Introducing Greenpoint’s Green Team

ExxonMobil, YMCA and NYU Team Up

Greenpoint is no stranger to environmental disaster. We’ve got oil spills and underground plumes, a toxic creek and a wastewater treatment plant, a former plastic company-turned-superfund site and enough truck traffic to make a healthy person wheeze. Lucky for the Garden Spot, as of this summer, Greenpoint also has an impressive group of fresh-faced environmental advocates dedicated to tackling some of the toughest issues in the neighborhood. And they’re only 16 years old.
Enter the Green Team, a brand new collaborative initiative between ExxonMobil, the Greenpoint YMCA and New York University. The Green Team program is designed to educate and train a group of ten Brooklyn-based high school students in a variety of subjects pertaining to environmental health, and dispatch them throughout Greenpoint to take part in park cleanups, lead workshops for young children, take samples, conduct studies, do projects and become the next generation of environmental stewards of Greenpoint.
The Green Team was made possible by a $150,000 grant from ExxonMobil, to create a program to foster a greater sense of environmental literacy, and a deeper spirit of community service among city’s youth. The ten participants, who come from neighborhoods across Brooklyn, will work full-time throughout the summer on projects ranging from learning about solar energy and renewable resources; conducting water quality tests on the East River and identifying contaminants; cleaning up Lentol Garden; learning to identify different types of flora, and care for street trees; visiting Eagle Street Rooftop Farms and much more.
“Through the Green Team, ExxonMobil is able to provide high school students with relevant hands-on job experience while emphasizing the importance of environmental stewardship, technology and community service,” said Carolina Asirifi, the North Brooklyn liaison for ExxonMobil. “The projects they undertake this summer will leave a lasting impression our neighbors will be able to enjoy for many years and we hope our students walk away from this program with a sense of pride and accomplishment that will help them as they complete high school and pursue their goals.”
Members of the Green Team celebrated the official start of their summer environmental adventure on Tuesday by volunteering at Lentol Garden, pulling weeds, planting flowers and helping to maintain one of Greenpoint’s favorite parks.
“The Green team teaches neighborhood teens about environmental awareness so they can become the next environmental stewards of Greenpoint,” said Julia McAllister, Director of Fund Development & Communication for the Greenpoint YMCA. “It’s such a big deal for Greenpoint to have our leading community center, a national corporation and a world-class university partnering to improve our community.”
A central component of the Green Team is education. Participating members will take part in workshops and engage with curriculum developed by educators from the Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education at NYU. The workshops are designed to equip the Green Team with the working knowledge and understanding of complex environmental and urban issues that will ultimately allow them to educate others around them.
“We hope to stimulate their thinking and creativity, and have them bring their knowledge back to the Greenpoint community,” said Mary Leou, director of the Wallerstein Collaborative. “We are fostering the stewardship ethic. They have to actively participate. Nature can no longer sustain without human support, and that’s the greatest lesson of all.”
Only three weeks into the program and already the Green Team is off to a running start, and its participants are looking forward to an incredibly fruitful summer.
“I’ve always been concerned with the environment, and this program gives us a chance to reduce the pollution, learn about needs assessment and green technology—it’s so useful,” said Lucy Hovanisyan, a 16-year-old Brooklyn Technical High School student. “But it’s not just about the environment; it’s about going out into the real world and learning interpersonal skills. We don’t want our future generations living in a polluted world, and the environment is becoming a major aspect of our lives.”
Martha Ziolkowska, a 15-year-old Brooklyn Tech student and Greenpoint resident, said that her experience as part of the Green Team has made her much more aware of her surroundings, and is changing the way she views the world, the environment and her neighborhood.
“This is a great chance to make a small different in my community because they say the small differences go the longest way,” Ziolkowska said. “I hang out in Greenpoint with my friends, and they always say, ‘something needs to be done’. Now I can walk past Lentol Garden and say that in the summer of 2010 I made a difference here.”

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