Veterans and residents of Red Hook, Brooklyn can work together to address the community's needs by mapping its human capital and connecting skills to opportunities. The proposal seeks $5,000 to fund an initial proof of concept where veterans are trained to help identify community skills and needs. This information would be shared transparently and used to support locally-owned projects and solutions decided by community voting. The goal is to create a sustainable process where veterans and residents improve their community by tapping into existing knowledge and abilities.

1. 1776: The Fort That Saved America
Do Veterans live there today?
Can they help enrich Red Hook’s
Tomorrow?
Project Fort Defiance, Red Hook, Brooklyn
John Kirbow Bill Knight Carolyn Ristau William Keltie
Track: Sustainability Track
App Designation: Most Innovative App

2. • We know that Veterans with motivation, knowledge, & skills live in Red
Hook.
• We also know that an abundance of “human capital” – of skills and
knowledge” – exists across residents within this community.
• We have a ‘platform’ for assessing the needs across the area, as well as
the skills and knowledge. Veterans help start and carry this process
Introduction. Complex realities of poverty, marginalization, neglect,
and a lack of transparency and inclusion have long plagued communities across the
US, and we are seeing the consequences.
Communities, residents, and veterans can be the solution.

3. • Veterans can be trained to make this a
sustainable process. As we know from
Iraq and Afghanistan, many can adapt to
local cultures. This is especially true in
their own neighborhood.
• From there, we ‘branch out’ and identify
the skills and knowledge of lifetime
residents, Veterans and community
leaders, youth, seniors, tradespeople,
self-taught finance experts, musicians,
artists, entrepreneurs, and many others
We have a process for not only
assessing the communities’
needs, but finding and mapping
its ‘human capital’. We link the
needs with the local skills and
knowledge, to create solutions.

4. Methods and Models
We work through the local culture, with the community, to
identify these needs and skills. Core process, but no ‘rigid
blueprint’ – it adapts to and respects local realities.
• Core Team members already identified; research fieldwork is in
development
• The community helps ‘map’ itself, making people part of this process
of identifying and linking skills and needs - and hence, part of their
own solution.
• Information technology allows this to be shared transparently with
entire community

5. Proof of Concept
Objective of our Proof of Concept: We connect skills and ideas
across the Red Hook community, so that it can define some of its
own projects, paid work, skills training, and solutions to its
problems. A community fund allows these ideas to be locally
owned and decided on, by the community, from the ground up. It
will be the reverse of ‘Trickle-Down Philanthropy’, and repeatable
in other communities.

6. Target Audiences and Markets
• Traditional funders (especially foundations and local donors) as well as Venture
Philanthropists, who wish to see innovative, bold and replicable ideas done to
scale across the US
• Veterans advocates (people and organizations). With untapped motivation, skill
and underutilized abilities, veterans are one of the most underutilized,
underemployed groups in our country – this is therefore one of our main audiences
and markets.
• Incoming and existing real estate firms who wish to better understand and connect
with the communities they are in, especially in gentrified and marginalized areas.
• Nonprofits and Community-Based Organizations -mainly for partnering to serve
the needs of their area
• Local and city-wide businesses who wish to conduct respectable CSR and invest in
good ideas
• The general public, through long-term Crowdsourcing

7. What We Are Asking
To launch this proof of concept, we are asking for $5,000 in seed capital,
as a worker and trainer fund for the ‘veteran and community mapping /
mobilization’ phase.
• Our main objective is to demonstrate our concept and promote it
• Future project funds could come later from various target market segments.
• Future funding would chiefly go to the community itself, through a process of
participation and voting, in which residents are involved with local projects they
want funded

8. We work with the area’s Veterans to create a ‘Train-the-Trainer’
platform, to make this into a process repeatable across neighborhoods.
Through this 'horizontal platform' , veterans – as well as other skilled
workers - find pathways of stability as they help build their communities
Residents and Organizations are primary stakeholders in their
community – they have ongoing interest in sustainment
It will be an ‘incubator’ environment across the community itself – ways
and ideas to improve it will be in no short supply
Road to Sustainment and Scale