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Educate and Engage.

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KIB community programs facilitate the mission to engage diverse communities to create vibrant public places, helping people and nature thrive.

Education Hub

At Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, we work every day to plant trees, create vibrant greenspaces, pick up litter, and ensure Indy is as clean and green as possible. But we also believe it is important to help our neighbors and friends understand the importance of the word. Below are news articles, features, how-tos, and a variety of other resources to help you play an even bigger role in our work.

Clean Neighborhoods

Clean
Neighborhoods

Trees & Native Habitats

Trees & Native
Habitats

Engaged Citizens

Engaged
Citizens

 
 

Learn About Trees & Native Habitats

 

Learn About Engaged Citizens

Nature Activities

Looking for fun activities to help teach about nature, native plants and all things green and beautiful? Check out some options we’ve curated below.

KEY NEIGHBORHOOD IDENTIFICATION TOOL (KNIT)

Keep Indianapolis Beautiful has developed a Key Neighborhood Identification Tool (KNIT) to help us identify neighborhoods in the city where KIB resources can have the greatest positive impact. Using this tool, KIB has identified 10 Focus Areas where social vulnerability is highest, tree canopy coverage is lowest, litter is highest, and KIB’s past involvement and use of resources has been lowest.

Many of KIB’s programs are largely driven by specific contracts and community applications. Focus Areas, as defined by KNIT, are where KIB aims to build relationships and trust, and begin to implement programs in cooperation with neighbors, to collectively make a lasting impact toward a more environmentally equitable city.

The geographies of these Focus Areas are determined by using data from the U.S. Census. KIB uses Census Tract data because their areas approximate the size of a neighborhood, and their borders tend to have simple and basic geometry.

The KNIT Score consists of four major components. All Census Tracts are assigned a rank for each component, and the sum of the rankings is the KNIT Score. The components are as follows:

  • Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) data (derived from the Thrive Indianapolis Plan)
  • Percent Canopy Coverage (from KIB’s 2013 LiDAR dataset found at: https://pg-cloud.com/KIB/)
  • Concentration of litter and illegal dumping complaints (from the Mayor’s Action Center)
  • KIB Program Score (a measure of the concentration of KIB efforts in the past)

The KNIT Map below highlights the areas that have the highest overall KNIT Score. These Focus Areas will be where KIB will focus on deliberate relationship building and community engagement in the hope that the organization can work with community members to put KIB resources to use.

KEY NEIGHBORHOOD IDENTIFICATION TOOL (KNIT)