It's a tough act following the Mary A. Whalen!

I am the Founder and Director of PortSide NewYork and the mother of Mary herself. I too write to ask that you make an end-of-year donation to the further the work of the resilient team at PortSide.   

I have devoted the past eight years of my life to growing PortSide, to help the underserved peninsula of Red Hook and to create and implement a new vision for NYC's waterfront -- to make a place offering authentic maritime experiences, culture, and education for people of all ages and economic levels, and boats, boats, boats.

My team has grit. PortSide came out on top after a tough post-Sandy year of helping our Red Hook neighbors with their recovery, while grappling with our own $134,000 in storm damages -- for which we could use your support. 

I am proud of how we were thoughtful about the Sandy saga, used it to deepen our waterfront understanding and then created programs for community flood preparedness and resiliency proposals for the de Blasio administration.

I am excited about our growing youth programs, place-based and STEM-themed programs related to the waterfront and our ship.  We've made a visiting exhibit  which teaches "simple machines" using a maritime context and have a dockbuilder math class that can be scaled to first graders or high schoolers.

I set out to make new on the waterfront, but PortSide also preserves history.  Our Mary A. Whalen celebrated 75 this year.  We got our 1941 Hyster "Karry Krane" deemed eligible to be on National Register of Historic Places.   Look for PortSide to deliver multimedia history via our cultural tourism project Water Stories.  

I see a bright future for PortSide.  Our team spirit is high.  Please join us and donate now.  We are offering some great PortSide swag as thank-you gifts, our first calendars, mugs, a "berth control" t-shirt and more!

You can donate via PayPal or send checks made out to "PortSide NewYork to P.O. Box 195, Red Hook Station, Brooklyn, NY 11231 

Happy Holidays!

Best,