Majora Carter

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Majora Carter (born c. 1966^{[citation needed]}) is the Executive Director/Founder of Sustainable South Bronx (SSB).^[1]

Majora Carter graduated from the Bronx High School of Science (1984), received a B.A. (1988) from Wesleyan University (majoring in film studies), and an M.F.A. (1997) from New York University. Carter served as project director (1997-98) and associate director of community development (1998-2001) for The Point Community Development Corporation (The Point CDC), working on youth development and community revitalization in Hunts Point, in the Bronx. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 and serves as its executive director.^[1]^[2]

After completing her MFA, Carter returned to her native Hunts Point where she sought to deepen the emphasis on the arts in the South Bronx. It wasn’t long, however, before she was engaged in battle over New York City’s plan for a solid waste management plant to process 40 percent of the city’s garbage at a facility on the Hunts Point waterfront. Successfully diverting this plan, SSB and other groups went further, embarking on projects that built a park on the site of a former concrete plant, enabled public waterfront access where the shore was once littered with industrial scrap, developed an ecological restoration workforce to protect and maintain the natural environment, and raised funds to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of a bike/pedestrian greenway along the waterfront, now the projected South Bronx Greenway: the first piece of this greenway in actual existence is the Hunt's Point Riverside Park. Making the connection between green space and health, Carter added a community education focus to the work of the SSB around fitness, food choices, and air quality. As part of this effort, she established a community market and introduced green roof technology. In so doing, Majora Carter has helped to profoundly transform the quality of life for South Bronx residents.^[1]^[2]

She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ("genius grant") in 2005.^[1]

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Majora Carter, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Current Fellows index. Accessed online 6 March 2007.
^ ^a ^b Cynthia E. Rockwell, "Breaking the Grip of Poverty", Wesleyan (Wesleyan University alumni magazine), Issue IV 2006, 33–37. p. 34–35.