Billion Oyster Project

Pete Malinowski is passionate environmentalist, educator and activist. He grew up farming oysters with his parents and five siblings on the Fishers Island Oyster Farm. Following college and a stint as a tall ship sailor, educator and celestial navigation instructor, Pete moved to New York City to become a teacher. After five years as a public school teacher he transitioned to non-profit work where he developed and now leads Billion Oyster Project, a city-wide education and ecosystem restoration initiative. His team of 31 staff work to restoring oyster reefs to New York Harbor through public education initiatives. Pete is a global leader in the oyster restoration community, serves on the Mayor's Waterfront Management Advisory Board and Co-Chairs the Governors Shellfish Restoration Council. When he's not restoring oysters and working with students, Pete takes every opportunity to get out on the water with his three young children. 

New York Harbor was once an ecological treasure. The abundance of animal protein provided by this resource played a significant role in supporting the growth of the City. By restoring oyster reefs we are restoring the key habitat that allowed for this abundance. By restoring oyster reefs through public education initiatives we are using this work to connect New Yorkers to the natural resource and build a constituency for the Harbor. By focusing this intervention on high need schools and environmental justice communities we are providing job training, technical skill building and waterfront access to communities that are traditionally marginalized and in the process building a new generation of environmental advocates and ecosystem restorers. Billion Oyster Project is a model for urban ecosystem restoration and has relevance wherever people live on our near degraded natural systems. 

New York Harbor is the same size as the land area of the City itself. At 200,000 acres, it is the City’s largest open space. Centuries of pollution have left New Yorkers without a connection or memory of the Harbor as a resource. Most streets in New York City end at the water’s edge but most New Yorkers do not identify as living on the water or living in a port city. All New Yorkers have a right to access nature in their City and have a right to clean water and an abundant and accessible Harbor. Meanwhile fewer than 25% of high school graduates from New York City public schools are prepared for college. The nation's largest, most diverse and most segregated public school system is failing to prepare students for life after high school. These issues directly impact all New Yorkers and the entirety of the New York Metropolitan Community. Degraded natural systems and under-performing public schools are unfortunate realities in most major cities in the United States. Globally the need to redefine our relationship with nature is vital. Systems for building ownership, access and appreciation of the natural world are essential for changing these dynamics.

Billion Oyster Project is an ecosystem restoration and public education initiative aimed at restoring the native oyster population to New York Harbor and engaging young people directly in the work. Public school students learn the technical skills associated with large-scale, in-water habitat restoration. Students learn to operate and maintain vessels, SCUBA Dive, design and build underwater reefs, grow oysters, advocate for access and conduct high level science research all in the fast-moving, polluted waters of one of the busiest ports in the country. They are joined by volunteers, community groups, restaurateurs and professional staff all working together to return New York Harbor to its rightful place as an ecological treasure. Through this work, the Harbor and the students are elevated in the collective consciousness of all New Yorkers. 

 Spent oyster shells are collected from restaurants, incorporated into built reef structures, seeded with live oysters and returned to Harbor as artificial reefs. These restored reef sites are monitored and serve as research platforms for students and scientists who study the direct impacts of restored reefs on the ecosystem to help refine restoration strategies and understand the impact of restored habitat.

Billion Oyster Project is designed to engage an entire city in the restoration of its largest and open space and most important natural resource. The primary constituency impacted through the work of the project are public school students. Education programs aimed at shifting teaching and learning in public schools throughout the city have the potential to impact all 1.1 million public students. Traditional, classroom based, teaching and learning is not an appropriate medium for teaching creative problem solving, collaborative learning or actual understanding of natural systems. Billion Oyster Project education programs are designed to get students in the field and engaged in authentic research and restoration based activities. Through this work students gain an understanding of emerging fields and interact with professional technical experts. Students develop technical skills and most importantly develop, through direct experience, agency; and the understanding that they have the power and ability to have real impact through the work they do in school and decisions they make in daily life. After working with Billion Oyster Project students are more likely to identify themselves as scientists and change-makers and more likely to pursue careers in related fields.

We know that ACCESS to natural spaces and careers relating to science, research, restoration and advocacy continue to track lines of race and socioeconomic factors. At Billion Oyster Project we work to ensure safe access for all, particularly those from traditionally underrepresented communities. We are also engaged in raising awareness, solution finding and driving action to solve one of the most difficult challenges of our time: If we are to continue living, working and learning on this planet, we must fundamentally change how we interact with the natural world. How do we live in cities without destroying natural systems?

Billion Oyster Project grew out of the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School (Harbor School), a public Career and Technical Education High School located on Governors Island, in the center of New York Harbor. Harbor School was founded by Murray Fisher, a passionate environmental advocate and educator with a dream to build a New York City public High School that prepared students for college and marine careers by using New York Harbor as a classroom. The school was founded in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2003. In 2008, Murray hired me to develop strategies for engaging Harbor School students in the work of restoring New York Harbor through oyster restoration. I began work at Harbor School as a high school teacher and developed the Aquaculture and Oyster Restoration Programs. Together, Murray and I developed Billion Oyster Project, first as an initiative of the newly founded Aquaculture Program and later as a collaborative effort between all six of the Career and Technical Education Programs. Through a series of successful grant applications, Billion Oyster Project gained momentum and Murray and I expanded the project to a city-wide initiative involving over 100 schools in all five boroughs.

I believe that there is magic in the natural world and that a great tragedy of our time is the human separation from nature and systematic destruction of our global environment. I had the great privilege of developing awareness and affinity for natural systems through a childhood and adolescence spent farming oysters in a beautiful natural setting. I’ve learned through direct experience that I can have a positive impact on the planet and have dedicated my professional life to that work. I know that these experiences can be replicated and if provided access, millions of young people will develop the same passion and the same skills. I believe that everyone has a right to access these experiences, to enjoy natural spaces and experience the confidence and skill building that comes through working with your hands to make the world a better place. I trust completely in the power of young people to come together for positive change. I want to collaborate with young people from diverse backgrounds who bring their personal stories and experiences to bear as they take on the challenge and responsibility of restoring the natural environment where they live.

Growing up on an oyster farm, working alongside my parents and siblings was the most powerful learning experience of my life. I was given the responsibility of maintaining complex systems, working in a laboratory environment and outside on the water. Through this work, I developed a deep understanding of the natural systems and became proficient at a variety of technical skills. There is no better classroom than a farm. Farmers and in many cases, the children of farmers, are required to understand the land and water that their livelihood depends on. The sense of accomplishment, self-reliance and competence is profound. After moving to New York City and meeting students at the Harbor School for the first time, I witnessed this same sense of confidence and competence among the students. Billion Oyster Project provides narrative and purpose to the student work and requires that students elevate their work to meet the demands of the environment they are working in. I believe that my experience as a farmer provides a unique perspective and allows for identifying and fostering similar experiences among our students. I’ve also spent five years as a public high school teacher in the New York City Public School system. Billion Oyster Project’s shared goals around restoration and education require us to understand the needs and challenges of public school teachers. Direct experience in the public school system has been invaluable. Finally, I am a Coast Guard licensed captain of commercial vessels, certified SCUBA diver and CPR/First Aid instructor.

I have spent last decade convincing government officials, grant-makers, regulators, elected officials and the general public to believe in the power of young people to change the world and have faith in the technical abilities and potential of middle and high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is not always an easy sell. For some reason, many experts have trouble trusting teenagers with complex tasks. Billion Oyster Project was originally pitched to the City as Billion Oysters NYC. Murray and I spent years developing various pitch documents and going to City Hall and the Mayor’s office to offer the next great public/private partnership for restoring the environment in New York City. As we honed our pitch and experienced lukewarm reception to our great idea again and again, we were also refining our project and building our proof of concept. When it became clear that we shouldn’t rely on significant investment from the City, we launched Billion Oyster Project as a privately funded  initiative of the non-profit. We have since demonstrated that young people can be relied on to safely navigate the challenges of oysters restoration in New York Harbor and we have built a non-profit organization around that work. 

COVID-19 has been devastating to our programs, the communities we work in and our staff. As have the heartbreaking acts of racism and violence towards the black community. These two issues have together created new challenges and opportunities for our organization. We also grapple with the reality that as an organization we work hard to bring our constituents, primarily young people of color, to the water's edge where they may not always feel safe and welcomed by the individuals and organizations who traditionally control access to those spaces. As a community we have come together to develop a coordinated response. We've built a budget for the next 12-months that will allow us to retain our full compliment of staff and developed COVID response for our team and programs that have allowed us to continue our operations.  We've developed a Safe Space agreement that will create the opportunity for hard and necessary conversations with our waterfront partner organizations and is an important step to building a more welcoming waterfront to all New Yorkers. I am incredibly proud of our team for coming together in these challenging, for their willingness to have hard conversations and develop elegant solutions to new challenges.

Billion Oyster Project's key innovation is the nexus of restoration and education. There are a plethora of restoration projects with some educational components, and educational initiatives about environmental restoration. We share these two goals equally and work hard to make our in-water restoration projects accessible to students all over the city and create educational content with work products that are necessary for our restoration work. Rather than manage students in classrooms we ask students to help solve the complex problems we address and ask them to work shoulder to shoulder with us to restore the natural environment. We say that restoration without education is fleeting and if we are truly going to improve positive outcomes for the environment AND for public school students we must train the students to restore the environment. In every city in the country there are small groups of talented, hard-working, well-meaning people working to improve the environment and a separate group of similarly well-intentioned educators working to improve public schools. Our thesis is that these cannot continue to be separate efforts. In combining them we task the students with the restoration work and support the growth of a new generation of change-makers with the skills and confidence to change the world. 

If we are to continue living, working and learning on this planet we must fundamentally change how we interact with the natural world. It starts with fostering awareness and affinity for natural systems. There's no better way to understand and fall in love with nature than through active work towards a better environment. Oyster restoration is our way in to the hearts, minds and behaviors of all the people living and working in and around New York Harbor. As students build the skills associated with careers on the water a new generation of scientists advocates, captains, engineers and environmentalists will grow from the City's most marginalized communities. 

Oyster Reefs are essential habitat in New York Harbor and have been removed by people. By restoring them we restore the Harbor's ability to clean water, support complex ecosystems and mitigate the damaging effects of storm waves.

Billion Oyster Project impacts students, teachers, volunteers and restaurant diners. Each year, we train approximately 100 teachers who teach 5000 students. Over 100 students at the New York Harbor School lead complex restoration activities and have deep engagement with that work. In a typical year 1000 volunteers work to support our restoration work on Governors Island. While the pandemic has had a significant impact on our programs, we intend to interact with the same number of students and teachers in the coming year. In five years we hope to be in 500 schools, impacting 25,000 students each year.

In the next five years, we plan to scale our work dramatically to restore over 500 million oysters on 100 acres of reef and work directly with 500 schools. We also intend to take on the work of replicating to new cities and expanding our impact.

The pandemic has a huge impact on our work, much of which is designed to bring people together at the water's edge. Our other challenges are regulatory and financial. Our model relies on the generosity of private foundations and individuals. As such, scaling our work is dependent on our ability to raise the necessary funding. Additionally, there are regulatory hurdles and red tape that make our work challenging. We operate in New York Harbor, which is heavily regulated. There are a lot of rules and regulations to keep bad things out of the Harbor and no rules to help put good things back. We hold over 100 active environmental permits, each with it's own reporting and renewal requirements. These regulatory hurdles are a significant barrier to our work. We have over the last decade become highly skilled in obtaining permission for our installations, but it remains a challenge. 

We partner with restaurants, schools, non-profits and government agencies. 

At schools, our train the trainer model provides Professional Development for teachers and the equipment necessary for monitoring oyster reefs and New York Harbor. Teachers and students adopt there own oyster cages, monitor water quality, oyster growth and survival and other ecosystem services. Each spring students from many of our partner schools join us at our annual research symposium to present their research to their peers and professional scientists. 

We work with restaurants to collect their spent oyster shells. To date, we've saved over 1.5 million pounds of shell from the landfill and instead re-purpose the shell for building reefs throughout the Harbor. 

We work with waterfront non-profits to host our oyster installations and provide support for our students and teachers in the field. 

Our work is funded through three primary sources. Government Grants, Private Foundations and Individuals/Events. 

We implement projects for the National Science Foundation, New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and New York State Governors Office of Storm Recovery. 

Private Foundations typically fund specific programmatic initiatives.

We have several key fundraising events throughout the year including an oyster festival event each spring that brings together over 50 oyster farms, 25 restaurants and over 1000 guests.

Our fiscal year is July to June. In FY20 we spent $4.1 million. We are projecting an expense budget of $4.3 million for FY21.

I am applying for the elevate prize because we need all the help we can get. We need funding, a bigger platform for awareness generation and technical expertise from a new broader group of experts. We have a proven model that is positioned well to scale for greater impact.