Community programs

North Brooklyn Angels Annual Luncheon a Big Success!

On June 6, 2023 the Angels held their annual fundraising luncheon at the Ascension Hall in Greenpoint. The event honored “Neighbors of the Year” Theatrical Teamsters Local 817, Whiskey Helps and the Brooklyn Brewery for their unceasing support for the Angels and its mission of neighbors helping neighbors. Community Liaison Kevin Thompson serves as the treasurer for the Angels, and ExxonMobil is proud to have supported the North Brooklyn Angels since their inception.

Angels bring the heat!

The North Brooklyn Angels recently took delivery of “Blue Heat” a brand new food truck purchased and outfitted thanks to the generous support of donors Norm Brodsky, Philip Kaplan, Shlomo Birnbaum and Noah Chaimberg. Blue Heat’s beautiful paint scheme was donated by the amazing designers and artists of The Young Jerks and Colossal Media. Blue Heat certainly stands out, bringing much needed attention to the mission of the Angels to address food insecurity in our community. ExxonMobil’s Kevin Thompson serves as the Treasurer for the Angels, and the company has supported the Angels since their inception.

An oyster update!

The mission of the Billion Oyster Project is to restore oysters to New York waters through public education initiatives. It looked like Covid-19 was going to upset BOP’s plans this year, but through tenacity and creative planning, the BOP is on track to have its best year yet! A new partnership with Red Hook Terminals will allow BOP to increase its oyster restoration capacity by 500% by this Fall.

How ExxonMobil helps: The oyster shells used in the program begin their return to the water at local restaurants, where the shells are gathered and then delivered to the former Mobil facility in Brooklyn, NY. Our facility acts as a way station for collection and storage of the oyster shells prior to their being delivered to the Harbor School on Governor’s Island, where the shells are inoculated with juvenile oysters (called spat), and then finally placed into NY waters.

Cleaning our waters: Oysters are filter feeders and play a key role in water quality as well as attracting life. They earn their nickname as “ecosystem engineers” because biodiversity levels increase dramatically surrounding oyster reefs. Oyster reefs can help to protect New York City from storm damage—softening the blow of large waves, reducing flooding, and preventing erosion. Restoring oysters and reefs will, over time, restore the local marine ecosystem’s natural mechanisms for maintaining itself, resulting in cleaner water and greater biodiversity.

Environmental Education: The NY Harbor School, a maritime high-school located on Governors Island, is the flagship school of the Billion Oyster Project, and its students contribute to Billion Oyster Project as part of their Career and Technical Education (CTE) experience—growing oysters, designing and building oyster reef structures, diving to monitor reefs, operating boats, performing marine biology research, and more.

27 million oysters!

The mission of the Billion Oyster Project is to restore oysters to New York waters through public education initiatives. So far, BOP has restored 27,475,800 oysters to NY waters, and ExxonMobil congratulates the organization on its incredible success. The oyster shells used in the program begin their return to the water at local restaurants, where the shells are gathered and then delivered to the former Mobil facility in Brooklyn, NY. The facility acts as a way station for collection and storage of the oyster shells prior to their being delivered to the Harbor School on Governor’s Island, where the shells are inoculated with juvenile oysters (called spat), and then finally placed into NY waters.

Environmental Education – The NY Harbor School, “a maritime high-school located on Governors Island, is the flagship school of the Billion Oyster Project, and its students contribute to Billion Oyster Project as part of their Career and Technical Education (CTE) experience—growing oysters, designing and building oyster reef structures, diving to monitor reefs, operating boats, performing marine biology research, and more.

Why oysters?

Why Oysters? As explained on the BOP website, “oysters have a remarkable ability to filter nitrogen pollution from water as they eat. This is a heroic feat, because excessive nitrogen triggers algal blooms that deplete the water of oxygen and create “dead zones.”

Oysters play a key role in attracting life. They earn their nickname as “ecosystem engineers” because we see biodiversity levels increase dramatically surrounding oyster reefs.

Oyster reefs can help to protect New York City from storm damage—softening the blow of large waves, reducing flooding, and preventing erosion.

Restoring oysters and reefs will, over time, restore the local marine ecosystem’s natural mechanisms for maintaining itself, resulting in cleaner water and greater biodiversity."

Ever have lunch with an Angel?

This year ExxonMobil once again supported the North Brooklyn Angels in their quest to alleviate food insecurity in our community. The first annual Neighbors Helping Neighbors luncheon, held at the Warsaw, sponsored by Broadway Stages, and supported by ExxonMobil, was a great success, raising over $130,000 for the Angels. At the luncheon, Borough President Eric Adams, restaurateur Josh Cohen, and Ana Oliviera, Marketing Executive for Investors Bank, were honored as Neighbors of the Year for their steadfast support of this important program.

Students from the Brownsville Culinary Community Center, whose mission is to address issues around food scarcity by offering healthy, accessible cuisine to neighborhood residents, prepared and served the delicious lunch. The Center offers a culinary training program designed to educate and inspire participants to excel in the food-service industry.

The funds raised at the luncheon will go a long way to helping the Angels achieve their goal of providing over 50,000 meals in North Brooklyn this year. ExxonMobil is proud to be a supporter of the Angels, and wish them the best of luck in attaining their worthy goal!

Angels in North Brooklyn

The North Brooklyn Angels are a volunteer-powered, hyper-local, grassroots non-profit organization that addresses hunger, poverty, homelessness and housing instability in North Brooklyn.

The Angelmobile, a mobile soup kitchen, serves hot lunches five days a week at various locations around the neighborhood. In addition to feeding people, the Angelmobile hosts, housing counsellors, healthcare advocates, and community representatives from local city council offices to assist local residents. The Angelmobile also distributes informative materials, flyers, clothes, books, toys, and personal care products to those in need.

The Angelmobile program is possible as a result of the generosity of volunteers and supporters including Mt. Carmel Parish, the Episcopal Ministries of Long Island and Norm and Elaine Brodsky. ExxonMobil is also a supporter of the North Brooklyn Angels, and we encourage our civic-minded neighbors to consider supporting this commendable community organization. If you would like more information about earning your wings as a North Brooklyn Angel, please visit www.northbrooklynangels.org.

A student student experiencing the Multi-Axis Chair, an activity in which trainees attempt to perform mental tasks while being rolled around in three dimensions.

Students Soar at Space Camp

The John Ericsson Magnet School for Environmental Engineering seeks to spark student interest in real world application of STEM principles through its Air and Space Science Club program. The year-long program provides students with the chance to explore space science and various aeronautics topics created by NASA. At the end of the year, students can attend a space camp where they share and expand on their interest in space science with other students their age from around the world. The Air and Space Science Club provides students with an outlet for their scientific curiosity as well as the opportunity to build relationships with like-minded peers.

This year, as part of its commitment to STEM education, Exxon Mobil sponsored 12 students from grades 6 – 8 to attend Cosmodome, a space science center in Montreal, Canada. The week-long, overnight space camp program is only one of five in the world. Cosmodome features NASA vehicle simulators and augmented gravity activities. It also serves as a space museum, housing one of two lunar rocks on display in Canada.

Pearls of New York Harbor

When Henry Hudson sailed into the New York Harbor in 1609, the river that would eventually bear his name was home to 220,000 acres of thriving oyster reefs. Fast forward some 400 years to today when the harbor’s oyster population has been decimated from overharvesting and pollution. The Billion Oyster Project (BOP) aims to turn back the clock.
The local initiative, launched by the New York Harbor School and New York Harbor Foundation, intends to plant one billion oysters in the New York Harbor by 2030 to promote the importance of environmental restoration and protecting local marine ecosystems.

Why bring back the oysters?

Despite their small stature, oysters play a big role in restoring an entire ecosystem. A single adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, removing pollutants, algae and sediment from its environment. Their reefs also serve as homes for a significant number of underwater organisms.

To date, the initiative has restored 28 million oysters into New York’s harbor since its launch in 2014. By the end of the project the oysters will help filter the entire harbor, approximately 74 billion gallons of water every three days.

Restoration and education

All the oysters start their journey at ExxonMobil’s former Greenpoint refinery site, which is maintained by the company’s Environmental Services division in Brooklyn, NY. Students from Harbor School, one of several local schools supported by ExxonMobil, use the site to store and reuse oyster shells collected from restaurants. This not only saves the shells from filling up landfills, it reduces the number of trips for the BOP collection trucks.

Next, the oysters go to school. Students grow oyster larvae in their science labs to plant on the reused shells. Once matured, the oysters then are planted at various sites around the harbor. Harbor School and 60 other New York City public middle schools use the organisms in biology and ecology research projects, integrating BOP into STEM education.

Finally, the oysters finish their journey at the New York Harbor, where Harbor School students introduce and further monitor them in the reefs.

“People often say New Yorkers are too busy to care about the well-being of the New York Harbor,” said Murray Fisher, founder and president of New York Harbor Foundation, New York Harbor School and co-founder of the Billion Oyster Project. “But our project shows otherwise. We’ve successfully brought a community of advocates, partners and volunteers together to restore a billion oysters to New York Harbor.”

ExxonMobil Supports Oyster Restoration

ExxonMobil is allowing the use of a section of the former Mobil refinery in Greenpoint to store oyster shells collected by students at Harbor School. The students are collecting the shells as part of the Billion Oyster project, which advocates for marine protection.

SeaPerch Students Dive into Science

ExxonMobil is proud to support students from MS 126 who are participating in the SeaPerch competition, a program that allows students to build an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles.

U.S. Military Academy at West Point

In collaboration with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, ExxonMobil invites environmental engineering cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to the Greenpoint site for tours and presentations as part of a class on Solid and Hazardous Waste Treatment and Remediation Processes.

Learn more

Cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point visit the Greenpoint site for a half-day of tours and presentations with field technicians. ExxonMobil and the New York Department of Conservation have hosted the cadets, all of whom are environmental engineering majors, since 2008.

Greenpoint YMCA

ExxonMobil’s involvement with the Greenpoint YMCA dates back to 1906, when John D. Rockfeller, Herbert Pratt and the Standard Oil Company contributed $100,000 to build the Greenpoint YMCA building on Meserole Avenue. Today, ExxonMobil continues to actively support the Greenpoint YMCA.

Newsletters

ExxonMobil’s newsletters include updates on remediation efforts and features people and events from the community of Greenpoint.

As a longstanding member of the Greenpoint community, ExxonMobil seeks to make real and enduring contributions for the benefit of our families, colleagues and neighbors.

North Brooklyn Angels Annual Luncheon a Big Success!

Angels bring the heat!

Ever have lunch with an Angel?

Angels in North Brooklyn

Students Soar at Space Camp

ExxonMobil Supports Oyster Restoration

SeaPerch Students Dive into Science

U.S. Military Academy at West Point

Greenpoint YMCA

Newsletters