Ten years ago The HUUB was founded to transform the 135-year-old buildings of Orange’s UU Congregation into a community center to address social fracture, support a healthy democracy, and provide a space for cultural programming and community events. Orange, NJ is emblematic of US cities and faces both historical challenges and those engendered by the current moment.  It also is a place with a long legacy of community organizing and has become a home to people from around the world. Our campus is rapidly growing and we are projected to host upwards of 10,000 people in 2026.

Since its founding the HUUB has become a vibrant campus in our region. We are home to three additional grassroots nonprofit organizations. We provide accessible and affordable spaces for rites of passage, cultural and civic programs, and community gatherings. We provide meeting spaces for political and community organizing at local, regional, and national levels. We develop programs that work to ‘reweave’ the social fabric of our region, by cultivating connections and collaborations between the groups of people that use our spaces.

Our Anchor Partners

The HUUB’s campus is anchored by our three core partners, all of whom have permanent office and program space in our buildings. The University of Orange is a people’s free school and popular education center. Founded in 2008, the UofO provides the HUUB’s leadership and leads our understanding and practice of “Urban Restoration”.

The LANBI Center for Civics and Humanities is a volunteer-run immigrant services organization, providing ESL for Orange’s Haitian population and legal immigration services for Essex County’s immigrant communities more broadly, since 2005.

The Laundry Workers Center builds power with low-wage immigrant workers across New Jersey and New York City. Founded in 2012, they run both labor and community organizing trainings and workshops and develop direct action campaigns with workers in Orange fighting against exploitation in the workplace.

Intersection of Culture & Civic Engagement 

At the HUUB, we believe in the power of spaces where people can come together from different backgrounds and disciplines.  People and groups who use our spaces include artists, theater groups and organizers working on many causes. We host civic events that include debates for local elections, forums for discussing local development issues and monthly community dinners that are designed to create connection. We lead the convening of several city-wide coalitions and are co-facilitators of an on-going people’s assemblies process.

Land Stewardship & Ecology

The HUUB is committed to the ecological stewardship of our community campus. We currently maintain three gardens that increase the community’s access to greenspace, function as an outdoor classroom and support our local ecology. Our pollinator garden lines our walkway and is home to Native plants from our region making it a lively space for butterflies and bees. The Ben Jones Community Garden is named in honor of the first Black elected official in Orange and is where we grow vegetables and flowers. The garden is open for youth activities, volunteer days and is the site of an annual harvest festival. Our rain garden supports our campus’s ability to manage storm water and is an additional space for education.

Beyond the gardens, we steward, repair, and enhance our 135 year old buildings in accordance with the principle that “the greenest buildings are the ones that already exist”, to paraphrase architect Carl Elefante. We model mitigation of environmental injustices such as filtering water and using raised beds to prevent lead poisoning, and are evolving ongoing approaches to manage heat during the summer that don’t rely on simply increasing air conditioning.