For students passionate about social change and developing the skills necessary to turn their ideas into action, the Fordham Social Innovation Collaboratory is excited to announce that Fordham Unniversity has teamed up with the DO School and 10 other NYC higher education institutions to launch the second year of a new landmark program within New York City’s higher education landscape: Innovate NYC. This program offers students from the participating universities and colleges a unique opportunity to launch their careers as changemakers within their communities and learn invaluable entrepreneurial skills. Through a curated co-creation method, a 20-student cohort will tackle a real-life challenge: to find new and innovative approaches for a world class industrial park to engage its workers in ways that save the environment and build community across the city.
The first 100 students to submit their application will automatically receive invitations to the first skills-building workshop, a day-long event focusing on enhancing your capacity for ideation.
The Community Mobility Challenge
“The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation Challenges INYC students to design a ride sharing community program across the city that fosters connections between people, reduces environmental impact, and is financially beneficial for users as they travel to the Yard.”
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a mission-driven industrial park that is a nationally acclaimed model of the viability and positive impact of modern, urban industrial development. Core to New York City’s history as the economic heart of Brooklyn, the Yard generates over $2 billion a year.
As the non-profit manager of the Yard, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC) strives to provide an environment where business and careers can constantly grow – thereby fueling NYC’s economic vitality and sustaining quality jobs. This emphasis on growth and community dictates that the Yard’s workers and companies come from, and have connections across, our entire City. This reality will only increase with the Yard’s intention to double the number of quality jobs available to over 16,000 by 2020.
Given the centrality of workers to the Yard’s plans for success – we must envision and create increasingly beneficial uses of the Yard’s space. One particularly crucial issue as we move forward will be to ensure people from across the City can travel to and engage with the Yard in ways that enhance access and foster thriving relationships with the communities they pass through en route. Ultimately, the BNYDC needs a program or service that will not only foster more ride-sharing among those employed within the Yard, but that connects people to others in their home neighborhoods, enables people to save money and the environment, and engages leading companies developing solutions in this space.
BNYDC encourages the Innovate NYC cohort to explore a variety of approaches to create a multi-faceted solution. We ask Innovate NYC students to be disruptive as the experience designing and piloting a program that will assist the Yard in taking its next steps to connect economic opportunity to communities around the City.
Structure of the program
A core group of 20 students will be selected from across participating universities. After the kickstart event on January 29th which is open to the first 100 students to register, 20 program participants will be selected during the interview phase in February.
Kickstart of the program: Sunday, January 29, 2017
To kickstart the program, the DO School will host a one-day DO-a- thon. This skill building session will focus on developing students’ ideation skills. The first 100 students who apply to join Innovate NYC will be invited to participate in this day-long workshop, free-of- charge.
In-school workshops: April 22-23, 2017
Emphasizing leadership and ideation skills, these workshops encompass the basic toolkit all changemakers need to find their passion and turn their ideas into action.
Full-time daily workshops across three weeks (Mon- Fri): June 12-29, 2017
Serving as the capstone experience of the program, students will be brought together for an intensive hand-on experience. At the end of these three weeks program participants will have co-created a tangible result that they deliver to the City of New York for use by NYC communities in the months and years ahead.
What Innovate NYC participants say
Stipends
We understand that three weeks in June of full-time work can take a bite out of a student’s budget. That’s why we’re happy to announce a limited number of stipends will be available. Students invited to interview for the program will receive a stipend application form as part of their notification package.
Our partners
Innovate NYC is supported by Newman’s Own Foundation.
Participating universities are: Borough of Manhattan Community College, Brooklyn Law School, Columbia University, The Cooper Union, Fordham University, Guttman Community College, Macaulay Honors College, Medgar Evers College, The New School, New York University & the Pratt Institute.
Community partners include the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation and the City University of New York – Office of Research, Evaluation & Program Support.