Mission
United for Brownsville is a community-driven, Brooklyn nonprofit with proven success helping the predominantly Black and brown children and families of Brownsville flourish. We facilitate problem-solving collaborations between residents and those working in the neighborhood. This work builds trust and creates solutions to racial inequities that are barriers to families’ prosperity.
Aim
UB aims for all families in Brownsville to realize their aspirations for their children. We will accomplish this by leveling the disparities between Brownsville and NYC in the areas most foundational to family well-being by 2034:
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- access to healthy and stable housing,
- enrollment in eligible public benefits,
- participation in programs that prepare children for school, and
- utilization of pediatric healthcare to optimize child development.
Vision
Resident leaders on the Family Advisory Board that sets our priorities want the same resources and opportunities as those from New York City’s most affluent neighborhoods. UB ensures that these hopes become reality by uniting residents and with social service providers, government, funders, businesses, and academia to change historically inequitable systems from the inside.
History
In 2024, United for Brownsville and the Brownsville Partnership united into a single independent entity, carrying on the traditions of two organizations with roots in Brownsville and similar methods of fostering collaborations to improve the way the neighborhood helps residents realize their aspirations.
Together, we have worked in the community since 2008, when Gregory “Jocko” Jackson joined up with Community Solutions to address conditions affecting neighborhood prosperity. Brownsville soon became Community Solutions’s flagship NYC office. In 2015 following the passing of Mr. Jackson, the Greg Jackson Center for Brownsville opened at 519 Rockaway Avenue as a hub for civic change.
Over the years, Brownsville Partnership developed expertise in issues related to housing, and was instrumental in the development of the Brownsville Plan, an initiative of NYC’s Office of Housing Preservation and Development, residents, businesses, and other nonprofits, that will bring over 2,500 new affordable homes and $1 billion of investment to the community.
In 2018, Community Solutions partnered with SCO Family of Services to launch United for Brownsville to improve early childhood systems in the community.
