The Idea

Block to Table is a community recipe library with guidance on growing ingredients, composting, healthy substitutes and community recipes. Cooking at home reduces waste, reuses scraps, and connects people to their culture. The concept was mine from the start.

What I Built

A website where you can find a recipe, cook with what you already have, find a substitute when you're out of an ingredient, or grow a few herbs at home. I added real recipes progressively throughout the program instead of shipping a shell and walking away.

My Role

Solo project — concept, recipe curation, content writing, visual direction, UX flow and site build.

How I Worked

Every week the site got more finished. I focused on visuals and how it feels to actually use — because I want people to stop and engage with the work, not pass by it.

What's Next

I'm deciding whether to keep it going past the program. The recipes are real, the structure works, and the library only gets more useful as more people add to it.

The Problem

When the lights go out in East Flatbush in August, the people most at risk are elders in their apartments — without a backup plan, without clear information about what they're entitled to, and without a direct path to the programs that could help. Energy literacy isn't something that gets taught.

Research Foundation

I researched elder heat vulnerability in The Flats using city-specific public health data — including the finding that heatstroke is the leading environmental cause of death for NYC seniors — and used that to shape the clinic design from the ground up.

The Clinic Model

Three parts: heat vulnerability at home (what seniors can do before a heat event), brownout and blackout preparedness (what to do when the grid fails), and resource navigation (where cooling centers are, who to call, what programs exist and how to access them). The design principle was accessibility, not technical accuracy — built for someone who may not use a smartphone.

Community Activation Plan

I developed an activation plan for a senior cooling event at Bethany Terrace houses in East Flatbush: cooling stations alongside energy education in the same room — immediate relief and longer-term knowledge as a dual intervention. Planned, documented and ready to be activated.

What's Next

The model is built and the plan is documented. What it needs is a partner organization that already works with senior residents in East Flatbush and can help get into the building.

The Problem

Most resilience hub surveys are English-only and written by professionals for professionals, so they never reach the people they claim to represent. The Hub on Utica Avenue is meant to serve The Flats year-round with emergency support, food, shelter, water and programming — which meant the community had to be heard before construction, not after.

Research Foundation

We grounded the work in the six-pillar resilience hub framework — programs and services, information and connectivity, built and natural spaces, power and backup, operations, and accessibility and transportation — layered with Flats-specific data from the NYC Heat Vulnerability Index, DOH Heat Risk dashboards and the NYS Disadvantaged Communities tool. One finding reset the whole project: heatstroke is the leading environmental cause of death for NYC seniors.

Survey Design & Deployment

We built and tested BKLVLUP's first-ever Community Resilience Hub survey in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, written by Operators who speak them — designed for reading level and format accessibility, not just translation. We collected responses in person at National Night Out and the Shirley Chisholm Center, and piloted Google Forms as the beta platform for ongoing data collection in The Flats.

My Contribution

I edited the intake survey questions for clarity and reading level, ran street interviews near Brooklyn College, and helped adapt the script for youth, seniors and longtime residents. I pushed our team toward the details official plans miss: during our emergency-readiness analysis I flagged that a coastal-city scenario never taught residents how to handle sharks, and that evacuation messaging assumed everyone had a car. I presented the work at the EcoPower '26 Community Report Back.

What's Next

The survey is live in three languages. The next phase is expanding in-person collection as the Hub moves from concept to construction.

The Problem

The Flats holds a 40-year-old Caribbean market, a playground with roots in the 1990s, substations serving thousands of residents, green spaces and institutions people walk past every day without knowing what they are. When gentrification comes for a neighborhood, it comes first for the things nobody wrote down.

Mapping with Ground3D

Working live on the Felt platform with Ground3D, our cohort mapped energy infrastructure (National Grid and ConEd substations), local institutions, green spaces, historical sites and community resources — multiple Operators dropping points and writing annotations together in one shared map.

Written for a Phone

Every point was annotated in full narrative sentences so someone could pull it up on a phone and get a story, not coordinates — a design decision drawn from Ground3D's Roots & Rhythms map.

Street Interviews & Route Fieldwork

I ran street interviews near Brooklyn College — the script took rounds of practice, because you can't open with 'do you live here?' in New York City. We also walked the route on foot documenting shade cover, water access and flood risk, and began identifying corridor businesses for a community pact of cooling, charging, water and information sites.

What's Next

The map is live and published. The next phase is community pact outreach to corridor businesses willing to be designated climate emergency resources.

The Problem

The communities hit hardest aren't always the ones who ignored the warning. Emergency messaging assumes one audience, one language and one way of reading — so the people most exposed to heat, flooding and blackouts in The Flats often never receive the message in a form they can use.

The Pivot

We reframed the research around a single finding: the same emergency message has to be translated across learning styles, generations and accessibility needs — not only languages. A 70-year-old without a smartphone, a parent who doesn't speak English and a teenager who won't read a pamphlet each need a different format for identical critical information. We audited existing emergency communications through that lens and mapped the gaps.

Green Book Research

We identified local businesses and institutions along The Flats corridors that could be designated community pact resources during a climate emergency — research feeding the Flats Rising Communication Strategy, the PACT outreach backbone built with OEM and COAD.

My Contribution

I helped build and test community outreach scripts for the Resilience Hub survey and worked on flood preparedness awareness materials written for Flats residents. During our emergency-readiness analysis I flagged that a coastal-city scenario never taught residents how to handle sharks, and that evacuation messaging assumed everyone had a car.

What's Next

The Flats Rising Communication Strategy is live infrastructure and this research feeds it directly. The Bethany Terrace senior cooling event was planned and documented — it needs a partner to activate next season.