2001
The Voice: Summer 2001
Cynthia Nibbelink Worley takes on developers in New York City-among other things
Sonya Jongsma Knauss
From taking on New York City developers to counseling adult students who have trouble
speaking English, Cynthia Nibbelink Worley ('66) has dedicated her life to helping those around
her. She credits Dordt with helping her develop the discipline that allows her to write poems and
work on a lawsuit at the same time, to teach creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College
and also be thinking of the immigrant mother she's counseling, who needs child care, work, an
apartment, and ESL classes.
“I think that I am essentially a nurturer,” she says. “Where I live, and my involvement
with young people and the environment. . . I think I've become more and more the person I was
always supposed to be.”
After graduating from Dordt with degrees in English and history, Nibbelink Worley
earned her MFA in English and Writing at the University of Iowa and has received a number of
awards for her poetry. She taught at various colleges and universities in Michigan and has also
written books for children.
After moving to New York twenty years ago, Nibbelink Worley was impressed with the
sense of community she found in Harlem. But she also was dismayed to see that many vacant
lots had become illegal dump sites and were used by drug dealers, users, and prostitutes. So she,
with the help of a 90-year-old neighbor, founded Project Harmony in 1985.
Project Harmony's motto is “Live simply, that others may simply live.” Nibbelink
Worley says the organization was founded to try to revitalize a “great community.” This means
many things for the organization: cleaning up vacant lots and making them into gardens and
woodlands; policing the neighborhood to protect it from crime, drugs, and violence; reaching out
to victims of addiction, mental illness, homelessness, hunger, and diseases; starting a “Doers”
cottage industry and environmental training program to help people acquire their own apartments
and establish businesses; hosting workshops, festivals, community clean-up and beautification
efforts, art forums, concerts, crafts fairs, and life-skills training.
Project Harmony is based on the belief that people's health and welfare is directly linked
to how and where they live.
Nibbelink Worley's work for the organization over the last sixteen years has been a
testimony to her belief in that statement. She says Project Harmony continues to take up an
“enormous amount” of her life. When the organization first started, she and others cleaned up the
block, including vacant buildings, and made a garden out of a vacant lot. Eventually they had two
gardens in the neighborhood, and then they helped others start gardens in their neighborhoods.
But she and the other gardeners have had to fight an ongoing war with developers.
“There's still thousands of vacant lots and buildings in New York City, but developers
have found it nicer to build on community gardens,” she says. A New York City garden coalition
was started in 1996 after news came that the city planned to take all community gardens and
build new townhouses on them.
“Everyone knows if you have open space near a residential area it makes it far more
valuable,” Nibbelink Worley says. “It almost seems like a kind of sabotaging of our effort.”
In June of 1999, the city bulldozed half the garden, an event which galvanized support
from others in the city.
“All the radio stations in the city were encouraging people to come out and protest. Most
people in New York City are not behind the bulldozing; they see that as very mean. We know
there are other places to build.”
The state's attorney general has taken up the cause and has gotten it to the U.S. district
court. He succeeded in getting a stay on bulldozing gardens but only until May 23, when the
issue will be reexamined.
Nibbelink Worley has taken the gardens' cause to the media, with articles appearing in
the Village Voice that helped galvanize a large city-wide coalition to save the gardens. She also
has filed a personal lawsuit against the city.
This spring, a joint performance project called Common Green/Common Ground,
involving community gardeners and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts drama
department, traveled all over the city. The musical detailed the saga of community gardens and
Bronx Riverfront grassroots reclamation. Nibbelink Worley was to be in the musical but instead
she had to recover from a broken leg.
“The gardens hang in the balance,” she says, “but we're carrying on.”
And if she didn't have enough to occupy her, Nibbelink Worley and her husband, Haja
Worley, operate a Homestay, similar to a Bed and Breakfast, in their four-story brownstone. They
encourage visitors to New York City to take advantage of their small studio apartment with a
kitchen and bathroom.
Nibbelink Worley says Dordt prepared her “extraordinarily well” academically for what
she's done in her life. “The discipline, thoroughness, and inspiring encouragement I received
from my Dordt professors have helped me in everything I've done_writing, teaching, directing
The Commotion Poets & Co. . . managing and directing [Project Harmony], dealing with the
political machine in NYC, navigating city agencies successfully, and dealing with purchasing and
renovating our four-story brownstone in Harlem.”
