The reason we made the project:
As New York City residents, we are fortunate enough to have luxuries many of us take for granted;, electricity in our homes, security in knowing that law breakers are sent to jail, trash is thrown away and never seen again, and we can flush our toilets and never worry about where it all goes. Although we can all reap the benefits of these systems, it seems that man
y of us have truly been neglecting the negative effects. Who must live with the social and environmental problems that come with hosting the facilities that produce and distribute the items New York City has become dependent on?
Hunts Point is home to 11,661 residents, with a large majority of these residents being Black and Hispanic. The area is host to 15 different waste transfer facilities, and single-handedly manages 40% of New York’s waste. The Hunts Point food market is the second largest food market in the world, yet the area is considered to be a food desert (an area with little or no access to fresh fruits and vegetables). The food market's constant distribution of products combined with the fact that the Hunts Point area houses many waste transfer stations, well over fifteen thousand trucks drive though the area every day, emitting harmful chemicals, such as nitric oxide and hydrocarbons. This is only one of many reasons why Hunts Point has the highest asthma rate in the United States.
Environmental injustice is definied as the unequal distribution of societal burdens upon a community, and therefore, one can see that this is a clear example of environmental injustice. Though the negative effects of these facilities are felt by everyone in Hunts Point, not many residents are aware of the causation of these problems. My name is Victor Davila, I and my partner Kendrick Martinez have been a part of
a youth activist organization called A.C.T.I.O.N (Activists Coming To Inform Our
Neighborhoods) for three years, (Chenkon Carrasco is not a member of
A.C.T.I.O.N., but has always been an active member of the community keeping in
touch with issues, and is another founder of Eco Ryders like myself and
Kendrick). In A.C.T.I.O.N., we fight for the social and environmental equality
of Hunts Point. There have been other organizations formed to try and resolve
the issues that face Hunts Point, and while they have made progress in their respective campaigns, they cannot tackle all of the community’s endeavors. The list of environmental issues mentioned above are only a small portion of the many things that trouble Hunts Point’s environment. Although there are many issues to campaign against in Hunts Point, there is a clear lack of activism. I began to wonder if this lack of activism was due to a social unawareness amongst the people who live there. Chen, Kendrick and myself have often found ourselves explaining why Hunts Point is in its current environmental state to residents of the area. When we first heard about the project:
After a woman by the name of Lila Starbuck visited A.C.T.I.O.N. and told its
members about a grant program called Powered by Service, I began to think of
ways to address the issues I felt strongly about. After she spoke, Kendrick and I began to bounce ideas off of each other to see what we should try to
submit for the grant. In less than a week, after we heard about the grant, Chen
joined to collaborate. We finally came up with a project; we called it Eco
Ryders. Planning before we wrote for the grant:
The program would reflect the passions of the community to make the workshops
fun and attractive, while immersing the students in informative environmental
education classes.We would offer to teach participants how to design skateboards
using stencils and chemically safe spray paint . Though we suggested students
make there boards have an environmental aspect we did not force them to do so ,
we didn’t want to stifle there imaginations . Skateboards themselves can be
considered to be very environmentally friendly as a form of transport . They emit no harm full chemicals and are a great way to workout , the exercise
aspect of the skateboards would allow the program to in a small way address the
issue of high obesity in hunts point . Before writing for the grant we wanted to make sure the main talking points had
been picked out. We decided to teach a combination of local and global
environmental issues. Amongst some of the main points being taught were C.S.O’s
(combine sewage over flow pipes). Whenever it rains over one tenth of an inch in New York City the sewer system is unable to handle the excess water. The sewers must divert the combine slush of rain water and raw untreated sewage, this slush is sent to the C.S.O’s . The C.S.O’s dump the sewage into the water ways of New York City. The Bronx River alone has over 1 billion tons of sewage dumped into it yearly. We also spoke about things that can benefit our environment and prevent the activation of C.S.O’s. A green roof is a roof that has been modified to support soil and plant life and can absorb rain water before it can get into the sewers. Green roofs also provide a space for urban farming (gardening and farming foods in an urban environment that would normally have little space for growing food) to take place increasing the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables in low income areas that are considered food deserts (an area with little access to fresh produce). We also realized that people become more engaged in issues if they have a
personal connection with the topic. To make the Eco Ryders students feel closer
to the area of Hunts Point we would teach them the history of the Bronx. Below
is an example of what we taught in terms of history . The Bronx was founded in the 1600s by Swedish Sea Captain Jonas Bronck . When travelers where heading to or through the area they would often refer to it as going to the Bronck’s. Over time the name was misspelled so often that the original spelling Bronck’s was drop and replaced with Bronx. The name of The Bronx is unique, there isn’t an area on the planet that shares its name ( its also the only area that has an article before its name). Within The Bronx there is a neighborhood called Hunts Point. At this time, Edward Jessup and John Richardson arrived on the peninsula and “bought” the land from the Wekkguasegeeck, a tribe of natives indigenous to the area. After Jessup died, his widow Elizabeth entrusted the land to Thomas Hunt Jr., her son in-law, for whom the area is named. His grave still resides in Hunts Point.We also tried to get the students physically active in the program. As A.C.T.I.O.N. members, Kendrick and I had often helped out at a local community garden, officially called the Bryant Ave Community Garden (known to Eco Ryders as Lucia’s garden after the women who runs the garden). Because the garden is
always looking for volunteers it wasn’t hard for us to make a partnership with
the garden. Our next step was deciding how old we wanted the students in the
program to be, we decided the students would be from the ages of 11- 19. We
wanted to focus on the youth of Hunts Point because they would be the ones
inheriting the issues of he community if something wasn’t done. Next, we began to budget the amount of money we needed to order supplies. The
grants were for five hundred dollars, we had to see how many boards we could
buy, the number of boards we could get would be the amount of students we could be accepted into the program . The budget could only allow 20 boards and 15 trucks (the part of the board the wheels are mounted to) so we could only have about 15 students which meant that the other 5 boards would be back up. We already had most of the gardening supplies we needed, anything else would come out of our own pockets. Then we had to find a place to hold our program. At first it was hard to find a
suitable spot to have our workshops. Some locations were too small to hold the
classes, some were too expensive. Thankfully, a local community center called
The Point CDC allowed us to host our project in their building, free of charge. We thought the program could be completed in one month if we had classes twice a week, Fridays (one hour and thirty minutes) and Saturdays (over five hours). Fridays would be dedicated only to environmental work, while Saturdays would be
split between environmental work and skateboard design . We made sure
environmental work took priority, the skateboard designing was purposely
stretched out to last the length of the program (we realized two weeks after the
program began it would take 3 months to complete ). To insure students would
become completely immersed in the project they would often be taken to
environmentally troubled sites we spoke about during class. We took
students to Barretto Point Park to hold our classes (Barretto Point Park is a
park located near the end of the Hunts Point Peninsula). Barretto Point Park was
a prime area to teach, many of the major issues discussed during class could be
seen from Barretto. The walk to Barreto Point Park itself was used to teach
students about the environment. The residential district is divided from
Barretto by a large industrial zone. There are no forms of public transportation
that stop at the park, people often must walk there (only 25% of Hunts Point
residents own cars). The wind would often sweep up debris from the ground making it difficult to see. This is very dangers because of the many truck routs that run throughout the area leading to the park. Both sides of the park are occupied by two different waste transfer stations. what the program is about :
Our program was not designed to directly fix the problems of Hunts Point, we don’t have the immense amount of resources one would need to even try to begin attempting such a feat. Our program was designed to spread knowledge, to inform the youth of this community about these issues. Different organizations around Hunts Point often hold meetings to talk about how to tackle the problems in Hunts Point, sadly not many people go. For the most part this is due to a combination of people not caring or knowing about the issues. Because people don’t know much about the issues they don’t care and because they don’t care they don’t try to inform themselves about the issues. The knowledge of an issue creates a need to make a solution, our goal was to have our students leave the program as experts in theses topics. We wanted to be a catalyst of activism and have our students leave Eco Ryders with a need to help there community, or at least share what they’ve learned. How we track the success rate of our students:
To see if our program made a difference in the thought processes of our students
we created pre and post eco riders’ surveys. The surveys would track students
environmental knowledge pro environmental behavior and pro environmental
behavioral intention before entering the program and after entering . After the grant was recived :
After the program began, we had to adjust our plan for the current year. We had
to learned to plan for weather, how to upload videos to the page that
we created for eco ryders and that we needed a cameraman to keep documentation of the classes. We also realized that if we ever hold Eco Ryders classes again (which we were planning to) we would have to start later in the year. We held classes in mid February and could not always go out to garden because days before class, it snowed. In the future we would have to hold classes in warmer weather . The end result of the project:
On the last day of class the students took the post surveys. After collecting
the data we found that students on average increased fifty percent in
environmental knowledge, pro environmental behavior and pro environmental
behavioral intention. Our Eco Ryders survey proved that our program made a
difference in the thought processes of our students, so much so that many asked
to come back next year to help teach what they have learned .
