ORGANIZATION PARTNERS
coLAB Arts partners with social advocacy and community organizations to create transformative new work, provide workshops, and facilitate conversations that respond to mission and constituency need.
SOCIAL ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS
coLAB Arts maintains sustained relationships with local and regional organizations across a broad advocacy spectrum, through creative engagement and collaboration.
Since 1989, Elijah’s Promise has used food as a tool to alleviate hunger, empower lives and invite justice for the most vulnerable members of our Central New Jersey community. We operate a community soup kitchen, culinary arts school, catering business, pay-as-you-can café, and connect low-income individuals and families with social and health services. With the support of volunteers, donors and community partners, we serve more than 100,000 meals per year and train previously unskilled workers for careers in the food service industry.
www.elijahspromise.org
New Brunswick Tomorrow is a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching the lives of New Brunswick’s people.
We do this by fostering public and private networks of institutions and community organizations. The initiatives that emerge help promote self-sufficiency and personal dignity in our citizens. New Brunswick Tomorrow identifies critical community needs and responds to those needs. We serve as a catalyst in developing and supporting solutions that improve the quality of life in our community. We work with our partners in the city’s public/private revitalization, assuring that health, human service and social issues are addressed that complement the physical and cultural revival of New Brunswick. Join us in improving the quality of life for all our people.
www.nbtomorrow.org
OUR MISSION
The mission of The Pride Center of New Jersey is to provide comprehensive programming which fosters the health and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed and questioning (LGBTIQ) community, and to increase public acceptance and champion social change for the LGBTIQ community through education and outreach.
OUR VISION
The Pride Center envisions a world where members of the LGBTIQ community are empowered as individuals, as citizens and as members of the larger community, enjoying non-prejudicial treatment under the law and in every aspect of their lives. We will encourage the creation of a society that celebrates the inherent worth, dignity and diverse characteristics of every individual.
We will be a leader in New Jersey for the collaboration of LGBTIQ and allied groups, the media, and policy makers; a resource and service center for all persons and organizations who share our vision; and a place of safety and education.
New Jersey’s newest watershed association, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership (LRWP) was formed in 2014 to address industrial pollutants that left a legacy of contamination in the Raritan River and the Lower Raritan Watershed. Although dumping is much ameliorated, current contamination levels in many stream segments are unknown, and no comprehensive assessment of water quality for the LRW has been performed since the 1970s. Ongoing threats to the watershed include combined sewers, an average of 34% impervious surfaces, and significant non-point pollution.
The Institute’s mission is to empower urban residents to realize and achieve their full potential. Established in 1999 by Alan V. and Amy Lowenstein, the Institute’s dynamic and independent advocacy is aimed at toppling load-bearing walls of structural inequality to create just, vibrant, and healthy urban communities. We employ a broad range of advocacy tools to advance our ambitious urban agenda, including research, analysis and writing, public education, grassroots organizing, communications, the development of pilot programs, legislative strategies, and litigation.
Using a holistic approach to addressing the unique and critical issues facing New Jersey’s urban communities, the Institute advocates for systematic reform that is at once transformative, achievable in the state, and replicable in communities across the nation.
Free Press fights for your rights to connect and communicate.
We're working to create a world where people have the information and opportunities they need to tell their own stories, hold leaders accountable, and participate in our democracy. We fight to save the free and open internet, curb runaway media consolidation, protect press freedom, and ensure diverse voices are represented in our media.
We believe that change happens when people have a real voice in the political process. To that end, we mobilize our growing base of 900,000 activists to sign petitions, meet with their elected officials, attend rallies and town-hall meetings, write letters to the editor, and take part in other targeted actions. We also craft policy proposals, conduct research, testify before Congress and argue in court for policies that serve the public interest.
The companies trying to kill Net Neutrality, crush competition and build media monopolies have way more money than we do. But we have two powerful things on our side: people ... and a plan.
Free Press is completely independent: We don't take a single cent from business, government or political parties and rely on the generosity of individual donors and charitable foundations to fuel our work.
Churches Improving Communities’ mission is to help the 29 churches within the New Brunswick Classis of the Reformed Church in America meet the social, educational and economic needs of their communities through the development and expansion ofjustice and mercy service projects. We do this by pooling skills and expertise to leverage funding, staff, volunteers, and community support.
Churches Improving Communities (CIC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit community development corporation, and its programs are non-discriminatory and open to the public.
Churches Improving Communities staffs and operates three programs through the involvement of member churches and the community: NeighborCorps Re-Entry Services, mentoring and assisting individuals as the return to their communities from Middlesex County Jail; CALTR, reconstructing Hurricane Sandy-damaged homes at the Jersey shore; and Church-Based Mental Health Services, providing low-cost, professional mental health counseling in counties throughout central NJ.
NJ Spark is a social justice journalism lab at Rutgers University. We bring students together with media makers and journalists to create media for an with underserved communities.
njspark.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick Cultural Center’s mission is to stimulate the cultural development and economic growth of arts and entertainment in New Brunswick through the enhancement, preservation, maintenance and effective administration of existing and future venues that service the primary constituent base of the New Brunswick Cultural Center. And, by nurturing emerging and viable arts, educational and entertainment organizations that reach the diverse communities of New Brunswick, New Brunswick Cultural Center and its Arts Partners thrive to establish New Brunswick as the premier arts and entertainment destination in the region.
Town Clock CDC provides permanent, supportive and affordable homes to survivors of domestic violence and their children.
Dina’s Dwellings is the Town Clock CDC’s main endeavor, a project which will reconfigure the sanctuary of the First Reformed Church to provide 10 units of affordable housing for victims of domestic violence.
The Town Clock is located in the steeple of the First Reformed Church of New Brunswick. The steeple was begun in 1827 and completed in 1839. In 1828, the “town” of New Brunswick paid $500 to install a clock in the steeple. The Town Clock continues to be owned and operated by the city of New Brunswick, recently being converted to a digital clock to adjust to time changes automatically.
The Town Clock CDC used the Town Clock as inspiration for its name. Though contained within a house of worship, the Town Clock is owned by the community, the City of New Brunswick. The Town Clock CDC wishes to allow for more of the building space of the First Reformed Church to serve a community purpose.
COMMUNITIES
coLAB Arts’ place-based work, including its public art initiatives and the Mercado Esperanza, are dependent upon strong relationships with individuals and organizations that directly reflect the identities and values of the communities served.
Who Is My Neighbor? Inc. (WIMNI) has been an operational 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization, incorporated in the state of New Jersey and tax-exempted by the federal government, since 2003.
Who Is My Neighbor? Inc. began with two ideas: to serve local and global neighbors. Locally, community members who were looking for ways to better serve the neighborhood. They identified a situation shared by many local families – the need for adequate youth supervision after school, when many parents were still at work. Awareness of this need spurred the creation of WIMNI and it’s first program – The Cave Afterschool Center, a free-of-charge, afterschool program for middle school youth.