We are looking for a researcher in sociology. public health, epidemiology, or geography who will be able to use the tools of their field to document the affects of 596 Acres' work on communities. While we will not be able to supervise the technical part of your work, we will help you structure it, reach out to organizers and neighbors, and distribute your findings. We are looking for someone whose educational or professional work requires scientific fieldwork. We want to provide the field! 

We are also really excited about the study below and would like to show that the outcomes found in Philadelphia are happening in New York, too, at least in part due to our work.

C. C. Branas, R. A. Cheney, J. M. MacDonald, V. W. Tam, T. D. Jackson, T. R. Ten Have. A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2011; (reported by Science Daily).

596 Acres is seeking an intern who can work with us in our space at The Commons in Brooklyn on Thursdays 10am-6pm and a 4 additional hours a week independently. The position will start on June 7 and continue for 10 weeks.

Your tasks will include groundtruthing lots, putting up signs, talking to neighbors, distributing materials, archiving for our website, creating a lesson/curriculum based on 596 Acres' tools, and generally helping us improve the work that we do.

This is an unpaid internship but we can work with your school for class credit.

Please send a resume, a letter of interest and a photograph of the place in your neighborhood that you are most curious about. Application due by 11:59p.m. on Saturday, May 26, 2012 to paula@596acres.org. 

596 Acres wants to make our tools available to Spanish-speakers in New York City. But we're handicapped -- none of us speak or write in Spanish very well. We are looking for a Spanish writer/ copy-editor to translate our Frequently Asked Questions page, the information on the "You've Found the Lot in Your Life" organizing guide, and the database field labels that drive our interactive map (which will make a Spanish map happen as though by magic!).

We pay $15. per hour and think this this work will take about 10 hours. 

Please submit a resume and/or Spanish-language clippings and a short statement about why you want to work with 596 Acres by 11:59p.m. on Saturday, May 5, 2012 to paula@596acres.org. We'll get back to you within the week. 

596 Acres is making two new print maps this Spring, one for Queens and one for Manhattan (we're starting to go ALL CITY). To do this, we're hiring two designers -- one from each borough -- to re-brand us for Queens and Manhattan, design the map (which will be printed with our organizing guide on the back) and make a borough-specific pamphlet advertising 596 Acres education and advocacy opportunities that groups can access in each borough. We will provide copy (and images, as needed).

We will pay each designer a stipend of $275. Designs will be completed by June 1, so we are looking for folks who have time to devote in May.

Please submit three samples of relevant work and a short statement about your connection to your borough to by 11:59p.m. on FRIDAY, May 11, 2012 to stephan@596acres.org. We'll get back to you within the week. 

Thank you to everyone who came out last night. So great to meet so many of you in person, even better to watch you meet each other. We are brewing an awesome concoction for spring!

Next Meeting: Sunday, February 12 at 5pm. 

Location TBD. Pie flavors will be unknown until arrival.

On the agenda:maps for all 5 boroughs, tools for groundtruthing, who needs fences?, national day of action for empty lots #F27, a seed saving library & whatever you want to talk about.

We also decided that we will start sending out a regular Friday email blast with news from the Acres and anyone else in our community with news to share. Got news? Send it to 596acres@gmail.com by Wednesday at 8pm. Want to make sure you are getting all the news? Sign up for the newsletter!

Vacant Public Land Visioning Session is a workshop during which we explain what we know about the city's land use and real estate warehousing practices, as well as present the map tools at 596acres.org. We talk about where we got our data, what city agencies are involved in land ownership and share success stories of communities gaining access to previously warehoused and close-off parcels of NYC public land. (See myrtlepark.org, http://javastgarden.blogspot.com, https://ioby.org/project/462-halsey-street-community-garden, https://ioby.org/project/small-green-patch-feedback-farms -- these are our 4 success stories from this summer's pilot project. Each one started by sharing information - via signage - about the municipal owners of the land with the local community.)

Then we tap into the resources in the room to talk together about how our tools can best serve the needs of those there. This often leads to us together using the map to identify lots that are in neighborhoods where participants live and work that we think would be good ones to target for transformation to community green space; we then empower those there to become stewards of the process of building community coalitions around those spaces -- and send them home with signs to hang on the fences of those lots (and zip ties).

This workshop is available for your community. We will come and spend 2 hours with your group, talking about land. You provide the group, the location, some snacks and ideally a projector. Contact us to request a workshop.

Visioning session (with seedbombs to give away from IOBY!): Thursday, September 8 at 7pm at Gowanus Studio Space, 166 7th Street, Brooklyn NY. With pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds (yummmm!).