Know A Good Yorkville Neighbor? Nominations Are Now Open.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Know a good neighbor?

Gooddard Riverside wants to hear.

The west — and east —side-based community, housing, and social service organization, has helped honor good neighbors for nearly 25 years with their annual Good Neighbor Awards.

And if you know a good neighbor in Yorkville, you can help celebrate them at this year's June celebration of community virtue.

“Part of our mission is strengthening community,” said Goddard Riverside President Roderick L. Jones. “It’s a joy for us to recognize, each year, some of the amazing people who help create that fabric of community we all benefit from.”

The awards are a way to find and celebrate the neighbors who elect and volunteer to help improve their community in conventional — and unconventional — ways.

Last year's winners included Linda Carter Cooper, who has helped fellow Upper West Siders navigate housing and education issues for years, Mark Diller, a Community Board 7 member and school PTA member and public school advocate, and LeVera Sutton, a housing advocate in Harlem who helped organize her fellow tenants in her building to help people learn about their rights.

While those all sound like very traditional good deeds people, past Good Neighbor winners also served their communities through less traditional means of how to be a good neighbor, like another winner from last year, Alan Winson.

Winson, a writing professor at CUNY, hosted a pandemic podcast featuring New York artists and performers who were stuck at home discussing arts, social issues and activism, a production that helped bring people together and create a distanced community during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, Goddard said.

If you know a good neighbor, submit their name to Gooddard Riverside by May 5 for them to be considered for this year's awards.

Click here to submit a nomination.