New York Restoration Project (NYRP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the urban environment by reclaiming and restoring parks, community gardens and public space in underserved neighborhoods throughout New York City's five boroughs. Since I started this organization in 1995, NYRP has achieved dramatic results by investing in the cleaning and greening of some of New York’s most environmentally challenged areas while engaging thousands of families and urban youth in environmental education programs and volunteer events; planting hundreds of thousands of trees, shrubs and flowers; removing more than 2100 tons of garbage and debris from project sites and city roadways; saving 52 community gardens from commercial development; transforming an illegal dumping ground into Swindler Cove Park, a beautiful waterfront oasis and outdoor nature center; building the adjacent Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse on the Harlem River; and working in partnership with the City of New York in leading MillionTreesNYC, in the largest urban reforestation campaign in the United States.