New Haven-Urban Resources Initiative Inc

Programs: Uri's greenspace program continues to empower volunteers to make tangible improvements to the landscape of their communities. The three programmatic goals - community building, environmental restoration, and stewardship - have not changed since the program's inception in 1995. Over the last few years the partnership for the greenspace program has expanded beyond city agencies and the cfgnh to also include usfws, audubon ct, and common ground high school on sites that are specifically focused on creating bird habitat. These sites tend to be in parks, and included 8 of the greenspace groups. We carefully measure the following: community building through the number of program events (350) led by the community groups, the hours of community service (3,637), and the number of individuals (814) participating in the program. Environmental restoration is measured by the number of trees (74), shrubs (177) and perennials (948) planted, and other inputs such as compost and mulch. We measure successful stewardship by monitoring the one-year survival rate for trees planted. The newly planted trees, shrubs, perennials in streetscapes, front yards, parks and pocket parks (former vacant lots) make a huge visible impact on communities and the people that inhabit them.

in 2017 uri's green job program "greenskills" successfully planted 548 trees in 19 different neighborhoods throughout the city of new haven with 28 high school students, 12 recently incarcerated adults, and 21 interns from yale university. .

in 2017 uri built 3 new bioswales in dowtown new haven and performed maintenance regularly on 17 existing bioswales, resulting in 82,000 gallons of stormwater being diverted from the new haven stormwater system. A total of 65 maintenance visits were made to bioswales by greenskills crew members. Maintenance included, removing leaf litter, sediment, snow and trash, weeding, pruning, cleaning the sediment trap, repairing fencing, and watering. The activites allowed the bioswales to continuously perform at their top function, diverting the maximum amount of water from the city stormwater system.