Youth

Rain gardens are the first line of defence against toxins leaking into local watersheds. Gardens of marshy, native plants attract pollinators with their blooms and filter polluted runoff with their roots, making sure that no chemicals end up in urban streams and rivers!💧Together we can protect our watersheds and generations of salmon to come!

High school students help shine a light on various projects on this park-like island

Charting Forgotten Spaces: This particular project was in some ways an outlier for Green Map – set in a Catholic Church on a block of Harlem (East 129th Street) which the NY Times had designated as the “most hopeless” in all of New York City and investigated by young people who were hoping that their findings would inspire some accelerated positive change in a neighborhood which had not experienced much of that in their short lifetimes.

Our Connected! Green Maps raised awareness of the amenities inside major parks, along trails, and in surrounding neighborhoods, emphasizing the unique local assets, history, opportunities to learn and take action, and the symbiotic relationship potential. Check out the Passport we created earlier, too!In 2014, we contributed to the book, Green Map Impacts.  We also undertook many 'Green Map Your Community' projects with youth.Provided by Janet Felsten, Feb 2025