Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Along with Gallery Aferro and Lustig Dance Theatre, we welcome new grantee Green Map System.

Through the Sustainable Jersey program, Green Maps will mobilize communities to develop their own Green Map projects, cataloging green living, nature and cultural resources in their neighborhoods. The sophisticated map making (in multiple platforms and mediums) can cut through political barriers, bring diverse perspectives to light and empower communities to take a deep look at their community assets. It’s also a promising tool for communities where language differences can limit collaborative work: Green Maps has extensive experience in multi-lingual gatherings and mapping exercises.

In Jersey City, Dodge learned that the local food Green Map was a galvanizing force in moving the City to focus on urban agriculture. It served as an action plan and united a number of stakeholder groups. Incorporating this process into Sustainable Jersey will encourage town “Green Teams” to take action, and it holds promise for increasing the number of towns certified by the Sustainable Jersey program. Furthermore, green mapping communities will also enable Sustainable Jersey to gather important data which can feed into the development of community indicators of program success related to civic engagement, effective public services, cultural education, and land use, among others.

For more information on Green Map System, please visit their website.

Is your town participating in Sustainable Jersey? Check here.

Michelle Knapik, Environment Program Director

Paterson has an extraordinary history as the first planned industrial city and as an immigrant stronghold. The Hamilton Partnership for Paterson is a new nonprofit with a vision and plan to thread Paterson’s past success with its current and future revival, and the Great Falls once again figures prominently in the story. You may also know that the Hamilton in the Partnership’s name refers to one of our nation’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, who was also the architect, economist, and driver of Paterson’s rise as an industrial giant (click here for information about Hamilton’s “Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures”).

A team of Dodge staff and trustees recently had an opportunity to tour the Great Falls area – now the heart of the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park (as designated by President Obama on March 30, 2009). Our guides, Leonard Zax, Executive Director of the Partnership, and Bill Bolger, National Park Project Manager, brought to life a planned project called “the Mill Mile.” The Mill Mile will involve “a series of walking tours and educational materials that will be an integral part of America’s newest National Park. Mill Mile will engage Paterson residents and visitors through history, art, literature, and environmental education.”

Our tour started at the Paterson Museum, which provides tributes to Paterson’s industry pioneers and visionaries.

We then walked up the block to the top of the falls – here the original 1913 hydroelectric power plant, back in operation since the 80’s, is generating clean energy for more than 11,000 homes, with strategies in development for ways to boost energy production. In Hamilton’s time, Paterson was the first urban center to harness clean hydro power through its “raceway system” that diverted water from the falls to power the mills. History buffs will tell you that Paterson was known as Silk City, and equally well known for operations related to early steam locomotive production, gun production (Colt Revolver), and submarine and airplane engine production.

Paterson also offers surprising “wilds” amidst its industrial relics. The area around the Falls provides exquisite vistas and anyone with a penchant for archeology will appreciate the imposing basalt rock substrate that underlies and surrounds the falls.

Unlike the eroding rock at Niagara Falls, this glacial remnant is not in retreat mode.  I only know this because Bill Bolger went way beyond NPS project manager role to act as naturalist, environmental and educational interpreter, historian, archeologist, and artist during our tour!  The National Park is comprised of 35 acres along the Passaic River and the Falls, and I have no doubt that there is inspired leadership behind the NPS planning process. The land use and educational programming promises to be groundbreaking – and to serve as a model for urban parks across the country. Imagine the trail system that will retrace and reclaim historical events such as the area at the top of the Falls where George Washington picnicked with dignitaries, then wind around to Hinchliffe Stadium, which was home to the New York Black Yankees and New York Cubans of the Negro Baseball League.

Land around the Falls is considered prime real estate, and Leonard tells us that it is attracting high quality and high integrity developers. In the name of sustainable redevelopment, and as a way to right the industrial pollution wrongs of the past, stakeholders are looking for ways that green industry can be a part of Paterson’s future, along with eco, cultural and heritage tourism.  Picture the raceway system with water rushing over the latest micro-hydro power technologies. Mix this with historic preservation plans and rehab projects that keep reuse in mind, consider new opportunities for brownfield development, preserve the ruins of our industrial history, and create space for interpretive public art.

Our walk through town and through history was punctuated by our awe of the engineering and design innovations of the time: the early use of renewable energy, and the diversity of the people past and present, which is part of Paterson’s strength. The key to success will be revitalization efforts that strategically integrate opportunities related to the economy, the environment, and equity/fairness. A positive sign in this regard is the news that Paterson recently enrolled in the Sustainable Jersey program. In addition, many revitalization efforts are being led by strong nonprofits. Dodge is encourage by the work of some key players including City Green (community and school gardening and urban farming), the New Jersey Community Development Corporation (see efforts related to the Great Falls Youth Corps and the NEA (Arts & Creative Revitalization Initiative), Paterson Habitat for Humanity (green arts & community initiative), the Paterson Education Fund (Learn and Serve Environmental Science Program), the Passaic River Coalition (PRC leads on land trust matters in Paterson), and now the Hamilton Partnership for Paterson.  The full revitalization of Paterson will take some time, and stakeholders will need to collaborate and leverage all available public and private resources, but the Great Falls is already powering hope, action and a good deal of momentum toward a sustainable, thriving Paterson.

What’s your favorite historical fact about Paterson? And what is your vision of Paterson’s tomorrow?

Sustainable Jersey held their awards ceremony earlier this week to recognize the 38 towns who achieved Sustainable Jersey certification in 2010 by meeting the program’s certification requirements. Four of those communities surpassed all others by meeting the advanced requirements of the new Silver Level of certification. Was your town one of the 38? You can find out here.

Remarkably, 315 (56%) of New Jersey towns have registered with the program and are pursuing the certification. This is quite a testament to Sustainable Jersey as a useful framework for New Jersey towns to work towards a more sustainable future; it is also a testament to the desire of New Jerseyans to make their communities more livable.

As Sustainable Jersey expands the scope of its actions that municipalities can take to become certified, Dodge has encouraged program leaders to consider the role of creativity in community building. An Arts, Culture and Historical Preservation stakeholder group has formed and is working on arts and education programming opportunities for Sustainable Jersey that include linkages to Arts Builds Communities, concepts like arts as an economic engine of redevelopment, the Cloud Institute‘s work on educating for sustainability, and the NJ Learns program. It is hard to separate the themes of creativity and sustainability, as we know we need innovative minds to develop holistic, systems to drive solutions to today’s social, economic and environmental issues.

As the stakeholder group continues its work, Dodge and the Sustainable Jersey team also know that we need to shine light on places where the community has become a canvas for sustainable solutions and where community building-artists have expressed their vision for what is possible. This thinking led to the inaugural Sustainable Jersey Creative Community award.

Dodge was thrilled to help bestow this honor to Galloway Township. The Go Green Galloway team has created a wide spectrum of entry points to their Sustainable Jersey work. From the “recirculation committee,” which helps community members find matches for the re-use of household items, to the native plant landscaping committee, Galloway is pushing the envelope of community engagement. They also included a public art project at the heart of their community garden project, and they transformed a drainage basin into a habitat friendly, recreation rich lake setting (Patriots Lake).

The most ingenious community engagement strategy, however, may have been the media project that the high school took on in support of the re-usable bag campaign. Students created inspiring messages and have become a key partner in the success of the campaign.

There is an interesting footnote to this story.

At the same time that the concept of creativity was being celebrated in a sustainability forum, a team from Dodge and the Municipal Land Use Center of the College of New Jersey (the academic partner in Sustainable Jersey) were injecting concepts of sustainability at the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma. We look forward to reviewing what we learned at the conference to help advance the integration of these themes in New Jersey.

In a national vote, Sustainable Jersey was named one of three winners of the Community Matters Changemakers competition, “Strong Communities: Engaging Citizens, Strengthening Place, Inspiring Change.” Sustainable Jersey will receive $5,000 and national recognition as a top social change innovation. The Strong Communities competition was designed to identify innovative projects and ideas that engage citizens to steer change and build strong communities across the United States and Canada. Sustainable Jersey was one of 260 competition entrants. The entrants were narrowed to eight top programs by a panel of expert judges including Majora Carter, Founder of Sustainable South Bronx and President of the Majora Carter Group; Rich Harwood, Founder and President of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation; Jared Duval, author and Fellow at Demos; and Bonnie Shaw, Founder and Director of BYO Consulting. As a finalist, Sustainable Jersey participated in the national CommunityMatters’10 conference in Denver, Colorado from October 5-8, which brought together leaders, thinkers and doers working to build stronger communities.

Sustainable Jersey program founders Randall Solomon and Donna Drewes of Municipal Land Use Center at The College of New Jersey and Fred Profeta, Jr. of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities’ Mayors’ Committee for a Green Future went to Denver to make a presentation to the conference attendees.  They emphasized the importance of creating a new pathway to make decisions about the future of communities and noted that the green team members become a shadow government that encourages local governments to get involved in sustainability initiatives.  On-line voting allowed the general public to review the entrees and vote for the finalists. Three “inspired change” winners were announced in Denver on October 8: 1) Sustainable Jersey, 2) Sustain-A-Raisers, a program in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and 3) the Making Connections Network, a program in Louisville Kentucky. Thanks to an online social networking effort, Sustainable Jersey led the voting by a significant margin, capturing approximately 52% percent of the total vote.

Sustainable Jersey is the most successful statewide municipal sustainability certification program in the country. Over 6,700 people in New Jersey have participated in statewide training and outreach events in 2010. The program has distributed over half a million dollars to New Jersey communities to support an estimated 1,500 actions taken “on the ground” to make communities more livable, environmentally friendly and prosperous. The comprehensive sustainability program links certification with strong state and private financial incentives, and a fully resourced program of technical support and training. Over 300 of New Jersey’s towns and cities (55%-or 312 towns across all 21 counties) have registered to become Sustainable Jersey certified. By supporting community efforts to reduce waste, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and improve environmental equity, Sustainable Jersey is empowering New Jersey towns to build a better world for future generations.

Civic engagement and green champions throughout New Jersey are fueling Sustainable Jersey fever. In less than two years more than 300 of our 566 municipalities have enrolled in Sustainable Jersey. Right now, though, we have an extraordinary opportunity to showcase and promote this model community building program.

By casting a vote for Sustainable Jersey in the Strong Communities Competition, you can propel Sustainable Jersey to the national spotlight.

Sustainable Jersey is one of eight finalists in the Strong Communities: Engaging Citizens, Strengthening Place, Inspiring Change competition. The competition was developed by CommunityMatters and Ashoka Changemakers.

The event aims to be much more than a competition for bragging rights; it is meant to build a community of social innovators, provide a forum for exploring community building skills, and inspire on-the-ground change. Bill Roper, President & CEO of the Orton Family Foundation and the driving force behind the CommunityMatters annual conference, said this about the Strong Communities competition:

The vitality and quality of life in small towns and urban neighborhoods throughout America are threatened by an array of challenges: one-size-fits-all development, decreasing social capital and disconnections between neighbors, struggling local economies, and rampant or sluggish growth. Just as troubling is the loss of unique local character and values – communities’ heart and soul. Even successful and established communities face serious challenges like changing economies, lack of affordable housing, substandard education and a global energy crisis.

Ashoka Changemakers and CommunityMatters know that when citizens rise to meet these challenges with creative solutions and collaboration, their communities thrive. Through the Strong Communities competition, we invite you to tell us how citizens can connect, collaborate, and build vital, enduring places. We want to hear ideas from a diverse array of voices: the newcomers and the experienced, teens and seniors, artists and conservationists, architects and economists, the outspoken and the quiet, and the affluent and struggling. We’ll invite eight finalists to attend the CommunityMatters ’10 Conference to scale-up their work and collaborate with other leaders in the field.

If you are a member of your town or city’s Sustainable Jersey green team, you know the power of this program in catalyzing community spirit, grassroots leadership, cross-sector creativity and collaboration, and transformative change. Sustainable Jersey is a powerful organizing theme: it is a roadmap toward sustainable community design and practices, and it is a certification program for municipalities in New Jersey that want to “go green, save money, and sustain their quality of life.” As noted by the program developers at the Municipal Land Use Center at the College of New Jersey and the NJ League of Municipalities, Sustainable Jersey “provides tools, training and financial incentives to support and reward communities as they pursue sustainability programs. The program uses the framework of ‘municipal certification’ to break new ground in establishing meaningful community partnerships and developing effective intergovernmental coordination.”

The eight Strong Community finalists will participate in the Community Mattters conference, which is “a four-day conference of novel tools and solutions, instructive discussions and hands-on experiences for citizens and community builders.” Here, finalists will “showcase their work, meet other innovators, and develop community building skills.” Winners will be selected via an online public voting process. The $5,000 prize is a plus, but the program recognition could help Sustainable Jersey scale-up any number of exciting program elements.

VOTING in the Strong Communities competition starts today (9/22) and you have 15 days to vote.

Let’s show the nation we are Sustainable Jersey Strong by making Sustainable Jersey a Strong Community winner!  Follow this link to cast your vote – and tell your friends!