Starting in 2023, Hester Street partnered with Rise and Attentive Energy to embed deep community engagement into the process to transform the Ravenswood generating station in Long Island City, Queens into a hub for renewable energy. Our team supported Rise to develop an engagement strategy and a mapping dataset with relevant environmental justice indicators, create a toolkit that explains the project, and organize community information tables, focus groups, and large fairs to engage residents and solicit their feedback about the project. Given the proximity of the Ravenswood site to several New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residences at Queensbridge, Ravenswood, and Astoria Houses, HST focused our outreach to ensure that public housing residents were centered in the project’s community engagement strategy.
At the end of 2023, HST produced an engagement synthesis summarizing the findings from our initial community engagement events.
ENGAGEMENT MATERIALS
For the community engagement events, HST designed a number of innovative engagement activities, including:
- Cards for Community custom game, including Game Board and Cards, inviting community members to imagine the possible benefits of a renewable energy hub for their neighborhood.
- Interactive boards with opportunities for community members to provide their feedback to the Rise team about the Ravenswood project.
- Focus group facilitation guide and Cards for Community game instructions