Vine City, a historically Black neighborhood in Atlanta, has endured decades of economic disinvestment, flooding, and gentrification due to highway construction that did not take the community’s needs into consideration. Vine City’s Rodney Cook Sr. Park, a 16-acre green space located near the world’s largest concentration of Black colleges, was designed to reduce flooding, but the sizable urban green space is otherwise underutilized.
The HBCU Green Fund is an organization that promotes sustainability in HBCUs and the broader Black community.
The HBCU Green Fund will launch a number of initiatives, which include: soliciting feedback from Vine City residents to learn their priorities for the park, supporting the Cook Park Alliance and Truly Living Well Center for Natural Agriculture in community engagement efforts, constructing a 1-acre community garden, and hosting a broad range of park events for the community. The Green Fund will also host a Bezos Earth Fund fellow to support all Atlanta-based Earth Fund grantees.