Day of Impact – Open Architecture Collaborative

Annual Day of Impact – New York, NY USA

Project Goal: Support 5-8 local non-profits and schools with repair, restorations and construction projects with teams of volunteer designers.

Client: 15 Non-Profits across the 5 Burroughs of NYC

Services Delivered: Program management, Site coordination, Volunteer recruitment, Marketing and Communications

Day of Impact 2016_Rebuilding Together_0016

“We loved your volunteers, we eagerly look forward to 2017!”

Catherine Stein

Special Projects Manager Publicolor

Designers cannot successfully build for their surrounding community without engaging with their neighbors. Community volunteer opportunities are limited within the design industry, time is rarely allocated, and community engagement training is almost non-existent.

After more than 10 years of producing community engaged design projects and events in New York area, the chapter decided to consolidate their efforts into one annual event. This event, called the Day of Impact, works with community non-profits and educational organizations to provide them with design services and hands on labor.

The initial partners included: Publicolor, NYC Parks (formerly Million Trees), Partnership for Parks, “It’s My Park”, Hunters Point Park Conservatory, CITYarts, Lower East Side Ecology, New York Cares and Rebuilding Together. The volunteer efforts ranged from painting schools, planting street trees, cleaning up parks and helping remodeling lower income homes in Brooklyn. For more detail on all the partnerships and the OACny support please see this doc.

OACny has successfully executed our the Day of Impact for three years, with the fourth in the works now. In total, we have partnered with 10 community organizations, facilitated over 300 volunteers for over 3,000 hours of labor including production time.