Meet Our Partners
Since 2012, GAVA has engaged thousands of active community members in collaborations with a variety of local organizations and their programmatic efforts and advocacy.
Below, you will find information about some of our coalition partners and how their work contributes to GAVA’s overall mission.
Urban Roots uses food and farming to transform the lives of young people and inspire, engage, and nourish the community. Urban Roots is the only farm-based youth leadership organization in Austin and has been empowering youth and nourishing community for more than 10 years. Urban Roots runs a Produce Distribution Program that was started with GAVA. We engage many of the same residents and work together to advance one anothers missions.
United Way for Greater Austin is a local nonprofit & community service organization providing resources and volunteer opportunities with local Austin charities since 1924. United Way gives everyone in Austin the chance to be a philanthropist through various Austin social services, and gives us the opportunity to work together to help families overcome barriers to economic opportunities. United Way works with GAVA to strengthen resources for early childhood home-based providers and through the Success by Six Family Based Provider Working Group.
GAVA partnered with the Austin Cooperative Business Association (ACBA) to catalyze the Austin Community Owned Food Retail Initiative. ACBA is dedicated to growing and strengthening the Austin-area cooperative community. GAVA continues to work with ACBA to support the Del Valle Co-op pilot project and planned Del Valle Co-op store through outreach, resident support, and as part of the co-ops Finance Committee.
GAVA partnered with the City of Austin’s Economic Development Department (EDD) to catalyze the Austin Community Owned Food Retail Initiative. EDD is the entity that funded the start of this project and managed the project’s deliverables from the City’s side.
GAVA works with Austin Public Health planning a comprehensive network of support for home-based child care providers. This work is supported by Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders committed to improving the quality of, and access to, home-based child care.
GAVA works with the City of Austin’s Office of Equity and Inclusion and department managers to improve City services. Our aim is to make services more responsive, equitable, and effective, while reducing disparities. We send staff and residents to Undoing Racism workshops by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), organized by the Office of Equity and Inclusion. GAVA also joins Equity Action Team meetings with City staff and community members. These efforts boost our capacity to organize, and build skills needed for anti-oppression and racial equity work in Austin.
GAVA collaborates with TreeFolks, whose mission is to empower Central Texans to build stronger communities through planting and caring for trees. Given tree canopy disparities in Austin and the increased heat exposure GAVA residents experience because of it, this partnership fulfills both organizations’ missions. When GAVA connects residents to TreeFolks, more trees are distributed and planted; and when TreeFolks provides trees to GAVA residents, those tree-planting efforts improve the health of their environment and communities.
GAVA facilitates equity workshops each year, hosted by American YouthWorks (AYW), for work crews from the Americorps and Austin Civilian Conservation Corps programs as well as AYW staff. These interactive workshops help participants develop an analysis of the root causes of inequities in the context of Dove Springs and Lower Onion Creek, where AYW crews are working to restore and rehabilitate nature preserves and parkland. They also provide rich oral histories from these areas, and give participants a sense of the wealth of community assets and strengths that can emerge from organizing in multicultural and intergenerational communities.
GAVA works with the Texas School of Architecture on the project Where the Water Runs/Donde corre el agua, a Spanish speaking resident-led creek adopter project along East Williamson Creek that has brought four City departments (Watershed Protection, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Office of Sustainability), dozens of residents, and the School of Architecture together to develop a trail enhancement project to support creek health, reduce erosion, improve connectivity, and protect this wild space for Dove Springs.
GAVA also works with the School of Architecture developing a resilience portal to guide people, organizations, and networks in climate emergencies, and provide data for long term policy decisions.
The LBJ School is working to showcase preventative measures the City of Austin can take to mitigate the dangers we know climate change poses to our homes and lives. GAVA supports high level conversation around policy analysis and content development for advocacy tools that will lead to more engaged dialogues between community members and their city representatives.
We also collaborate to develop and distribute the Austin Area Sustainability Indicators survey in our neighborhoods of focus. This survey aims to measure quality of life, sustainability trends, and serve as the foundation for a systems approach that addresses challenges in Central Texas.
GAVA has worked with Dr. Dev Niyogi and colleagues on research looking at disproportionate levels in heat across Austin and how it affects our health. We collaborated with residents to map heat, overlaying it with data collected by sensors, and determined solutions that we continue to advocate for today.
GAVA works with Dr. Matt Bartos & colleagues from UT Cockrell School of Engineering to develop maps that identify areas where localized flooding is occurring in Dove Springs. Current flooding maps don’t account for lot to lot flooding caused by increased urbanization or localized flooding from outdated drainage infrastructure. We are working with their team to understand the impacts of green infrastructure as an intervention strategy.