Founded in 1981 by a few students and faculty of Princeton University, Isles is an
award-winning nonprofit community development and environmental organization.
With a mission
to foster more self-reliant families in healthy, sustainable communities, Isles:
- Supports personal and community change, offering an array of services and
training that empower people to improve their lives, families and communities — while they restore the environment.
Addresses immediate challenges such as food, shelter, jobs, and toxic environments
in an entrepreneurial way that impacts future generations.- Assumes that strengths and assets exist in even the most challenged areas.
- Helps people to re-imagine and re-develop older communities.
- Brings the wisdom of years of community building work to efforts to improve public policy and education.
- Offers a variety of self-help tools and services that communities choose to use. They include “green” housing and real estate development, community planning, research, micro-business and wealth creation, foreclosure prevention, environmental health, community gardening, youth training and education, green collar job training and other market-based social enterprises.
- Recognizes that the health of people and the place where they live are connected and interdependent.
In addition to community-based development services, Isles provides public education support throughout New Jersey and beyond. In particular, Isles works to change regional and statewide policies that concentrate poverty, undermine schools, promote sprawl, and foster racial segregation.
To broaden its impact, Isles develops easily replicated approaches and provides other organizations with technical and organizational assistance. Isles also partners with hundreds of public, private, and academic friends to achieve innovative, cost effective ways to meet its mission.
Click here to watch a video on Isles’ work in Trenton, NJ.