To meet our environmental education mission, Recycle-A-Bicycle does a lot more than just teach bike repair. Since 1999 we have worked with Green Map NYC to create maps that document and explore evironmental issues in New York City neighborhoods. To date we've made 6 maps, and a seventh is underway. Through our repair bike safety programs in Brooklyn and upper Manhattan (Inwood), RAB has continued making Green Maps, always including justice issues. Through making these maps, kids learn how much fun it can be to make your community a better place. Our 6th Green Map, Sprout to Action, is about local food production and security. Thanks to our Inwood group, under the leadership of Pasqualina Azzarello, this bilingual map is full of information and hand-drawn illustrations.

To date, Recycle-A-Bicycle has published the following maps:

• Coming Soon - Learning From the Past
• Sprout to Action (Inwood), 2004 Created by students at IS90, this map is about local food production and security.
• Space to Breathe (on air pollution and asthma, Inwood), 2003
• Go Green NYC (car-free mobility options, Brooklyn), 2002
• Stop Fronting (who is blocking public access to the East River waterfront, Brooklyn), 2001
• Are We Trashing the Apple? (Charts the city's garbage crisis and poorly planned transfer stations, Brooklyn. 2000). Students chose to chart the city-wide garbage crisis after learning that their neighborhood was a planned transfer site for NYC's residential waste. The map features the middle-school youths' drawings and text, and includes facts and hints for reducing, reusing and recycling in NYC.
•  
• Pedaling Brooklyn's Gardens (Greenpoint-Williamsburg's community gardening, Brooklyn), 1999

Recycle-A-Bicycle and Green Map System have also held workshops together and shared ideas with other youth groups and teachers around the city. RAB's maps have inspired youth Green Map projects around the world. New York City's youth were among to the first to publish their own Green Map - Pedaling Brooklyn's Gardens, published in early 1999 was created by Recycle A Bicycle's 1998 summer project participants. BREAK Building from their experiences with Recycle-a-Bicycle, the Green Map System has prepared a Youth Green Mapmaking Resource Disk, which is being used in classrooms and clubs around the world.

Green Map NYC intern Sarahjane Sacchetti wrote about about her work with Recycle-a-Bicycle's mapping projects in Go Green NYC Click Here to view and read more about the history of the Underground Railroad in New York City.

To learn more about youth map making in NYC, visit http://greenapplemap.org/page/sep