Winner of Grassroots Community Planning Award Announced
October 6th, 2010
MAS congratulates Kelley Williams, the winner of the 2010 Yolanda Garcia Community Planner (YGCP) Award. The award acknowledges the hard-working leaders of grassroots, community-based planning. MAS created the award in 2007 to commemorate Yolanda Garcia, a community activist in the South Bronx. Yolanda Gonzalez, the daughter of Ms. Garcia, will present Williams with the award on October 22, at the MAS Summit for New York City.
Ms. Williams has been a community organizer for more than three decades, working to maintain an ethnically, racially, and economically diverse Upper West Side. At the age of thirteen, she became involved in community and tenant organizing. Since then, Williams has organized hundreds of low-income tenants on the West Side. In 1991, she organized parents to form a small, community-based public middle school named the Community Action School (CAS). Today, CAS has an enrollment of 230 students, and is committed to serving an academically and culturally diverse student body. Then, in 1993, Williams developed and secured funding for the Learning Action Center for Academic Success and Achievement (LACASA). The program is designed to help school-age children of all learning abilities reach their academic potential through after-school and summer programs. LACASA is now operating programs in two public schools and enrolls more than 250 participants each year.
Currently, as executive director of Strycker’s Bay Neighborhood Council, Ms. Williams assists low-income residents of the Upper West Side in overcoming challenges related to affordable housing, economic self-sufficiency, and neighborhood revitalization.
To learn more about the Garcia Award, and to hear podcasts with past awardees, visit mas.org/garcia








“A renewal effort has to be conceived as a process of building on the inherent social and economic values of the community. Neglecting these values through programs of massive clearance and redevelopment can disrupt an entire community.”
MAS announced the winners of its Annual Awards honoring individuals and groups that help define the character of New York City at its annual meeting earlier this week at the Chelsea Art Museum. This year’s awards were highlighted by the Brooklyn Flea, the flea market that is becoming an essential weekend activity for all New Yorkers and IRT: A Tragedy in Three Stations, an original play that actually takes place in the subway. This year’s award-winners also included the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival; Sustainable Streets Strategic Plan for the New York City Department of Transportation 2008 and Beyond; and the Center for New York City Law. 
The Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award (YGCP) acknowledges the hard-working leaders of grassroots, community-based planning. The award was created to commemorate Yolanda Garcia, a community activist in the South Bronx. Under Garcia’s leadership, the residents of Melrose challenged the city, created an alternative to an urban renewal plan, and transformed a neighborhood. The organization created by Garcia, We Stay/Nos Quedamos, is bringing that community’s vision to life through planning, design, construction, and programming.
The bright sun reflected off the many new buildings of Melrose Commons in the South Bronx, as elected officials, activists, developers, friends, family, and other admirers gathered on East 157th Street to honor the memory of Yolanda Garcia yesterday. Third Avenue between 156th and 157th Streets is now known as “Yolanda Garcia Way.”
Jeanne DuPont, Executive Director of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance (RWA) is the 2008 Yolanda Garcia Community Planning Award recipient. This award, which recognizes the often-unsung leaders of grassroots community-based planning, was awarded to Jeanne for her work promoting public waterfront access in the Rockaways. In 2005, the RWA created the Rockaway Waterfront Park Project, which laid the groundwork for the present PLANYC public park project for Far Rockaway. Like Yolanda Garcia, Jeanne has a strong commitment to community-led planning-working across cultural and generational lines to create a community vision.