CONCRETE SAFARIS INC

Our mission is to prepare youth in East Harlem and beyond to lead healthy lives and shape their environment through outdoor play, education, exploration, and community engagement.

Our strategies involve children and youth in outdoor programming during after school, internships, summer, and single-day programming on courts, streets, and within underutilized spaces in the public housing projects of East Harlem.

Over the next three years, Concrete Safaris will focus on expanding its existing programs to meet demand in East Harlem through increasing its fundraising capabilities and deepening its resource capacity to more effectively serve a greater customer base.

Demand for programming: Concrete Safaris will expand its direct-service programs to simultaneously reach a broader number of students more frequently and employ a greater number of interns in the community.

Fundraising capability: The organization will focus on securing larger government and foundation funding, increase participation from individual and corporate donors, and explore alternative methods of generating revenue while improving brand recognition.

Staff capacity: Underpinning the success of its strategic objectives, Concrete Safaris will hire additional highly-qualified staff able to oversee the management of its programs and improve talent retention, while growing its leadership teams with members possessing the expertise necessary to lead the organization to success.

Concrete Safaris has grown steadily from an after school workshop series serving 16 children twice per week in 2008 to a 4-program organization serving 7-24-year-olds through after school, internships, single-day field trips, and an annual event -- getting over 4,750 participants outdoors, active, and educated -- in 2017.

In 2019, the organization opened its Outdoor Leadership Academy internship program to over two hundred 14-15-year-olds and over thirty 16-24-year-olds for six-days per week of professional development workshops, trainings on how to lead community events for thousands of local residents, and site visits to corporations and government agencies in the field of healthcare, media, business/professional, construction, and food services.

Also in 2019, Concrete Safaris opened its City Surfers after school program to 72 children at PS 57 for a five/day/week after school program offering gardening, cycling and fitness, photography, obstacle race design, advocacy, field trips, nature adventures, and camping.

Now in 2022, the organization expects to serve 72 children in after school and summer camp, nearly 300 youth through school year and summer internships, a dedicated group of school children from 3 schools and local NYCHA residents at its gardens, and a wide variety of community members at its street-based obstacle event series.