Omar Freilla, Green Worker Cooperatives

Published: August 1, 2007, 9:29 am

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. We weren't even sure how we were going to raise that much, he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn't new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as transportation coordinator for the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance reading reams on proposals that would adversely effect his community. His work is paying off. Last month, Freilla won the Rockefeller Foundation's 2007 Jane Jacobs Medal. This fall, GWC opens its first coop, a building material reuse center that will be a retail warehouse for surplus and salvaged building materials recovered from construction and demolition jobs - 10,000 tons of such waste ends up in Bronx waste transfer stations each year. We

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