bowers, founder of Dance Theater Etc., which for 10 years has used performance to tackle social issues. “Programs developed here are now in schools throughout the city.”

With the Brooklyn Community Foundation as a hub of ideas and connections, Red Hook organizations have collaborated to usher a neighborhood toward a brighter future.

“If something’s already happening at another organiza-tion, our goal is never to re-create it 10 blocks away,” says Eisenhard. “We just say, ‘let’s partner.’”

That means that Cora Dance has a program with P.S. 15 to walk students over after school for pay-what-you can classes. It means the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition has worked with local seniors, students and schools to put on its shows. It means that Kentler International Drawing Space has brought its arts education to local elementary schools and RHI, and those groups have sent their students to the gallery on Van Brunt Street.

The organizations supported by Brooklyn Community Foundation strive every day to offer the tools for the people of Red Hook to build the community they want to see.

“We empower people,” says Florence Neal, founder of Kentler, “and that’s pretty amazing.”

“We empower people, and that’s pretty amazing.”

Kentler International Drawing Space’s monthly Drawing Together art workshop for families.

DO GOOD RIGHT HERELearn more about the difference you can make as a Brooklyn Community Foundation donor at: BrooklynCommunityFoundation.org

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Our Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge-winning project with City Limits officially launched in January at BKBureau.org. The site employs investigative reporters and video journalists to cover the big challenges facing our com-munities, from government funding cuts to school closures.

Leveraging surging attention and affinity for Brooklyn, as well as its attraction to entrepreneurs, artists, and young profes-sionals, Do Good Right Here—anchored at DoGoodRightHere.org—connects residents with volunteer positions at Brooklyn-serving organiza-tions and institutions, to both increase the capacity of Brooklyn’s nonprofit sector and grow ties between Brooklynites and their neighbors in need.

With more than 600 pages of data on Brooklyn’s 18 Community Districts, as well the borough as a whole, these new reports present an unprecedented look at nine civic themes—Demo-graphics, Youth & Education, Economy, Housing, Environ-ment, Health, Public Safety, Arts & Culture, and Civic Engagement. See them in full at BrooklynCom-munityFoundation.org/Your-Community. Coming this fall: the first-ever Brooklyn Trends Report, an in-depth examination and assessment of all aspects of Brooklyn life.

In March, with our Brooklyn Greens initiative partners Pratt Center for Community Development, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, El Puente, and Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, we hosted a meet-up of 150 environmental leaders from government, community development, and nonprofit to discuss the many ways urban sustainability is realized. Read more about the conference and our continuing work in this area at: BrooklynCommunity-Foundation.org/Impact/Green-Communities

THIS JUST IN: Brooklyn Bureau Brings More Coverage to Issues that Matter Most

DO GOOD RIGHT HERE: New Volunteer Initiative for Brooklyn

KNOW BROOKLYN: Introducing the “Brooklyn Neighborhood Reports”

GREENING FROM THE GROUND UP: First-Ever Sustainability Conference for Brooklyn

DoGoodRightHere.org, the online home of the Community Foundation’s volunteer initiative, launched June 1st.

A GREATER IMPACT HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR BOROUGHWIDE PROGRAMS

45 Main Street, Suite 409 Brooklyn, NY 11201w: BrooklynCommunityFoundation.org

IN THIS ISSUE: How the Brooklyn Community Foundation is bringing Brooklynites together to take on our

challenges, ignite positive change, and make our beloved borough a better home for all.

While Parts of Brooklyn Flourish, Serious Challenges Persist

A TALE TWO BROOKLYNSA TALE TWO BROOKLYNSWHILE PARTS OF BROOKLYN FLOURISH, SERIOUS CHALLENGES PERSIST

One in five Brooklynites is unable to afford enough food at some point during the year.

Brooklyn has the 2nd least amount of park space per capita in New York City.

Half of the top 10 NYC neighborhoods with the highest foreclosure rates are in Brooklyn.

Less than 18% of Brooklyn students are deemed “college ready” at graduation.

Eater.com ranked The Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare the 7th Toughest Reservation to Get in the World.

Brooklyn Bridge Park received a $40 million gift in April, the largest in NYC Parks’ history.

Propertyshark.com ranked DUMBO the 4th Most Expensive Neighborhood in NYC.

Brooklyn’s $3 billion tech industry is home to Etsy, HUGE, Steiner Studios.

Half of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winners live in Brooklyn.

City and State arts funding is just $3.43 a person in Brooklyn vs. $6.26 per person for all NYC.