For those who wish to help in Sandy recovery efforts, here is news about grassroots groups to support! It comes from Ron Shiffman of Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, who is himself volunteering with a joint regional disaster task force and the NYC Office of Emergency Management. Pratt has posted a spreadsheet of organizations to help at this link. It offers contact info and websites for each organization.

In addition to efforts like 596 Acres and the Red Hook Initiative, folks on the ground like Pat Simon of Ocean Bay Community Development Corporation of the Rockaways are working with Public Housing folks, know the community, and have done an outstanding job in the wake of Sandy, as has Jeanne DuPont of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance. These are two groups indigenous to the area that work with those traditionally ignored. People who have self-organized to help also need to be identified and supported.

Others worthy of support are the New York Environmental Justice Alliance working to protect vulnerable communities from toxic poisoning that can easily engulf waterfront communities where industrial sites have or presently exist. The need to maintain jobs coupled with the need to clean those areas is critical. Groups like el Puente and UPROSE need funds to keep serving youth and education programs and others like the BTCC and churches united need resources to help identify and develop housing relocation resources.

Occupy Sandy is collecting supplies and donations and leading a series of grassroots efforts, including dispatching people for on-the-scene work, in New York and New Jersey. In a New York Times article entitled “Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief,” Allen Feuer described how on the morning of November 7, “as the winds picked up and FEMA closed its office ‘due to weather,’ an enclave of Occupiers was huddled in a storefront amid the devastation, handing out supplies and trying to make sure that those bombarded by last month’s storm stayed safe and warm and dry this time.” Feuer also noted how there is an “Occupy motor pool of borrowed cars and pickup trucks that ferries volunteers to ravaged areas. An Occupy weatherman sits at his computer and issues regular forecasts. Occupy construction teams and medical committees have been formed.” The group is also running a registry of needed supplies through Amazon.

Check out We Got This (Occupy Sandy) by Alex Mallis to learn more about relief efforts by locals and Occupy Sandy that are offering continued direct aid to the neighborhoods most affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Please consider contributing directly to one of these groups with your time, connections, or a donation. The Brooklyn Community Foundation has also set up a Brooklyn Recovery Fund to support Brooklyn nonprofits responding to Sandy.