Yale University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

GoNewHavengo is an active transportation program to encourage healthier, cleaner, and cheaper travel in the Greater New Haven Area. Every September, we host an alternative transportation contest and month of events, giving individuals and businesses access to our wide range of transportation resources. During the rest of the year, we host events and work with our partners to decrease congestion and traffic in our City. These events have included "community conversations" where we explore issues such as transportation equity and safety. Lead organizations on goNewHavengo include state and local government agencies – the City of New Haven Department of Transportation, Traffic & Parking, CTrides, and CTTransit – and private and non-profit institutions – the Yale University Office of Sustainability, New Haven Leon Sister City Project, and New Haven Healthy City Healthy Climate Challenge. Through this cross-sector collaboration, we are able to reach a variety of audiences, including individuals, businesses, schools, and other organizations, as we seek to help New Haven commuters save money, improve their health, and reduce their environmental impact with a sustainable commute. Learn more at gonhgo.org.

Yale’s Office of Sustainability administers the Yale Community Carbon Fund (YCCF), started in 2008, to support local carbon mitigation projects that go beyond the university’s immediate campus. It seeks to reduce and mitigate the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, and to increase economic and health security for low-income people living in New Haven by enabling their homes to be more energy efficient. YCCF is financed by contributions from Yale-affiliated individuals or groups interested in reducing the carbon impact of their travel or events. After calculating their carbon emissions, participants are taken to a secure website to make a donation to one of three options: 1) Connecticut Children’s Healthy Homes Program to help low income New Haven residents pay for health and safety problems so that they can have energy efficiency work done in their homes, 2) Urban Resources Initiative (URI) - a Yale affiliate which plants trees in the city, or 3) a gold standard offsets project chosen by Nexus, a non-Yale affiliated organization which identifies and supports gold standard carbon emissions reduction projects. Learn more at http://sustainability.yale.edu/research-education/community-carbon-fund.

Urban Resources Initiative (URI) is a non-profit university partnership whose mission is to foster community-based land stewardship, promote environmental education, and advance the practice of urban forestry. Its close relationship with Yale brings the expertise of faculty and graduate students to the local community while offering graduate student interns the opportunity for practical field training. URI GreenSkills is a local green jobs program that employs high school students and ex-offenders through the planting of trees. GreenSkills connects people to their communities, their environment, and each other. The program kicked off in the fall of 2007, when the New Haven Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees carried a backlog of citizens’ requests for street trees. Because of URI's ongoing and successful partnership with this city agency through the Community Greenspace program, we were the natural partners to respond to these unfulfilled requests. URI's Board of Directors includes Yale faculty, local activists and New Haven residents, and others. Learn more at environment.yale.edu/uri.

In addition to the formal partnerships above, Yale participates in other community efforts to advance sustainability, such as the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE). The mission of CARE is to improve the health of New Haven residents through visionary leadership, community engagement, collaborative community-based research, and dissemination of findings. This unprecedented alliance includes community organizations, neighborhood associations, hospitals and health centers, city government and public schools, faith communities, arts and cultural institutions, businesses, Yale University and its School of Public Health, and other academic partners domestically and globally. CARE conducts a door-to-door survey late last year in six of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Participants responded to questions about their current health status, health-related habits and barriers to better health. The goal is to get community residents’ input and to discuss their recommendations. Data also will be shared with elected officials and other city leaders, resulting in an action plan to improve community health.