The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) surveys civic environmental stewardship groups to provide digital maps and organizational network diagrams that show where, with whom, and how groups are taking care of the local environment in NYC. This presentation gives an overview of STEW-MAP and introduces an emerging real-time tool, called STEW-MAP Live, that will enable our team to better map stewards in real-time. In this presentation, the audience is invited to add groups working in NYC that they know of to this live map. By joining this presentation, you will learn about environmental stewardship, existing open data about stewardship, and ways to consider collecting and updating data on civic organizations.
Civic stewardship groups are not only environmentally focused, they include community development organizations, youth groups, public health groups, and more; all of them play a role in conservation, management, monitoring, education, advocacy, and transformation of NYC’s land, air, and water. STEW-MAP was designed to identify active agents of change working in all communities, to acknowledge the work of informal and grassroots groups, and to extend potential partnerships “beyond the known knowns”. It can also be used to identify “stewardship gaps” -- areas that are underserved by active environmental stewardship and engagement. STEW-MAP utilizes methodologies to identify new and existing organizations working across a landscape and depicts strategic networks, stewardship gaps, and overlaps in activity.
