Every year, ioby awards the Heroes In Our Backyards awards to those ioby project leaders that exemplify the ioby spirit of community activism. ioby Heroes In Our Backyards are hyper-local, community-based, entrepreneurial and tireless. In 2012, we awarded three groups with this award around the key tool for revitalizing urban centers: reimagining vacant space. The Heroes are Urban Patch in the Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood on the north side of Indianapolis, the People’s Garden in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, NY, and the movement of leaders who have activated vacant lots throughout NYC with the support of 596 Acres including the 462 Halsey Street Community Garden, Java Street Garden Collaborative, Myrtle Village Green, One Kin Farm, and A Small Green Patch. Thanks to Good Eye Video for producing this beautiful video.
ioby is an environmental nonprofit organization. Their name is derived from the opposite of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) and their mission is to strengthen civic engagement in cities by connecting individuals directly to community-led, neighbor-funded environmental projects in their neighborhoods. They provide this service primarily through a web-based crowd-resourcing platform.
Crowd-resourcing is a made-up word combining the concepts of crowd-funding (the ability to pool small donations made online to a specific cause or project) and resource organizing (a core tenet of community organizing that considers activists and advocates the best supporters to ensure financial sustainability of a cause or project).
ioby as an organization enables ordinary people to invest in their neighborhoods and connect them with resources. The project pages on ioby.org aren’t glamorous, there are no celebrities, no large-scale protests. There are everyday neighbors taking small steps—bringing sunlight, green open spaces and fresh food into our backyards.
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