Some of the organizations that have received funding from the Building Foundation include:
ACE Mentor Program of Greater New York
The mission of the ACE Mentor Program is to engage, excite and enlighten high school students to pursue careers in architecture, engineering, and construction through mentoring to support their continued advancement in the industry. Founded in 1994 by a group of leading contractors, engineers, and owners in New York, in the 2018-2019 school year, the program nationally engaged over 9,500 students and 3,700 volunteer mentors. ACE has 70 affiliates and operates in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and has presence in more than 200 cities.
The ACE Mentor Program of Greater NY (ACE GNY) is the largest ACE affiliate that now involves over 200 industry firms, almost 300 high schools and engaged more than 1,600 students in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County in the 2018-2019 school year. Since its inception, ACE GNY has awarded over $2 million in scholarships.
Andromeda Community Initiative
The Andromeda Community Initiative (ACI) was founded in 2018 to provide free, practical workforce development training taught by industry experts to individuals interested in a career in the construction industry. ACI’s mission is to make an individual, industry and city wide impact by educating novice workers with the skills required to become tradespeople. ACI builds a pipeline of qualified workers for unfilled jobs, benefitting contractors, owners, and real estate managers.
The first program offered by ACI began in April 2018 and was a comprehensive four-week masonry restoration training.
Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) was founded in 2002 by Beverly Willis, FAIA, to advocate for women in architecture and the related disciplines, in order to provide them with the same opportunities as men, realize their dreams and be recognized. BWAF is working to change the culture through the effective business education of young professional women with its Emerging Leaders program and its expanded series, “Begin Your Career,” which is directed at engaging a diverse group of younger women who have recently graduated from school to facilitate their earliest job experiences with a view to establishing the skills needed for success.
Building Skills NY
Building Skills New York’s (Building Skills) mission is to provide an efficient and convenient process for finding a construction job for many residents who have long been unable to gain access to careers in the construction industry. This makes Building Skills uniquely positioned to assist government, the development community and local communities achieve hiring initiatives and goals.
Building Skills provides residents, most of them minorities, with a robust network of the City’s leading workforce agencies which recruit and provide them with the necessary skills and safety training. Building Skills helps to bring fulltime and good paying jobs to workers interested in in the construction industry by connecting them to available construction jobs provided by developers, contractors, and subcontractors.
Center for Architecture
The mission of the Center for Architecture (CFA) is to educate a broad audience about the built environment and the value of architectural practice. Through free informative exhibitions, timely pubic programs, and design education experiences for K-12 students and families, the CFA reveals the transformative power of architecture and serves as a vital place of dialogue and collaboration for building professionals and the general public. The Center for Architecture presents 12 exhibitions, offers 1,000 public programs, and delivers hundreds of design education experiences to a visitorship of 70,000 each year.
CFA’s K-12 education programs serve over 9,500 youth and adults annually at the CFAand in schools throughout the city. The K-12 programs were launched in 1991 with the founding of AIANY’sLearning By Design committee, NYC’s first K-12 architectural education program. CFA now hosts a robust slate of year-round architecture education programs including: Student Days, hands-on workshops at the CFA for visiting K-12 classes; summer, vacation, after-school, and weekend youth programs; weekend Family Day workshops; and Professional Development for educators.
Center for Employment Opportunities
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) was first developed in New York City as a demonstration project of the Vera Institute of Justice in the 1970s, becoming an independent nonprofit in 1996. In 2009, the organization began to replicate its program model, and they now serve 22 cities in eight states across the U.S. Their mission is to provide immediate, effective, and comprehensive employment services to individuals with criminal convictions who have recently returned home from incarceration and are under community supervision. Annually, CEO serves roughly 6,500 men and women returning home from jail or prison and focuses their services on individuals who have a higher risk of re-incarceration. Through a proven and effective model, CEO breaks the cycle of recidivism and helps participants regain the skills and confidence needed for successful transitions to stable, productive lives.
The Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (The Cooper Union) is recognized as a world premier educator in art, architecture, and engineering and a leader in high-quality, accessible education. The institution prepares students, including those of greatest need in New York City, to become tomorrow’s leaders and agents of change. Their focus on openness and accessibility extends to underserved youth through their STEM outreach programs which include STEM Days, STEM Inventors (afterschool), STEM Saturdays (during academic year) and their capstone program – Summer STEM. The program addresses two significant needs: a lack of equitable access to high-quality STEM education for students of underserved backgrounds; and a growing technology industry with a limited, non-diverse pool of skilled engineering professionals.
Manhattan College
Manhattan College is an independent Catholic institution of higher learning that embraces qualified men and women of all faiths, cultures, and traditions. The mission of Manhattan College is to provide a contemporary, person-centered educational experience that prepares graduates for lives of personal development, professional success, civic engagement, and serviceto their fellow human beings. The College extends this mission to students of all grade levels, and as part of its mission created the Summer Engineering Awareness Program (SEAP) in 1982.
The program is a vital part of the College’s year-round efforts to attract minorities and young women to engineering. Through the original 10-day program and two six-day extension programs, students gain hands-on experience and exposure to engineering and science, while learning about the wide range of rewarding career options available to them. Additionally, the program explores engineering careers in combination with the fields of law, business, medicine, and education.
Nontraditional Employment for Women
Founded in 1978, Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) recruits, trains and places women in careers in the skilled construction, utility and maintenance trades, helping women achieve economic independence and a secure future. At the same time, NEW provides a pipeline of qualified workers to the industries that build, move, power, green and maintain New York.
NEW graduates are working as carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, laborers, plumbers and operating engineers thanks to unique partnerships between NEW, its Board of Directors, the construction unions and New York’s real estate industry. Over the last 10 years, NEW has placed women in over 2,500 industry jobs.
NY Helmets to Hardhats
NY Helmets to Hardhats, Inc. (NY H2H), a direct licensee of the national Helmets to Hardhats organization, is a non-profit that places military service members into the unionized construction industry. NY H2H is registered as a direct entry program which acts as an advocate on behalf of military service members who are interested in working for the building trades, contractors, developers and associations that comprise the New York construction industry. Once a military service member is fully registered on the organization’s website and pre-screened by NY H2H staff, the military veteran can access information and opportunities on over 80 different apprenticeable crafts and over 10,000 contractors at the national level.
In addition to the apprenticeship training programs, military veterans can access management opportunities such as project management and administrative and clerical positions with general contractors, sub-contractors, developers and employer associations.
NYU Tandon Center for K-12 STEM Education
The Center for K12 STEM Education at NYU Tandon School of Engineering (NYU Tandon) provides high-quality science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) content to students and teachers in the New York metropolitan area. It is the Center’s mission to strengthen interest and expertise in STEM studies and careers through programs focused on real-world applications, hands-on learning, and science and engineering activities. Their programs integrate instruction across disciplines, including computer science/coding, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering, and materials science, among others. Above all, the programs emphasize peer mentoring and instruction in small groups.
Originally designed in 2012 by NYU engineering, mathematics and education students, their Science of Smart Cities (SoSC) program introduces middle school students to engineering, science, computer science and technology that make cities more sustainable, efficient and safer.
Pathways to Apprenticeship
Pathways to Apprenticeship, Inc. (“P2A”) recruits, trains and mentors people from low-income communities – including the formerly incarcerated, people on public assistance and people living in public housing – to be accepted into and succeed in construction union apprenticeship programs in New York City. Careers in the building trades lead to solid middle-class incomes, ending the intergenerational poverty that hinders low-income New York families.
Since its founding by a small group of volunteers in 2013, P2A has assisted 235 people from low-income communities (66 percent of whom were formerly incarcerated) to be admitted into a building trades apprenticeship program. More than 85 percent of these graduates are still working in the building trades and many of them have become P2A Peer Mentors, teaching classes and conducting information sessions.
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute—a Brooklyn-based, nationally-ranked institution of higher education offering programs in art, design, architecture, and information science—enrolls nearly 5,000 graduate and undergraduate students. In addition to these activities as an institution of higher education, the Institute’s Center K-12 augments Pratt’s historical mission to share the expertise of the faculty and students with the local community by implementing programs that provide studio-based art and design instruction for almost 1,000 children and teens.
On campus, the Saturday Art School (SAS), the Design Initiative for Community Empowerment (DICE), Pratt Young Scholars (PYS), and Summer Scholars serve youth ages six to 18, and off-campus Rising Artists and Designers (RAD) serves middle and high school students in selected Title 1 schools throughout Brooklyn.
Rebuilding Together NYC
Rebuilding Together NYC is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to repair homes, revitalize communities, and rebuild lives. They preserve affordable housing and community assets by creating opportunities for striving New Yorkers to maintain safe, healthy, and accessible homes, revitalize community spaces, and develop career pathways to enter into the construction trades. Their programs, offered at no cost to qualified recipients living within the five boroughs, include critical home repair, accessibility modifications, community center renovations, construction workforce training and job placement services.
Salvadori Center
The Salvadori Center delivers collaborative, hands-on, project-based learning experiences for public school students in all five boroughs of New York City. Salvadori's programs aim to promote college and career readiness for all students; emphasize higher-order skills; and produce student work that reflects high levels of thinking, participation, and ownership. This is achieved by offering a variety of multi-day, in-school and after-school programs for children, as well as professional development workshops that provide teachers with a strong foundation in project-based learning. The teaching staff features experienced architects and engineers who share their passion for New York's urban landscape in ways that inspire young learners.
Urban Upbound
The mission of Urban Upbound is to break cycles of poverty in public housing communities by providing low-income residents with the tools and resources needed to achieve economic mobility and self-sufficiency. In 2004, Chief Executive Officer Bishop Mitchell Taylor co-founded Urban Upbound to ensure that residents of Queensbridge Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development (and nearby western Queens NYCHA developments -- Ravenswood, Astoria, and Woodside Houses), could benefit from the rapid economic growth in Long Island City.
Sixteen years later, Urban Upbound offers a comprehensive suite of programs -- employment services for youth and adults, financial counseling (surrounding credit, debt, savings, and housing), income support services (free tax prep, public benefits enrollment), community revitalization (entrepreneurship, worker cooperative organizing, community advocacy), and financial inclusion, anchored by the Urban Upbound Federal Credit Union. At present, Urban Upbound serves the needs of 22,000 individuals living in NYCHA neighborhoods in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx.
Waterfront Alliance
For more than a decade, the Waterfront Alliance has been the New York–New Jersey metropolitan region’s preeminent advocate for coastal resilience, waterfront access, environmental restoration, and the working waterfront. WEDG® (Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines) premiered in 2015 and serves as a resource to a wide range of stakeholders, from community board members to landscape architects to environmental engineers to real estate developers. WEDG provides a gold standard and illuminates the complexities of waterfront development, providing design concepts and best practices accessible to all. In order to ensure waterfront development in our region is driven by highly skilled and trained professionals, in 2019 the Waterfront Alliance launched the WEDG® Professionals program. WEDG Professionals is a platform for participants to learn from innovators in the fields of waterfront planning, design, engineering, finance, and insurance about designing for a resilient 2050 and beyond.
