Project Partners

Our projects are social ventures that practice and exemplify Transformative Action. They employ pattern-breaking ideas to address pressing social problems.

CTA currently provides fiscal sponsorship to eleven projects. Our Projects are an integral part of our center, qualifying for charitable donations and grants available only to tax-exempt organizations. They also benefit from our mentorship, business services, and the credibility and accountability that come with decades of successful, progressive social change work.

If your organization in New York State needs fiscal sponsorship, click here to find out how to apply for non-profit status under our 501(c)3 umbrella. You can also click on each project below to learn more about how our projects promote social change.

Alternatives Library

The Durland Alternatives Library is located on the Cornell campus and is free and open to everyone. The collection is comprised of books, periodicals and audio-visual materials focusing on cutting edge work in ecology, community, renewable energy, alternative health, organic agriculture and gardening, world cultures, global issues, domestic politics and policies, spirituality and a variety of materials on sustainable living.

Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR)

The Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR) works for peace, justice, and greater mutual understanding in U.S.-Latin American relations through education, solidarity and support of human rights. CUSLAR supports the right of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean to self-determination, and supports their efforts to free themselves from a legacy of colonialism, exploitation, and oppression.

Dorothy Cotton Institute

The Dorothy Cotton Institute envisions the full realization of a just and peaceful Beloved Community in which all people understand, respect, protect and exercise full human rights. We believe that with a global community of human rights leadership, and a well informed, inspired and motivated population, in the United States and elsewhere, the goal of human rights for all can be achieved.

Ecovillage at Ithaca Center for Sustainability Education

EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI) is part of a growing global movement for a saner, more sustainable human culture. It is developing an alternative model for suburban living, which provides a satisfying, healthy, socially rich lifestyle, while minimizing ecological impacts. EVI-CSE offers a variety of hands-on, experiential learning programs including those of the Groundswell Center for Local Food & Farming.

Ithaca City of Asylum

Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA) is dedicated to providing sanctuary to writers whose works are suppressed, whose lives are threatened, whose cultures are vanishing, or whose languages are endangered.

Life Writing

The Life Writing Project aims to reconnect us to our original selves, to each other, to the larger universe we inhabit, and to our purpose to serve in some important way. We enliven these connections in life writing workshops and by training life-writing coaches.

An Open Window

An Open Window is a project in which Treacy Ziegler, the director, goes into maximum-security prisons to teach art to incarcerated individuals. The project also donates professional artwork to prisons with the goal of involving non-artists into the process of art. It is the vision of this project for the prison community to have the fullest and most complex experience of art.

The Relationship Foundation

The Relationship Foundation is one of our newest projects, and the first of our projects to be based in New York City. It is committed to creating a world in which people celebrate healthy relationships with dignity and respect. Through our high school curriculum, students develop a communication skill set that gives them a way to express their needs and feelings and relate to the needs and feelings of others with care and compassion.

The Tompkins County Workers' Center

The Mission of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center is to stand up with all people treated unfairly at work or faced with critical poverty, racial, housing, health care or other social and economic issues. We will support, advocate for, and seek to empower each other to create a more just community and world.

Veterans' Sanctuary

The Veterans’ Sanctuary works to create a peer-based, residential program to support Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as they transition from combat to civilian life. The organization provides a new path toward addressing veterans’ issues with tools for transformation, holistic wellness programs, expressive arts, farming, green job training, and community living.

Vitamin L

The purpose of the Vitamin L project is to spread love and goodwill, and to encourage positive character development through music, by inspiring young people with messages that are meaningful in their daily lives.

Past Projects

The Center for Transformative Action started in 1971 as the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP). Over the past forty years we have been home to a number of projects. Some of them have become independent non-profit organizations, some of them moved to new fiscal sponsors, some of them ended, and some of them are still with us. This page is a timeline of past and current projects.