Growing The Green Route Urban Environmental Summit And Expo, April 25 & 26, 2008
About Project RISE. The American Cities Foundation was founded on a simple premise: our future as a country is fundamentally linked to the vitality of our urban communities.
Since 1992, we have been advocating for and developing a national strategy to revitalize our cities and improve the quality of life for children, youth and families who live in them. Founded by U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah as an outgrowth of the American Cities Conference held in Philadelphia in 1991, we share his vision for a national urban agenda that prioritizes the revitalization of America’s cities through a variety of innovative, multifaceted solutions.
Often these solutions lie in new region-wide collaborations to drive systemic change. Sometimes, they are found in changing the behavior and attitudes at the grassroots level. No matter the source or mechanism, ACF seeks to uncover and advance these ideas nationally. ACF serves both as a center of policy analysis and as the organizational midwife of community initiatives:
No community can thrive without a healthy economy, a growing job base, and the means to prepare and connect its residents to available opportunities. Recognizing this, ACF works to create sustainable living economies in our cities by stimulating and supporting entrepreneurial endeavors and job creation.ACF has implemented several projects in Philadelphia that use innovative strategies which can be easily replicated in other cities. Currently, ACF’s efforts to promote economic development focus on these areas:
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Small Business Development: Creating an environment for community-generated businesses to take root and be sustained in our community
Project RISE (Reaching and Impacting Small Entrepreneurs), in partnership with the Small Business Administration, is a new ACF initiative in West Philadelphia that will provide existing and prospective business owners with intensive business education, services and technical assistance to help with business creation and retention.
This initiative concentrates specifically on neighborhoods in West Philadelphia (zip codes 19131, 19139, sections of 19143, and 19151) and targets low- and moderate-income individuals from specific population, including ex-offenders, youth, and those in transition-to-work programs. The program not only encourages this neglected populations to learn about how businesses are formed and successfully operated, but also offers start-up and existing business owners basic business education and technical assistance, with the goal of improving their chances of starting and maintaining a stable, income-generating business.
For more information about this new small business initiative and how you can participate in it, please contact Bernadine T. Hawes, Director, at (215) 476-8091.
Protecting the environment and reversing the legacy of environmental racism in our cities is a major focus of ACF. To address this, we promote sustained environmental activism at the neighborhood level that supports sound environmental stewardship within our communities. One example is Project NEAT (Neighborhood Environmental Action Teams), an environmental education demonstration project that engages and informs residents in targeted Philadelphia neighborhoods around an issue of particular importance to urban communities—stormwater runoff.
Even a light rainstorm can produce two inches of rain over a 24-hour period. While this may not sound significant, consider this: even two inches of rain falling on the roof of a small rowhouse can send over 600 gallons of water down the drain spouts. Combine this vast volume with the runoff from other surfaces that dominate urban communities—like sidewalks, driveways and streets—and the problem gets even bigger.
The biggest problem is that this water picks up and carries trash, oil, animal waste, and other pollution into the public sewers. During a typical major storm event overflows happen which result in the water going into the tributaries and rivers directly having an impact on our drinking water filtration system.
Project NEAT provides community leaders with the tools and information they need to begin to impact this important issue in their communities. We offer a series of innovative educational programs designed to reduce the pollution of stormwater by encouraging urban greening, neighborhood clean-ups, and changes in behavior to reduce litter.
From Left to Right: At the American Cites Green Route Urban Environmental Summit -Van Stone, WVSR-AM, Founder, Earl Harvey, The Black Professional News, Editor & Publisher, Kirk Lewis, visitor from the Islands, James Sullivan, James Sullivan Research Center, President/CEO
R to L: Van Stone, WVSR-AM, Founder, Dennis Lee, Director of Project N.E.A.T., affair attendee, Bernadine Hawes, Director of Project RISE, and affair attendee
