The Sixth Street Community Center is a not-for-profit community-based organization. It began in 1978 as a block association organized by single mothers living on East 6th Street between Avenues B and C in the Lower East Side. These neighborhood women decided to organize in order to transform the meager conditions in which they were forced to live: the local streets were lined with abandoned buildings and were rife with poverty, crime, and despair. They made it their mission to create a better and safer community in which to raise their families. One of their first efforts was to work with the city to seal up abandoned buildings that had become vulnerable to drug trafficking and crime. When the former synagogue at 638 East 6th Street became vacant, the block association had found its home. With the support of Save The Children and other foundations, funds were raised to purchase the building and turn it into a community center.

From its beginning, the Sixth Street Community Center has fostered economic and community development through a variety of programs including after school, summer day camp, tenants’ rights, and life skills and career development for teens. In 1996 the Community Center initiated a program around community supported agriculture to provide fresh local produce to city residents.  Building on the CSA, new efforts emerged in the areas of youth, food safety and community entrepreneurship.  Now the Community Center is home to four related efforts: the CSA, Seeds to Supper (a program for teens in sustainable agriculture and culinary arts), SOS Food (advocacy around food safety issues) and our new Organic Soul Café.