More than 700 people attended the first annual Fordham Goes Green Walk and multicultural health fair in Poe Park on Saturday, May 17, the kickoff event of a new environmentally-friendly campaign sponsored by the Fordham Road Business Improvement District (BID).
“It’s great to inform businesses and residents about going green,” said Daniel Bernstein, the BID’s deputy executive director. “We’re the first Bronx BID to do environmentally-friendly programming, and we hope to set a precedent for the rest of the Bronx.”
Supported by chants of “Go Green!” and “Save the Earth!,” attendees followed a marching band along East Fordham Road from Creston Avenue to East Kingsbridge Road. In Poe Park, people lined up for information on environmental issues like recycling and energy conservation, as well as a range of health issues. Passersby could get their cholesterol and blood pressure checked. And local musicians and dancers performed.
The goal, say the event’s organizers, was to show the link between healthy bodies and healthy environments. “If you eat and stay healthy, you should treat the environment healthy,” Bernstein said. Wilma Alonso, the BID’s executive director, added, “Everyone is very glad we did this event because of the high rates of asthma, diabetes and obesity in the Bronx.”
BID officials also announced that more than 90 percent of business owners want to learn more about and be more involved with environmental sustainability, after 25 supervised pre-kindergarten students from the 1199 SEIU Child Care Corporation handed out surveys over the past month, according to Bernstein.
The BID, founded in 2005, is also conducting a pilot program with the Department of Sanitation and the Department of Parks and Recreation in placing two recycling bins at the intersection of Fordham Road and Grand Concourse through the end of June.
Recycling is one of many initiatives in Fordham, which now has new select Bus Rapid Transit bus service, bus shelters and historic streetlighting. There will be a $2.5 million renovation of Bryan Park starting in 2009.
The BID will also be presenting its streetscape enhancement master plan on June 5 at the Bronx Library Center from 9 to 11 a.m. The pre-K students’ science fair projects will be on display at the library through the end of May.
admin
Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.