EFS Profiles
The Urban Resources Initiative
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Purpose: Community Involvement
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Yale is a private university that occupies 260 acres and enrolls 5,266 students. Yale develops partnerships that engage the interests of both the University and the New Haven community. The University strives to be constructively involved in the community where it resides. Partnerships help Yale overcome the problem of being a major cultural private institution located in the center of one of the poorest cities in the country. In order to carry out its commitment to community development, the University created the new position of Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs in 1997 to help organize and facilitate future partnerships. The institution has $2 million in community initiative projects planned for the next 10 years.
Urban Resources Initiative (URI)
The Urban Resources Initiative draws upon a unique collaboration between Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and affiliated, local non-profit organizations. In 1989, at the invitation of Baltimore's Director of Parks and Recreation, Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Professor William Burch sent Yale students to Baltimore to apply the principles of social forestry to the education of teenagers and the development of neighborhood forestry groups. Social forestry-originally designed for rural areas of developing countries-uses community participation and human resources to restore damaged ecosystems. Sustainability of projects is encouraged through local control and management.
The techniques developed in the Baltimore URI program have been adopted in New Haven through our Community Greenspace projects and environmental education programs. As the New Haven program developed a focused agenda of its own, its advisory board separated from the Yale program and formally incorporated as New Haven URI in 1991. However, Yale continues to contribute to URI by providing financial support as well as expertise, resources, and participation in many of the projects. The University also helps develop partnerships between the campus and city agencies.
URI's work focuses primarily on establishing partnerships with community groups to replant, restore and reclaim the environment in the City of New Haven. The organization feels that is increasingly important to link urban revitalization with environmental restoration to break the cycles of urban decay. As a result, URI seeks out those areas that are traditionally seen as problems-vacant lots, derelict buildings, and historically neglected areas of the city-as opportunities for the social and physical renewal of our community's environment.
Some examples of the programs that are conducted through URI are discussed below.
Community Greenspace Program
Neighbors across the City of New Haven are replanting their communities making them more vibrant. The Community Greenspace Program offers material supplies and technical advice to support residents who wish to reclaim their neighborhoods. Volunteers, with some outside support, are the catalysts for change-it is their efforts that will restore New Haven's neighborhoods. Working together, neighbors create a more beautiful, livable community, and by joining forces, address problems while forging stronger ties to one another. Citizens working on a common space project such as curb strips, parks and vacant lots succeed in setting and achieving their own goals while uniting their community.
The Community Greenspace Program consists of an intern from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES) working alongside community groups in a mutual pathway of learning. Greenspace provides both material and technical resources to the participating groups. The community forester also helps neighbors to conduct an inventory of existing trees; select and prepare sites for new plantings; select appropriate plants; and learn planting and maintenance techniques. In addition to the support of a community forester, participating community groups also have access to training workshops and landscape architects.
Open Spaces as Learning Places
Since 1991 URI has developed partnerships with dozens of schools, neighborhood groups and individual teachers. These projects have directly benefited the hundreds of New Haven students who have studied the wildlife in their neighborhood parks, designed watershed management plans, created nature trails through nearby open spaces, studied critical urban environmental management issues such as land use planning, and planted trees around their schools and neighborhoods both to improve the aesthetics of the grounds and create habitat for wildlife.
Our most recent environmental education project, Open Spaces as Learning Places, is designed to teach New Haven students about environmental stewardship through exploration of open space sites in their communities. The program targets for participation 4th and 5th grade students from historically neglected neighborhoods. These students are old enough to understand and appreciate the complex nature of local ecological systems and young enough to retain their sense of wonder that comes from investigating the world around them. Distinct from past efforts that concluded with the completion of the program, we are working to make Open Spaces as Learning Spaces sustainable through curriculum-building, annual teacher training workshops, and strong partnerships with the New Haven Public Schools, the Peabody Museum Bio-Action Lab, and the New Haven Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees.
Urban Ecosystem Research
URI is involved in a number of urban ecosystem research projects. Each year, the Hixon Center for Urban Ecology gives fellowships to two F&ES students to conduct research on urban ecology related to URI's work. In 2000, Alexis Dinno initiated a large community survey to determine the human health impacts of vacant land, while Adrian Camacho carried out research on biodiversity in urban areas. Another Yale F&ES student, Lianne Fisman, did research to inform the planning of schoolyards in future New Haven school improvements.
In addition, F&ES Professor William Burch focused on URI's Greenspace Program during his class entitled, "Rehabilitation Ecology and Community Revitalization - Monitoring and Evaluation Techniques" in the fall of 2000. URI is in the process of implementing the findings of the students in this class into the "Monitoring and Evaluation" segment of the Greenspace program. The students' work is proving very useful in improving the way URI finds and records information on both plant survival and community building.
Professional Training
The Greenspace Program affords approximately 7 interns each summer the opportunity to gain real-world experience as community foresters. No longer confined to academic discussions and books, the summer interns gain real insight into social ecology from the neighborhoods of New Haven. Moreover, this clinical learning opportunity is dually beneficial: beneficial for the interns, who are able to put their theories and skills into practice, and a boon as well for the community groups, who are able to take advantage of the interns' knowledge and expertise. In addition to the Greenspace internships, URI also gives internships in environmental education through Open Spaces as Learning Places. In this program, F&ES students travel to local schools to discuss ecological issues. Once again, F&ES students and community members engage in a "mutual pathway of learning," as F&ES and elementary students both teach and learn a great deal from one another.
URI also engages incoming first-year F&ES students in modules just before the academic year begins in late August. These modules are also affectionately called, "A Hands-On-Day-to-Explore-Opportunities-in Urban-Ecology-Research-and-Outreach-and-Get-Out-and-See-the City-with-the-Urban-Resources-Initiative." The purpose of the modules is to introduce the students to the wide variety of opportunities for urban natural resource management in New Haven. In this "learning-by-doing" setting, students do interactive research with residents on the ecological, social, and economic forces shaping the neighborhoods throughout the city. Like the community forestry internships for the Greenspace program (discussed above), the modules also attempt to serve a dual purpose: to act as a learning laboratory for students and to improve the biophysical and social fabric of the city.
Urban Resources Initiative
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
© 2005 Second Nature, Inc.
