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Isles, Inc. is a self-help, urban green development organization in Trenton, New Jersey founded in 1981. [1]
Despite Trenton being New Jersey’s capital city, Trenton’s median household income is $35,259 – more than 50 percent below the median income for Mercer County, New Jersey. [2] According to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development data for the month of April 2012, Trenton reported an unemployment rate of 12%, which is significantly higher than the statewide rate of 9.1%. [3] In 2010, the city’s poverty rate was 29.2%, with an additional 3,000 Trenton residents falling into poverty last year. [4]
Isles YouthBuild Institute: Isles YouthBuild Institute (IYI) offers alternative education options for at-risk urban students seeking a high school diploma or GED, vocational skills training (construction, computer technology, office management), and life skills training (leadership, financial, health education, conflict management). [5] Isles has developed a peer-based approach for students ages 16 to 24, who have struggled in conventional school settings and/or have had encounters with the justice system. IYI students rehabilitate at least one abandoned home in Trenton each year. [6]
Community Enterprises: Isles Community Enterprises (ICE), a certified Community Development Financial Institute (CDFI), offers educational and financial products in Spanish and English that support lower-income families pursuing long-term financial stability through homeownership and home preservation counseling, credit repair counseling, and other financial products. [7]
Isles E4: Isles E4 (Energy, Environment, Employment, and Equity) is a weatherization and healthy homes subsidiary that works to deliver energy and health retrofits to low-income households in New Jersey. E4 offers job training for unemployed or underemployed residents and weatherization services for lower-income communities. [8]
Center for Energy and Environmental Training (CEET): Isles’ CEET is a green-collar job training facility targeting careers in clean energy and environmental hazard cleanup. [9] Training modules include energy audits and retrofits, green construction, renewable energy, environmental assessment, and hazardous material cleanup. [10] CEET is a Building Performance Institute (BPI) certified trainer, and an approved National Center for Healthy Housing satellite training center. [11]
Community Planning and Development: Isles’ Community Planning and Development department teaches residents how to organize, identify, and address immediate land, business, and service needs and opportunities through master planning projects in the region. Currently, Isles is working to renovate an 1800s mill that will become a multi-use center for community and culture in the Trenton area, not far from the well-known Grounds for Sculpture. [12]
Urban Agriculture: Isles’ Urban Agriculture work supports Trenton-area residents, schools, and other groups to transform vacant urban land into gardens. Through local and national support, such as the Rita Allen Foundation Grant [13] to promote urban agriculture, Isles supports over 30 community and school gardens in the Trenton area. [14]
Environmental Health: Isles’ Environment Health Department targets the environmental hazards that impact family health and develops methods to reduce the presence and impact of those hazards. Education programs help families learn about lead and asthma triggers in homes, energy efficiency, and how to test for hazards and improve health and quality of life. [15]
Community development bank (CDB) or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) is a development bank or credit union that focus on serving people who have been locked out of the traditional financial systems such as the unbanked or underbanked in deprived local communities. They emphasize the long term development of communities and provide loans such as micro-finance or venture capital.
New Community Corporation (NCC) is a not-for-profit community development corporation based in Newark, New Jersey. NCC focuses on community organizing, provision of a variety of community-enhancing services, and resident participation in agency operation. Early prototypes of the community action movement included local housing and service agencies started by the Ford Foundation Gray Areas Initiative and the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, and both federal and private Mobilization for Youth in New York City.
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund promotes economic revitalization in distressed communities throughout the United States by providing financial assistance and information to community development financial institutions (CDFI). A government corporation owned by the United States Department of the Treasury, it was established through the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. Financial institutions, which may include banks, credit unions, loan funds, and community development venture capital funds, can apply to the CDFI Fund for formal certification as a CDFI. As of September 1, 2005, there were 747 certified CDFIs in the U.S. The CDFI Fund offers a variety of financial programs to provide capital to CDFIs, such as the Financial Assistance Program, Technical Assistance Program, Bank Enterprise Award Program, and the New Markets Tax Credit Program.
Walter Reed Gusciora is an American Democratic Party politician who has served as the 48th mayor of Trenton, New Jersey since 2018. He previously served from 1996 to 2018 in the New Jersey General Assembly, where he represented the 15th Legislative District.
The term "sustainable communities" has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "green cities," "eco-communities," "livable cities" and "sustainable cities."
Altgeld Gardens Homes is a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project on the far south side of Chicago, Illinois, United States, on the border of Chicago and Riverdale, Illinois. The residents are 97% African-American according to the 2000 United States Census. Built between 1944 and 1945 with 1,498 units, the development consists primarily of two-story row houses spread over 190 acres (0.77 km2).
WE ACT for Environmental Justice is a nonprofit environmental justice organization based in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. The organization was founded in March 1988 to mobilize community opposition to the city's operation of the North River Sewage Treatment Plant, and the siting of the sixth bus depot in Northern Manhattan.
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in an environmental sector of the economy. Environmental green-collar workers satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally conscious design, policy, and technology to improve conservation and sustainability. Formal environmental regulations as well as informal social expectations are pushing many firms to seek professionals with expertise with environmental, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy issues. They often seek to make their output more sustainable, and thus more favorable to public opinion, governmental regulation, and the Earth's ecology.
The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs is a governmental agency of the U.S. state of New Jersey.
George S. Hawkins is a lawyer, college professor and environmentalist. He served as general manager of the DC Water and Sewer Authority from 2009 to 2017. Hawkins has worked in the environmental industry, as a corporate lawyer and as a regulator.
The Ecology Center is a non-profit organization based in Berkeley, California to provide environmental education and reduce the ecological footprint of urban residents.
Capital Good Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Providence, Rhode Island that provides loans and financial coaching to residents of Rhode Island, Florida, Massachusetts, and Delaware. Capital Good Fund offers loans for car purchase/refinance, immigration costs, weatherization, security deposits, and other consumer purposes.
Green affordable housing is reasonably priced housing that incorporates sustainable features. The phenomenon has become increasingly common in the United States with the adoption of state and local policies that favor or require green building practices for publicly owned or funded buildings. Potential benefits of green affordable housing include lower energy cost burden and improved health. One challenge to green affordable housing is the tendency to overlook long-term benefits in the face of higher upfront cost. The challenge for green housing advocates is to see to the life cycle cost of the building. Many affordable housing projects already find it a challenge to raise capital to finance basic affordable housing. Green affordable housing has taken form in traditionally wooden homes and most recently with 'upcycling' shipping containers
Sustainable refurbishment describes working on existing buildings to improve their environmental performance using sustainable methods and materials. A refurbishment or retrofit is defined as: "any work to a building over and above maintenance to change its capacity, function or performance' in other words, any intervention to adjust, reuse, or upgrade a building to suit new conditions or requirements". Refurbishment can be done to a part of a building, an entire building, or a campus. Sustainable refurbishment takes this a step further to modify the existing building to perform better in terms of its environmental impact and its occupants' environment.
The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) is a US non-profit community development financial institution (CDFI) that supports community development initiatives across the country. It has offices in nearly 40 cities and works across 2,100 rural counties in 44 states. LISC was created in 1979 by executives from the Ford Foundation. LISC's affiliates include the National Equity Fund (NEF), the largest national syndicator of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), the New Markets Support Company, a national syndicator of New Markets Tax Credits, and immito, which specializes in SBA 7a lending.
Urban agriculture in West Oakland involves the implementation of Urban agriculture in West Oakland, California.
Capital Impact Partners, or simply Capital Impact, is an American congressionally chartered, District of Columbia nonprofit and certified community development financial institution that provides credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations in the United States. S&P Global issued Capital Impact its first rating in 2017.
Greater Newark Conservancy is a non-profit organization headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, with the stated goal of promoting "environmental stewardship to improve the quality of life in New Jersey's urban communities." It offers programs for youth education, community greening and gardening, nutritional health, job training, and prisoner re-entry.
Open spaces in urban environments, such as parks, playgrounds, and natural areas, can provide many health, cultural, recreational, and economic benefits to the communities nearby. However, access to open spaces can be unequal for people of different incomes. In California's two largest metropolitan regions, Los Angeles County in Southern California and the Bay Area in Northern California, access to green space and natural areas varies with the predominant races and classes of the communities. This also holds true in San Diego County in Southern California. Both expanding urbanization and diminishing funding for open space tend to widen these gaps in accessibility. Because open space is associated with various mental and physical benefits, a lack of access to it can pose health consequences. However, more research is needed to determine whether such environmental inequalities translate into long-term health inequalities, and, if so, how.
Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles(CCSCLA) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) community-based organization whose mission is to work for social justice and economic and environmental change within the South Central community. CCSCLA works to involve community members in identifying social, economic, and environmental areas of concern to them, and give them the tools necessary to engage with institutions, such as industries or political leaders, to enact change.
