Posts tagged rebuilding

Alliance for Coney Island Update: Two Years Since Sandy

On behalf of the Board of Directors, staff, and members of Alliance for Coney Island, and in commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, I write to gratefully acknowledge and reflect on the assistance that Coney Island continues to receive.  

With contributions and grants this past year, we continued to help the Coney Island community get back on its feet and saw several monumental steps of progress in 2014. 

In January, we began our third round of regrants to the community. We awarded nine faith based organizations with regrants for a variety of programs including after-school programming, baseball equipment for a little league team, senior events, football equipment and summer camp scholarships.

In the spring, we commenced our final round of regrants awarding three mental health organizations funds for mental health services which has resulted in over 1,000 hours of mental health counseling for over 200 clients. 

Additionally, this past winter we held our 4th annual Workforce Recruitment event connecting local residents to job opportunities in the Amusement District.  This year, these events saw over 2,000 individuals screened for over 800 jobs.
 
City-wide, we have seen various efforts to provide for a more resilient city.  In particular, the announcement earlier this fall with Senator Schumer and Mayor de Blasio announcing over $100 million in federal funds to repair New York City Housing Authority developments including Coney Island Houses will greatly assist some of Coney Island’s residents. Additionally, public meetings are beginning for a Coney Island Creek Study to understand how to create a more protected and resilient peninsula.

Most recently, the Alliance and other community organizations assisted New York City Small Business Services on their outreach for the Storefront Improvement Program.  SBS has invested funds in over a dozen businesses on Mermaid to renovate and improve their storefronts, strengthening Coney Island’s business corridor. Coney Island Hospital has secured a site for their health clinic and has begun work to open a location on West 17th Street in 2015. This morning, the Mayor visited a house on Neptune Avenue that Habitat for Humanity is rebuilding for a long-time Coney Island resident. These accomplishments are just some of the many that Coney Island has seen over the past year and are signals of continued progress to come.  

The Alliance is proud to continue to serve as a convening organization, bringing together service providers with monthly service coordination meetings. This past month at our office, SBS began holding office hours weekly providing assistance to local small businesses for their Hurricane Sandy Grant & Loan Program.

Much of this work could not have been accomplished without countless volunteers, the #ConeyRecovers Steering Committee and our local elected officials. The Alliance looks forward to participating in future efforts toward resiliency for the residents, businesses and community organizations in the months ahead.

For more information about the programs and services we provide, please visit our website at www.AllianceForConeyIsland.org. 
 
 
Sincerely,


Johanna Zaki, Executive Director

Brooklyn Recovery Fund Releases Recommendations for Accelerating Rebuilding and Enhancing Local Resiliency

With over $3.5 million deployed to more than 100 community-based organizations to address recovery and rebuilding in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, the Brooklyn Recovery Fund will finalize its grantmaking operations as of January 31, 2014. 

Established by the Brooklyn Community Foundation in partnership with the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President and Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, over the past 15 months the Fund has provided three rounds of grants, fostered the creation of six Community Collaboratives, and advocated city-wide on behalf of impacted Brooklynites. 

A final report released today, Brooklyn Communities Speak: An Action Guide for Local Decision-Makers Post Sandy, documents the extensive lessons learned by the Fund and its community-based partners, and offers specific recommendations to elected officials and government agencies for achieving a holistic recovery while building local resiliency. 

Moving forward, Brooklyn Community Foundation will continue to support the Fund’s grantee partners through capacity-building assistance and resource dissemination, but will no longer fund recovery initiatives. To learn more about the ongoing work of Brooklyn’s local recovery coalitions, please visit the BCF website.

Reminder: Citizens Committee Grants due 1/27

Grants of up to $3,000 are available to grassroots groups across the city working on projects that support everything from community gardens to tenant organizing, as long as the effort is volunteer-driven and community-based. The Citizens Committee prioritizes groups based in low income neighborhoods and Title I public schools.

More information on the grant opportunity here.

High Importance: New Guide to NYC CDBG Action Plan Amendment 5

You may or may not know, but the City has made changes to the CDBG plan for recovery funds. If you participated in previous CDBG plan hearings or read previous drafts, you need to know that this change being proposed reallocates money and significantly changes program eligibility requirements across a number of previously planned programs. Changes in financial allocations impact programs and funding for:

• Housing
• Business
• City Administration
• Infrastructure
• Resilience Programs

You can find a short 5 page guide here to help those of us who are not familiar with the City’s planning and comment process locate the guide (both online and in hard copy), understand how to read the guide, and includes all the info you need to give comments on the guide. We have also included a section by section overview.
 
The City is only taking comments until January 25, so please take a moment either on your own or with your organization and provide comments about these considerable changes to disaster relief funding.
 
If you have any questions or need further guidance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Noël Kepler or Gillian Kaye at [email protected].

Talking Transition Mobile Tents Coming to Coney

Plan accordingly: Talking Transition mobile tents head to Bay Ridge and Coney Island tomorrow. More info: http://talkingtransitionnyc.com/