Pro Bono Net

Founded in 1998, Pro Bono Net works with a broad network of access to justice partners to close the “justice gap,” which leaves millions of low income and vulnerable people cut off from vital legal assistance and their ability to exercise their legal rights. Through innovative technology solutions and expertise in building and mobilizing justice networks in New York City and nationally, Pro Bono Net transforms the way legal help reaches the underprivileged. Our comprehensive programs enable legal advocates to make a stronger impact, increase volunteer participation, and empower the public with resources and self-advocacy tools to address legal issues.

The Public Society

The Public Society is a multi-disciplinary design studio that seeks, above all else, impact. Impact for our clients, yes, but also for the world at large. We are interested in using our talents to amplify voices that are often unheard but are critical to the public discourse. This is why we are keen to work with those who are interested in collaborating on world-changing and world-bettering ideas, be they commercial or not-for-profit. Making the world a cleaner, more just, and more transparent place excites us. Education excites us. What excites us most of all is collaborating with others to accomplish these goals.

The Public Society were 2013-2014 Public Access Design Fellows and worked on Housing Court Help.

Public Utility Law Project

Public Utility Law Project of New York, Inc. (PULP) educates the public about their legal rights and provides legal services for low-income utility consumers in electric, natural gas, telephone, and other utility related matters.. CUP and PULP teamed up to create Shine A Light On Your Utility Rights, a guide to illustrate utility consumers’ rights in New York State. Simple text and visuals spell out practical steps you can take to tackle common utility problems, from being behind on your bills to dealing with a shutoff notice. https://utilityproject.org/

Kevin Pyle

Kevin Pyle is a comic artist. His books include Blindspot, Lab U.S.A. and Prison Town. He is also a co-editor of World War 3 Illustrated, America’s longest running political comics anthology. Kevin Pyle was the teaching artist on “Prison City Comix.”

Luna Ranjit

Luna Ranjit is the co-founder and Executive Director of Adhikaar. She has over ten years of experience in organizing, activism, and participatory action research in the US and South Asia. Prior to Adhikaar, she worked at Andolan, APICHA, and New Voices National Fellowship Program. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, and a master’s degree in public and international affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. She regularly appears on print and broadcast media on issues related to workers’ rights, language access, and the needs of the emerging Nepali-speaking community. She currently lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Siyona Ravi

Siyona is CUP’s Program & Communications Coordinator. Before joining CUP, she worked on several creative advocacy projects, including the Fundred Project, a campaign led by artist Mel Chin, and a documentary film for a TGNC branch of a sex workers’ labor union in Kolkata, India. In 2019 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project. She holds a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She was born in Bangalore, grew up in Chicago, and now lives Crown Heights, where you can find her making a mess in the kitchen. 

David Reinfurt

David Reinfurt is an independent graphic designer and writer in New York City. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1993 and received an MFA from Yale University in 1999. On the first business day of 2000, David formed O-R-G inc., a flexible graphic design practice composed of a constantly shifting network of collaborators. Together with graphic designer Stuart Bailey, David established Dexter Sinister in 2006 — a workshop in the basement at 38 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in New York City. The workshop is intended to model a Just-In-Time economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on-demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production and distribution into one efficient activity. Dexter Sinister published the semi-annual arts magazine Dot Dot Dot from 2006-2011 and is currently regathering under a new umbrella project called The Serving Library. David is 2010 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow in Architecture and Design and currently teaches at Princeton University.

Aaron Reiss

Aaron grew up in a coastal town in Southern California. He studied Urban Planning and Environmental Studies at Yale, where he fell in love with using the visual arts as a means for exploring the places we inhabit and for talking about fascinating and important social issues. Right now, he lives in Chinatown, Manhattan where he works as a freelance journalist and cartographer.

Elma Relihan

Elma Relihan is a Graphic Designer with a passion for storytelling. Born and raised in Ireland before moving to the UK to further her education, she completed an MA in Graphic Design at the London College of Communication. Since then she moved to NYC to broaden her scope and take on new and exciting opportunities with a move into film. She hopes to use her experience thus far to create awareness around social issues with stories that ignite people’s imagination and curiosity. She has won several design awards and loves to collaborate with youths to help them recognize their potential to create change. Her passion lies in harnessing the power of art in its many mediums to start a dialogue. Her inspiration includes varied artists and filmmakers, Ai Weiwei, Banksy, Picasso, Ken Loach, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pedro Almodóvar and Carsten Höller.

Resilience Advocacy Project

Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP) empowers youth to become leaders in the fight to end poverty. RAP combines youth leadership programs with system-level advocacy initiatives in order to build resilience in youth and increase their voice in civic and social justice efforts.

Retail Action Project

RAP is an organization of retail workers dedicated to improving opportunities and workplace standards in the retail industry. RAP’s growing membership network of 3,000 retail workers is an industry voice for workers across the industry, ranging from bargain chains to high-end department stores. Together with community and labor allies, RAP members are impacting retailers’ labor practices and the public policies that affect their lives. RAP supports retail workers’ path towards career security through job training, services and workplace organizing. Retail Action Project is working with CUP on a video about scheduling practices in the retail industry.

Damaris Reyes

Damaris Reyes is the Executive Director of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES). A lifelong resident of the Lower East Side, she has been involved in community organizing and housing issues both locally and nationally for more than a decade. Under Reyes’ leadership, GOLES expanded the scope of its work to include, land use, environmental public health, and economic justice. Her commitment to working collectively to organize and to build power for low-income communities of color in the decision-making that shapes the future of their lives and the Lower East Side neighborhood brought the organization into a pivotal role on a range of key issues including the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, Living Wage, and the redevelopment of the East River Waterfront. Reyes currently sits on the board of the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development, the advisory board for the Center for Neighborhood Leadership, and the Land Use, Zoning, Public & Private Housing Committee of Manhattan Community Board 3. She is the recipient of the 2006 New York Women’s Foundation’s Helen La Kelly Hunt Neighborhood Leadership Award, the 2008 Urban Agenda Visionary Award, and the proud winner of the 2009 Jane Jacobs Medal from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Municipal Arts Society.

Kyle Richardson

Kyle Richardson is a Graphic Designer and Artist, raised and based in NYC. She studied Graphic Design and Painting at Cooper Union.  She has worked for Opening Ceremony, Baggu, Friends & Family and currently, she is a part of the in-house design team at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). She self published a publication called Tropical Fantasy that was distributed through Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair 2016 and currently at Topos Bookstore in Ridgewood close to where she grew up. Growing up a New Yorker she feels a responsibility to preserve her home for lower income families, neighbors and friends as the city wouldn’t be the same without them. 

Joelle Riffle

Joelle Riffle is a communication designer from Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in communication design in 2013. Joelle has a range of professional and creative experiences, from her time as a graphic designer at the small branding and web studio to her current role as the program administrator at the Parsons Scholars Program. Her design practice and administrative work overlaps in the desire to work from a people-focused approach to collaborate and mobilize for positive change, particularly around underrepresented populations in creative fields.

Riverkeeper

Riverkeeper’s mission is to protect the environmental, recreational and commercial integrity of the Hudson River and its tributaries, and to safeguard the drinking water of nine million New York City and Hudson Valley residents.Riverkeeper focuses on three overarching problems facing Hudson River communities: (1) Restoration of the Hudson River ecosystem, with particular emphasis on minimizing fish kills and water pollution; (2) Protection of New York City’s drinking water supply; and (3) Improving public access to the Hudson River.