Charity Work
Midler founded the New York Restoration Project (NYRP) in 1995, a non-profit organization with the goal of revitalizing neglected neighborhood parks in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of New York City. These include Highbridge Park, Fort Washington Park, and Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan and Roberto Clemente State Park and Bridge Park in the Bronx.
When the city planned in 1991 to auction 114 community gardens for commercial development, Midler led a coalition of greening organizations to save them. NYRP took ownership of 60 of the most neglected plots. Today, Midler and her organization work with local volunteers and community groups to ensure that these gardens are kept safe, clean and vibrant. In 2003, Midler opened Swindler Cove Park, a new 5-acre (20,000 m2) public park on the Harlem River shore featuring specially designed educational facilities and the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse, the first community rowing facility to be built on the Harlem River in more than 100 years. The organization offers free in-school and after-school environmental education programming to students from high-poverty Title I schools.
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Famous quotes containing the words charity and/or work:
“These days are dangerous;
Virtue is choked with foul ambition,
And charity chased hence by rancor’s hand.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“You seem to have no real purpose in life and won’t realize at the age of twenty-two that for a man life means work, and hard work if you mean to succeed.”
—Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854–1921)