Revitalization and Recovery

Overcoming the Pandemic’s Impacts

The pandemic has negatively impacted individuals, families, and businesses throughout the city, worsening existing racial and socioeconomic inequities. To address this, the city has targeted economic recovery in lower-income households and underserved neighborhoods by supporting small businesses, creating employment opportunities and career development options, restoring, and expanding summer and afterschool programs for K-8 students, and ensuring access to affordable housing, food, and nutrition assistance.

FY22 Project Highlight: Job Training for the 21st Century

Agencies: Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), NYC Small Business Services (SBS)
Website: Green Jobs

The Job Training for the 21st Century program consisted of fourinitiatives to prepare and support workers for new jobs. They were designed to promote social and economic justice in a variety of ways:

• Build On-Ramps to Green Jobs created a sustainable pathway for jobseekers, including NYCHA residents and other New Yorkers from economically disadvantaged communities, to obtain new green building jobs.
  
• The Career Pathways initiative delivered employer-informed, demand-driven training across growing sectors.
• The Employee Training Apprentice initiative recast a traditional workforce development approach to address 21st century skills, allowing workers to earn while they learn the skills for careers in healthcare, tech, manufacturing, and food service. 
  
• The Precision Employment Initiative, a violence intervention employment program, connected people at risk of gun violence with a climate-technology startup.

FY22 Project Highlight: Artist Corps

Agencies: Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), Department of Education (DOE), Department of Probation (DOP), NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA), NYC Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)
Website: NYCHA Public Arts Program; City Artist Corps

The New York City Artist Corps (CAC) project supported the cultural sector in NYC, which was hit paticularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. CAC distributed grants to help artists sustain their practices and engage the public in cultural programs. Grants were distributed through various agencies and partnerships, including:

• Dept of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) partnered with the Queen Theater to distribute $5,000 grants.
• Dept of Information Technology (OTI) and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) contracted with the NY Foundation for the Arts to distribute $5,000 grants.
• Dept of Education (DOE) in partnership with DCLA and the CAC directed $25,000 per project for murals and performing arts at sites for Summer Rising, a free school-based summer program that also provided a wide range of arts and cultural programming.
• Dept of Probation (DOP), as part of Beautify NYC, offered paid opportunities for artists and young people to collaborate on onprojects that revitalized community spaces.
• NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) and ArtBridge, a program that empowers local artists to transform prominent urban spaces into quality exhibitions, received $1M to install art across NYCHA developments.