Pratt Institute

On the evening of Wednesday, September 12th , representatives of local non profits Sustainable Long Island and St. Nicks Alliance spoke to students in the Planning For Sustainable Communities class led by Jaime Stein and Ron Shiffman. Every semester students in this class work alongside an organization as consultants in efforts to make their operating systems more efficient and sustainable. After a semester of research and analysis with their community clients, the students present their work in a final presentation to the organization and class.  For the past 4 years, the recommendations which have come out of the class haveoften lead to visible changes within the client’s community!

Sustainable Long Island is a non-profit organization with core values of promoting economic development, environmental health, and social equity for all Long Islanders. Some of their main areas of outreach include community revitalization, brownfield redevelopment, food equity (youth-run Farmers’ Markets) and advocacy. The organization also works with The North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System (NSLIJ) as well as Katz Women’s Hospital in efforts to inform patients of their environmental numbers, which include blood pressure, weight, water usage, meat intake, etc, and informing them about healthy and sustainable alternatives. Students choosing to work for Sustainable Long Island this semester will be broken down into three small groups. Each group will be responsible for acting as consultants to investigate ways in which NSLIJ can creatively enhance their current corporate social and sustainability programs.  .

St. Nicks Alliance is a non-profit organization providing services in affordable housing, health care, workforce and economic development, and youth and education. They serve 9,000 low to moderate-income families in the North Brooklyn area each year. This semester, students who work for St. Nicks Alliance will be in charge of deciding an operating system for a mobile “Book Bus”, which will act as a library on wheels to children and families in North Brooklyn. Studies show that a child with a 500-book family is 36% more likely to graduate from high school than a similar child without readily access to a home library. The goal is to make reading easy and enjoyable for kids! Faculty from Pratt’s Interior Design program will also help with the layout of the mobile library. The students will present their pitch at the end of the semester with answers to questions like: Where will the bus service? What time will it come? How will it park? How often will it come? What will the bus look like? How can we provide incentives for the children to read? How can we get children to want to come in our bus?

Updates throughout the semester will be available.