-- Joyce Dixon, ENY Community Gardener
"[The UCC is] Wonderful. They are extending themselves out to the neighborhood. They are building a better community. They give kids values, and make them see the value of a dollar. They make it better for the kids in the community. We're making a better East New York."
-- Eliza Butler, ENY Community Gardener
"I was lucky to be one of the first interns to go on to a few conferences where I learned about other projects like us, and compared notes on how we can make our projects better and give other people advice on how their projects could be better. I went to Boston, Virginia, Atlanta, and Mexico. I was undecided, but I know now that I want to be involved in environmental and urban planning, and economics, and the bigger picture."
"The youth run the farmers market. They're a part of the garden and in other gardens in the community, and they clear the generation gap because they work with the gardeners who happen to be older. So they get a chance to not only learn from each other, but from people that are older and wiser than them."
-- Tamara Gonzalez, UCC Member and former Volunteer Coordinator for the East New York Farmers Market"It's my second family. I never fail to learn something new at the Center, even when I'm teaching other people."
-- Corea Loach, teen volunteer and member of the UCC Teen Drama Group, "One"
"I started with [the UCC] when I was 15. I’m 52 today. I got involved because UCC really influenced me, inspired me. It's an organization with guts. A lot of spunk. Creativity. Hard fighting. Can get people to go further than they ever thought they could."
-- Michael Golan, Vice President, Board of Directors
"I came back when my son was 4 and I wanted to put him in the daycare. I trusted it here. I knew there were certain values here that I wanted him to understand. The center taught about integration, about other parts of the world, and since he was part of an African American community, I wanted him to be a part of something bigger, more diverse. When I was growing up here, I went on marches with the center, performed plays around Brooklyn, did clogging. It was a very diverse education I got from the center and I’ve been able to take that to other places."
-- Nicole Hall, President, Board of Directors
"They are very community focused. They look a lot to parents and people in the community in terms of whether they are meeting the needs of the community. That is the strength of UCC."
-- Ken Walters, Director of Member Services, UNH
"When we first started looking into community-based planning, we discovered that East New York had the largest number of local gardens in the area. UCC was a primary player in helping us establish a farmers market. Now, with East New York Farms!, we’re reaching WIC families with the vegetables and fruits. Other neighborhoods have followed our model and since then we’ve gotten private and public grants, we’ve gotten youth programs and food coops out of it."
-- Perry Winston, Pratt Institute