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Anti-Poverty Organizer With New Model for Revitalizing Hard-Hit Rust Belt Neighborhoods Named Among World’s Best Emerging Social Change Entrepreneurs by Echoing Green
By Lara Galinsky
Jul 6, 2005, 11:01
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NEW YORK and BUFFALO July 6, 2005 – The global nonprofit organization Echoing Green has named Aaron Bartley among the world’s “Best Emerging Social Change Entrepreneurs” for his bold plan to empower the urban poor of Buffalo’s West Side to revitalize their neighborhood, gain home ownership and stimulate the local economy.
With one of the highest abandoned property rates in the nation and a poverty rate exceeding 40 percent, Buffalo’s multi-ethnic West Side neighborhood is mired in a vicious cycle of deterioration. Despite the far higher cost of renting compared to owning in the neighborhood, more than 4 out of 5 residents rent their homes. Outdated public policies enable the destructive dynamic of disrepair and abandonment to persist and worsen.
As winner of the prestigious 2005 Echoing Green Fellowship, Bartley will receive $60,000 in seed funding, plus two years of technical support, leadership training and strategic counsel, to develop the Niagara Community Initiative (NCI) in Buffalo.
“We will work with local residents to break the cycle of poverty that has plagued our community for decades,” Bartley said. “It’s my hope that NCI’s efforts and success will establish a model that can be applied in cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Toledo, which all faces crises of abandonment, disinvestment and poverty.”
NCI will combine grassroots organizing with the development of an urban land trust. Through the land trust, even residents who do not qualify for mortgage financing will gain equity ownership in cooperative buildings. NCI’s community action arm will enable residents to advocate for reform of public policies that enable abandoned properties to deteriorate before resale, and guide comprehensive redevelopment of the neighborhood.
Through NCI, Buffalo’s West Side residents will work to end rental exploitations by demanding attention from government agencies and banks that have left their own properties to entropy. The urban poor will spearhead the counterattack on urban decay, redeveloping the property whose decay does them the most damage.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Swarthmore College, Bartley grew up close to urban poverty in four different inner-city Buffalo neighborhoods, attending Buffalo public schools. Bartley’s extensive organizing experience includes leading the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, which won $10 million in annual wage and benefits gains for 2,000 low income workers; leading an SEIU strike in Boston of 2,000 immigrant janitors, which won new health benefits; and organizing for ACORN, the national housing advocacy organization.
NCI is one of ten organizations to receive the 2005 Echoing Green Fellowship from 700 applicants in 28 countries. From healthcare to human rights and education to economic development, Echoing Green’s 2005 fellowship recipients represent a cross-section of new leaders committed to using smart business principles to right seemingly intractable social wrongs. The rigorous six-month selection process included the submission of detailed start-up plans and a series of in-person interviews before panels of veteran business and nonprofit leaders in New York City. Judges evaluated applicants’ leadership and entrepreneurial skills, creativity and the potential of their ideas to deliver long-term social change.
“Our fellowship is designed to provide critical support to bold leaders like Aaron Bartley when they need it most,” said Dr. Cheryl L. Dorsey, Echoing Green’s president (and a 1992 fellowship recipient for The Family Van, a mobile health unit for inner-city Boston neighborhoods).
“These visionaries are not afraid to think big, and they need an investor with a strong track record to pave the way for future support. But that alone is not enough,” she said. “That’s why Echoing Green also provides strategic counsel, technical support and access to an extensive networking community.”
About Echoing Green
Founded in 1987, Echoing Green identifies, funds and supports the world’s most exceptional emerging social leaders and the organizations they launch. Through a two-year fellowship program, Echoing Green helps these leaders develop new solutions to society’s most difficult problems in diverse fields including education, healthcare, housing, civil and human rights, the environment, economic development and the arts. With the support of co-founder General Atlantic, LLC (GA), a private equity firm, foundations and individual donors, Echoing Green has invested over $22 million in start-up funding to nearly 400 social change entrepreneurs. For more information, visit http://www.echoinggreen.org, call 212.689.1165 or email info@echoinggreen.org. Applications for the 2006 cycle will be accepted in September 2005.
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