Who We Are
WHEDco works with families who struggle with the multiple challenges presented by poverty, and who, like all of us, aspire to a healthy, financially stable future. WHEDCo offers interconnected, innovative and high quality solutions - including the building of healthy energy-smart affordable homes - creating more beautiful, more equitable, and more economically vibrant places to live and raise a family.
WHEDCo was founded in 1991 by pioneering president Nancy Biberman, who began restoring the Bronx in the late ‘80s, when she led an organization that redeveloped 23 abandoned buildings into over 700 affordable apartments.
Nancy was acutely aware, however, that housing alone was not going to lift families out of poverty, especially in a borough as devastated as the Bronx. She had a vision of providing low-income women and children with both affordable homes and interconnected, high quality solutions to the obstacles they face, and foresaw the profound community-wide economic and educational opportunities that would result from reclaiming, renovating, and transforming the long-abandoned Morrisania Hospital complex.
Partnering with neighborhood leaders, Nancy developed that ravaged site into the award-winning Urban Horizons Economic Development Center, an architecturally stunning building providing high quality homes and initiatives to low income families, and catalyzed the construction of a high-performing magnet school, serving the residents of Urban Horizons and the surrounding community.
Today WHEDCo’s innovative solutions include: family support, mental health and housing services; education and youth development through after-school and summer programs; early childhood education and family literacy in the Head Start Early Childhood Discovery Center; an expansive Home-Based Child Care Microenterprise Network; and a small business incubation program in a fully equipped commercial kitchen. WHEDCo continues to develop affordable housing solutions, completing Intervale Green, a sustainable “green” building that will use energy-efficient technology and environmentally friendly materials, and is currently conducting a green retrofit of Urban Horizons. Annually, WHEDCo serves over 10,000 families.
Our Values
WHEDCo provides groundbreaking, sustainable solutions that are respectful of the community, and that honor the legacy of the people and buildings of New York City.
WHEDCo replicates the attributes found in prosperous communities – attributes like safe and healthy homes, professional childcare and extra-curricular activities, opportunities to develop small businesses, and mental health counseling – and offers them to low-income families throughout the city. WHEDCo thoroughly coordinates these initiatives, so that each person, and every family, can benefit from over-lapping, practical, and sustainable solutions.
What We Do
WHEDCo sets high standards and delivers high-quality results to over 10,000 individuals annually:
Green Homes We help low-income New Yorkers by building beautiful, healthy, energy-saving, and internet-wired affordable homes. Our flagship apartment complex, Urban Horizons, is currently undergoing a basement-to-ceiling energy retrofit that will ultimately save over $150,000 annually in utility costs and benefit the environment. Approximately 384 adults and children are now residents of our second affordable South Bronx housing complex, Intervale Green, and an adjacent studio apartment building, the Louis Nine House, for youth aging out of foster care. Demonstrating that high-performance - or "green"- building isn't just for high-end homes, the new development utilizes energy-efficient technology and environmentally friendly materials and is the largest Energy Star affordable housing development in the nation. The development offers green roofs, courtyards, a public park, and sculpture garden. Additionally, each family is being given a free computer to help bridge the digital divide.
Family Support and Housing Services We help families become more emotionally and financially stable, and help homeless families transition out of shelters into safe, affordable homes. We assist families in negotiating apartment leases, obtaining health insurance, identifying public benefits and initiating financial planning. Social workers provide crisis intervention and extensive psychological counseling, and offer free fresh food and groceries through our community Food Pantry. Last year we helped more than 5,700 individuals.
Home-based Childcare Microenterprise We help community members start and grow successful home-based childcare businesses, providing children with high-quality, safe places to learn and grow; and allowing parents to seek and maintain employment. Last year, the providers in our network offered affordable care to over 2,000 children and grossed nearly $8 million in revenues. In 2008, WHEDCo successfully launched the Childcare Improvement Project, a unique collaboration with New York State to dramatically increase the pool of quality childcare for Bronx families, as well as provide opportunities for caregivers to increase their revenues and create their own home-based childcare businesses. Based on our success, WHEDCo will take the program to scale to serve unlicensed childcare providers across New York City over the next year.
Head Start Our early childhood development program serves 104 pre-school children from 18 countries, offering a safe, nurturing and activity-rich learning environment and in turn helping their parents enter the workforce. We provide parents the opportunity to participate in English language and family development classes though the Family Literacy program. WHEDCo’s Head Start received national accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAYEYC), whose seal of approval is considered the “gold standard” for early childhood education programs. The rigorous accreditation process required both self-study and site observation, and only 10% of the early childcare centers in New York have successfully completed it.
Education and Youth Development WHEDCo encourages students to be community leaders and to attend competitive high schools and colleges. Students in Grades K – 8 in our after-school program enjoy art, drama, chess, dance, fitness, music, sewing, computer technology and violin lessons. Middle school students participate in Project STEP, a program that focuses on issues of social justice, and teens meet every evening for athletics, academic enrichment and meetings with business professionals to learn about prospective careers. Each year WHEDCo serves over 900 local students.
