Call for Fellows
Posted: January 19, 2010
Deadline to apply: February 3, 2010 by 5:00 p.m.
The Design Trust, in partnership with Added Value, seeks Project Fellows for
Five Borough Farm, a project to create New York's first citywide plan for urban agriculture. The anticipated timeframe for the project is 12 months, beginning March 2010.
For the first phase, the
Design Trust will select two fellows in the fields of metrics/evaluation and policy/sustainable development. The Fellows will work closely with each other, and with Design Trust staff, who will manage the project. Fellows must have a demonstrated ability to work both independently and collaboratively, as well as direct experience producing deliverables similar to those outlined in the folllowing Fellow descriptions.
Policy/Sustainable Development Fellow
Estimated hours: 300
Anticipated stipend: $15,000
How to apply: Send your CV and a PDF of a writing sample or other relevant work to: fellowship@designtrust.org. (Please note: Only those candidates under consideration will be contacted)
The
Policy/Sustainable Development Fellow will conduct a comprehensive survey of existing urban agricultural resources and activity in New York City and around the country. The Fellow will briefly describe and/or map the following:
• Case studies of municipal agencies and public/private partnerships nationwide that support urban agriculture (e.g. Portland, Oregon)
• NYC urban farms and community gardens that include agriculture
• NYC farmer's markets, CSAs, and other market outlets
• NYC nonprofits and other organizations that support urban agriculture
• Land management regimes (NYRP, Land Trust)
Based on these investigations, the Fellow will develop typologies of existing New York City urban agricultural activity. These typologies will include, at a minimum, the following models for urban agriculture:
• City-sponsored (e.g. Greenthumb/Community Gardens)
• Nonprofit (e.g. Added Value, East New York Farms)
• For-Profit (e.g. Rooftop Farms)
These typologies will be based on factors that include the following:
• Goals/benefits (e.g. community development, education, job training, etc.)
• Inputs (e.g. start-up costs, labor, land, etc.)
• Outputs (e.g. scale of production, profits, etc.)
• Challenges/successes
• Audience/community
The Fellow will describe and map/diagram how these models are situated within their neighborhoods and also broader NYC food systems' networks (e.g. composting, restaurants, public markets, etc.). The Fellow will assess New York City's current capacity to support urban agriculture. The Fellow will review and assess existing and recommended city policy initiatives; identify opportunities and barriers for greater agency participation in urban agriculture; and develop action items that could be adopted by relevant agencies/municipalities.
The Fellow will work with appropriate City agencies to map City-owned, arable land that could potentially be used for urban agriculture, and develop criteria for the evaluation and disposition of this land. The Fellow will identify partners to help organize verifications of land parcels identified through this mapping process.
Metrics/Evaluation Fellow
Estimated hours: 150
Anticipated stipend: $7,500
How to apply: Send your CV and a PDF of relevant work to: fellowship@designtrust.org. (Please note: Only those candidates under consideration will be contacted)
The
Metrics/Evaluation fellow will develop metrics to quantify and otherwise measure a wide range of indicators associated with the typologies of urban agriculture practices identified by the Policy/Sustainable Development Fellow. The Fellow will develop methodolgies for this evaluation where necessary, and create a framework for collecting data on the following:
• Economic activity (e.g. sales, multipliers, costs, etc.)
• Public health (e.g. benefits from exercise, changes in diet, etc.)
• Youth empowerment
• Ecological benefits (e.g. stormwater capture, reduction of waste stream from use of compost, etc.)
• Community building
The Fellow will work with academic and/or institutional partners to develop protocols for ongoing, long-term metrics research. These protocols will summarize the focus areas and methodologies of the project and outline priorities for future studies. The goal of these metrics will be to demonstrate how urban agriculture impacts people, neighborhoods, and ecologies.
The Fellow will implement a selected series of metrics using Added Value's model as the baseline, and will study and review the outcomes to determine their impact on the policy work of the Policy/Sustainable Development Fellow.
