With a year’s worth of college credits and no degrees or certificates to show for it, Miguel Ponce, 28, was in a rut: living with his mom and siblings in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx and working hourly jobs that he didn’t enjoy. “I bounced from retail job to retail job. I was making barely anything,” he says. “It always felt like it was just a gateway to something better…I was working retail until I became a computer technician or a doctor — always something else.” While employed with a delivery company, Ponce used Craigslist to find a job that would allow him to work with computers — his favorite way to spend time. One poster told him he was under-qualified for a tech job, but linked him to a website for Per Scholas, a New York City-based nonprofit that provides free, intensive I.T. job training to low-income adults in five other U.S. cities.
Along with 800 other aspiring employees who sign up every year for Per Scholas’s classes (in IT support, network engineering and cyber security, among other subject matters), Ponce enrolled in an eight-week class on software testing. The rigorous sessions, which lasted from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, taught him how software works and why it might fail, then asked him to practice spotting errors in real time. After receiving additional training in “soft skills,” like communication, collaboration and problem solving in the workplace, Ponce had the skills he needed to start a career in a booming part of the tech industry. His chances were good: 80 percent of Per Scholas graduates find a job in less than a year, and most see their wages rise five-fold to more than $36,000 a year — offering a pathway to the middle class, complete with a living wage, fulfilling tasks and the prospect of career advancement.
APPLY: Per Scholas is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
Perhaps surprisingly, many tech jobs require only a high school diploma. Per Scholas, which is supported by numerous partners and organizations, including NBCUniversal Foundation, the Center for Economic Opportunity and JPMorgan Chase, among others, aims to fill those positions. Employers in the tech sector give Per Scholas direct input on the curriculum, sharpening the organization’s training beyond a generic computer science class. By doing this, participants receive skills for jobs that are available now, instead of abstract roles that might never exist. The results of the collaboration? A strong track record of placements at big firms like Bloomberg, ConEdison and TimeWarner Cable. Wayne Kunow, global head of information risk management at Barclays’s investment banking arm, says he’s “truly been impressed with the caliber and quality of talent coming from Per Scholas,” rare praise for a program located in the South Bronx.
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The organization’s impact, however, exceeds successful placement statistics. Tech companies often hire college graduates who are overqualified for entry-level jobs because other streams of talent haven’t been identified. By proving that its workers (of which 90 percent are minorities) from poor communities can competently fill these jobs, Per Scholas could change the face of the sector and open job pipelines to forgotten communities. No longer do tech titans need to think they must sacrifice quality to add diversity. Hiring a Per Scholas graduate — an asset with appropriate talent that can quickly fill a role — is a win-win.
These trailblazers who will transform the tech industry come from neighborhoods consistently left behind by economic development. Per Scholas is headquartered in the South Bronx, an area notorious for being the poorest congressional district in the country (38 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line). Plinio Ayala, Per Scholas’s president and CEO grew up in the neighborhood and says that while the physical decay may be better than it was during 1980s, the people still feel left behind. “The borough has always lacked opportunities, and the people have lacked opportunities.” Better jobs, he believes, are the only way to foment a change.
“The success of programs such as Per Scholas is vital to the future of our economy,” says Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. “We want to be the next tech hub of the world and in order to fulfill that goal, we will need qualified talent to step into those job opportunities. Per Scholas helps teach and build up our future tech geniuses that will help take our great borough to the next level.”
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A life-changing career can’t come soon enough. Poverty dogs many: A male student reported not having eaten for three days; a female student couldn’t do her homework in the homeless shelter where she lives. To solve these challenges, Per Scholas regularly signs people up for government assistance and offers advice from an in-house financial planner whose services are particularly valuable since three out of every five participants carry an average of $20,000 in outstanding debt (from prior schooling, cars, mortgages, credit cards, child support arrears or tax liens). The advisor advocates for those who are in default, helps students qualify for tax breaks and teaches them how to start saving. Thanks to regular group workshops and one-on-one counseling sessions, students collectively socked away more than $100,000 during the first three months of this year.
This financial planning is vital, especially since those enrolled are trying to leave behind retail and fast-food gigs — low-wage work with limited possibilities — to climb the career ladder. “If a crisis comes up, you can fix it,” explains Ayala. “But if you’re not making enough money at all, those problems are almost insurmountable. It creates this very yucky situation for people that don’t know how to get out.”
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Ponce, once stuck in an endless cycle of dead-end jobs, now works at a top-tier Silicon Valley firm. “Back then, [Per Scholas] was the only thing that I had going for me,” he says by phone from San Francisco. Today, he’s using his computer skills to provide recommendations on how to improve software functionality, a job that gives him immense satisfaction.
The joy of the position, he says, is that testing is like a puzzle: There’s so many ways humans might use a computer tool that he needs to consider to make sure it works. In a way, his job mirrors the role Per Scholas plays for tech companies. Without the organization, no one would give thought to how poor communities might participate in the online revolution, but thanks to its rigorous testing and training, a whole new functionality is deployed.
Per Scholas is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Tag: bronx
The Charismatic Gardener Whose Giving Is Inspiring Future Community Activists
When Karen Washington, a black urban farmer in the Bronx, learned that she was the recipient of the $10,000 AllStar prize, she was dumbfounded. Her mouth hung open in shock. Oversized check in hand from NationSwell and NBCUniversal, Washington stood onstage in silence, a rare moment of speechlessness from a charismatic storyteller.
Now that a month’s passed, NationSwell caught up with Washington to discuss that emotional moment and her future plans. Washington has already doled out some of the funds in New York City’s poorest borough and hopes her giving will inspire more donors to step forward to help her match the prize and start a community foundation that will back other local activists.
Looking back to the NationSwell Summit in early November, Washington thought she had no chance of winning. “Here I am 61 years of age, and I’m with a younger generation who knew all about social media, and this competition was all about social media,” she says. Her strategy to get online votes? “The only thing I can do is tell my story,” she says, and mobilize folks with some good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth organizing.
After her name was announced, Washington was “just so overwhelmed with emotion,” she says, her voice cracking into a restrained sob. “I guess I never knew how much I was really loved. I never knew how far-reaching it was, the impact that I had on so many people across the world that took the time to vote for me. And that’s when it hit me, right then and there.”
Inspired by that outpouring of love, Washington is sending that affection back to her neighborhood. Already, she’s given money to a community garden to help build a retaining wall, funded an apprenticeship program at a farm and group for young men of color, paid the funeral expenses for a farm school student who died suddenly and contributed to a legal defense fund for black farmers threatened by foreclosure.
Her aim is not to fund big projects that other nonprofits are already working on. Instead, Washington wants to help community activists who can’t get grants elsewhere. She’s looking for the locals who don’t make the headlines — the ones whose operation is too small to have a full-time grant-writer.
Washington is keeping diligent notes about each dollar to track how her impact magnifies. She isn’t asking for anything back, but the money does come with one condition: As soon as the person has a few extra bucks, she asks that he or she pass along the surplus to another activist in need.
As soon her name was announced, Washington thought to herself, “You know what? I won for a reason.” But then she corrected herself. “No, we,” she said. Her family, her gardening friends and fellow farmers, her community. “We won for a reason.”
WATCH: See the Seeds of Change Grown by One Bronx Woman
Homepage photo courtesy of Karen Washington.
Homeless and Jobless, This Man Found Hope Running 26.2 Miles
Kevin Gonzalez, a 24-year-old from the South Bronx, had been training for the marathon his entire life — he just didn’t know it. Gonzalez didn’t regularly go on 18-mile training runs on the weekend nor did he spend hours on the treadmill; in fact, he wasn’t a runner at all. But his tough upbringing prepped him to endure a long haul, not just a sprint.
After a pre-dawn run, Gonzalez met with NationSwell recently in the front lobby of the Bowery Mission, a men’s residential recovery center in East Harlem, N.Y. After living at the shelter for a few months, Gonzalez signed up with Back on My Feet, a program that uses running to instill responsibility and self-sufficiency, with the ultimate goal of running the 2015 New York City Marathon. Gonzalez heard that the nonprofit’s morning runs had translated into 2,000 jobs and 1,400 housing placements for homeless participants, so he laced his running shoes to test whether he could be the organization’s next success story.
“I went from running the streets to running to save my life,” Gonzalez says. “Now I knew what I wanted to do and why it mattered. I had the dedication and a goal to achieve.”
That feeling of determination was new for Gonzalez, who was orphaned at a young age and spent his childhood in the foster care system. From age 17, he’s been on his own. With a minimum-wage job, Gonzalez was able to pay for his own apartment for a year before moving with his girlfriend’s family. Struggling with addictions — alcohol, drugs and cigarettes — he lost a job and was kicked out. Without anywhere to go, Gonzalez was living on the street.
His first run wasn’t easy. Another Back on My Feet member ran alongside Gonzalez for the whole hour to make sure he wasn’t alone. But that guy wanted to chat, something that Gonzalez, who was struggling to breathe, found impossible. Six months since he started, a morning run has become part of the routine, and Gonzalez’s lungs have greater capacity.
“Nothing is as relaxing as breaking a quick sweat,” Gonzalez says. “It helps with my stress and anxieties. I feel like I’m 18 again. I’m in the best shape of my life.”
The weekend before the Big Apple’s marathon last month, on one of his final practice workouts, Gonzalez stumbled and sprained his ankle. He had trained so hard and the injury didn’t seem that bad, so Gonzalez continued with his marathon plan. With his toe on the starting line in Staten Island, his shoulders were tense with nervousness. Using the resilience he’d built and strengthened over so many years, Gonzalez pushed his worries about the injury aside.
When he passed the 18th mile and saw the cheering supporters from the shelter at 110th Street, he knew he could make it. Four and a half hours after starting, he crossed the finish line in Central Park.
With one marathon down, Gonzalez already has his sights on his next one. He now has a job walking dogs, and he expects to enroll in school next year. He’s planning to run the marathon again in November 2016, cutting an hour off his time.
“I’d say running has saved my life,” Gonzalez says. “I found hope. Things are brighter than ever.”
MORE: The Running Program That’s Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessness
See the Seeds of Change Grown by One Bronx Woman
“The first plant that changed my life was a tomato,” says Karen Washington, a black urban farmer in the Bronx. “It was the one fruit that I used to hate.” But after watching one that she’d grown shift in hue from green to yellow to red and taking a bite of it, she was instantly hooked. “When I tasted that tomato, when it was red and it was ripe, and I picked it off the vine, [it]…changed my world because I never tasted anything so good, so sweet. I wanted to grow everything.”
For a quarter century, all manner of trees and flowers, fruits and vegetables, have thrived across abandoned lots in the Bronx because of Washington. Deemed “the queen of urban farming,” she’s an African-American woman who’s dedicated her life to greening New York City’s poorest borough. Since 1985, Washington has assisted dozens of neighborhoods build their own community gardens, taught workshops on farming and promoted racial diversity in agriculture.
Your food “is not from a grocery store, it’s not from a supermarket. It’s grown in the ground,” she says. “You have to understand where your food comes from. It gives you power.”
A lifelong New Yorker, Washington grew up in a public housing project on the Lower East Side. She moved up to the Bronx in 1985 and bought herself a newly built home, which she viewed as, “an opportunity, as a single parent with two children, to live the American dream.” While some gentrification occurred, other parts of the low-income neighborhood looked “like a warzone,” dotted with abandoned buildings. Some of Washington’s windows looked onto an empty lot filled with garbage and rusting cars.
One day, she noticed a man walking by with a shovel and a pick — an unusual sight in Gotham’s concrete jungle. “What are you doing here?” Washington asked. He told her he was thinking about creating a community garden. “I said, ‘Can I help?’”
“I had no idea about gardening. I didn’t have a green thumb,” she recalls. Despite that, a city program that leased undeveloped lots for $1 gave Washington and her neighbors lumber, dirt and seeds, “and we gave them power — muscle power — and hopes and dreams to turn something that was devastating and ugly into something that was beautiful.” Within days, the first seeds of the Garden of Happiness and Washington’s lifelong activism were beginning to sprout.
Ever since, Washington has helped others in the Bronx locate empty neighborhood spaces that are prime real estate for something to blossom and led volunteers through the process of opening a community garden — earning her respect throughout the Big Apple and beyond. She holds positions on almost every board imaginable, including the New York Community Gardening Coalition, Just Food and the New York Botanical Garden. “Can you imagine, a little girl from the projects on the board of the New York Botanical Garden?” she asks in disbelief, her smiling face framed by her dreadlocks.
And then there was the time she met First Lady Michelle Obama. Washington describes feeling, “the elation of the spirits of my ancestors. I just felt them clapping and cheering, because here I was, a black woman, standing in the presence of the First Lady.”
Blooming with daffodils, tulips and hyacinth, the original purpose of Washington’s first community garden — the Garden of Happiness — and others like it was “beautification,” Washington says, “about taking away the garbage” from a disadvantaged minority community. Only later did she start to think about greenery beyond being decoration or as a food source. “When I first started initially in the food movement, I was focused on growing food. It wasn’t until I was in that community garden that I started hearing social issues like low employment, poor health, people who couldn’t afford rents,” Washington says. She learned she had to “feed people’s body and mind.”
To promote equity and fairness, she’s recently been focusing on boosting the number of African Americans in agriculture through BUGs — or Black Urban Growers. The most recent agricultural census figures show 55,346 farmers in the Empire State are white and only 113 are black.
It’s always been a dream of Washington’s to purchase land upstate for a farm, but every time she counted all the zeros in the real estate listings, it seemed impossible. Drawing on her connections, Washington met a businessman interested in launching a farming co-operative in Chester, N.Y. They started growing veggies on three acres of black dirt in January. Located just an hour from the city, Washington hopes the rural-urban relationship will help African-Americans have a better understanding of how food systems work and have a chance to participate.
“Farming’s in our DNA, but [we] never have that conversation, always being pushed to the side as the consumer or the person with their hand out, never the type with their hand in the conversation,” Washington says. “There’s no agriculture without culture, so having people understand that slavery was part of our life, it doesn’t define who we are. … [We’re] trying to have people understand that. Don’t be afraid to put your hands in the soil, don’t be afraid to garden or farm because that’s who you are.”
Keeping Communities Healthy By Restocking the Corner Store
We think of corner stores as places where you can conveniently buy a bag of chips or some soda pop. But in many low-income cities around the country, the food sold at these shops isn’t just consumed at snack time — it’s served at mealtime.
In neighborhoods like the Bronx in New York City, a scarcity of grocery stores drives many residents to food shop entirely at local bodegas. Unfortunately, the absence of healthy choices in these stores can lead to poor diets—which in turn leads to poor health. In fact, the Bronx has the highest obesity rate among NYC’s five boroughs at a startling 30.5 percent. (In comparison, just 13.9 percent of Manhattanites are obese.)
“More than 1 in 6 adults in the Bronx is now overweight or obese, and has developed or is at risk of developing related illnesses like diabetes,” said city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley. “It is crucial that we address the issue of access to healthy foods in high needs areas.”
ALSO: A New Study Yields Surprising Results About Low-Income People and Food Deserts
So if residents can’t get to healthier fare, why not bring it to them?
As NY1 reports, 170 out of 200 corner shops in the Bronx neighborhoods of West Farms and Fordham are working with the City Health Department to stock up and advertise healthier fare to customers as part of the Shop Healthy NYC initiative.
“Instead of being bombarded with the usual advertisements, you can look right in the store and see baskets full of fruits. You can walk right up to some snacks, but they’re healthy snacks; they’re fruits and nuts. If you want to get a candy bar, you have to ask for them because they’re behind the counter,” City Health Commissioner Mary Bassett told the news station.
This simple plan to get more fresh produce into bellies is clearly working. Shop owners told NY1 that sales of healthier foods in these neighborhoods has increased 59 percent from 2012 to 2013, and profits are either staying the same or even increasing.
DON’T MISS: An Oasis in One of America’s Largest Food Deserts: the Local Quick Mart
“It’s a very, frequently repeated misconception that the junk in these stores is there because that’s what people want, but that’s not true,” Bassett said.
Based on the success of the Shop Healthy program, the city plans to expand it to other neighborhoods in the Bronx as well as to neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
The small changes that New York City bodegas are making aren’t difficult to implement nationwide. As you can see in the video below, shop owners make simple changes such as placing baskets of fruit by the cash register and removing sugary drinks from eye level, replacing them with water and other low-calorie beverage options.
When more than one-third of American adults and 17 percent of children are obese (costing the country $147 billion per year to treat), it makes a whole lot of sense to get the country on healthier diets.
It’s time to turn the corner on the corner store.
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MORE: Maryland’s Public Experiment to Combat Poverty and End Obesity
Soccer, Not Just a Pastime — but a Path to Citizenship
A year after arriving in New York City from Italy in 2009, the soft-spoken Reindorf Kyei, 18, was still struggling. He struggled with schoolwork, and he struggled at home. His mother was unemployed and his father was never home, working out of state to support the entire family and to maintain their legal residency status.
When Kyei was 7, his family had moved from their native Ghana to Italy in pursuit of economic opportunity, and then resettled again when his father landed a job in the United States. Torn between the three cultures, and speaking only broken English, Kyei and his family labored to fit into their new home.
Then, in March 2010, on a soccer field in the South Bronx, everything changed for Kyei. At the urging of his mother, he had sought out the youth coach of South Bronx United, a nonprofit soccer club based in one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods. Kyei started playing competitively with the club, and his teammates nicknamed him “Balo” — after Ghanian-Italian striker Mario Balotelli — a sentiment that carried special weight. Playing with South Bronx United not only provided an outlet for Kyei’s passion for the sport, but it also became the key to his dream: legal residency in the U.S.
MORE: Tired of Waiting for Immigration Reform, One Man Is Giving Undocumented Students a Shot at the American Dream
South Bronx United uses soccer as a way to engage with underprivileged kids, while providing them with tutoring, college prep and mentorship. Unlike other youth-mentoring programs that sometimes have a hard time keeping kids from dropping out, South Bronx United has a built-in draw. “They are always going to stay for the soccer,” says Andrew So, executive director of the club, which boasts a 99 percent retention rate.
The club has about 600 participants, who play on seven competitive teams and a recreational league. Staying true to the diversity of its South Bronx environment, the club is mostly made up of kids from immigrant families, and more than half were born outside the U.S. “That’s exactly the reason this program is so powerful. We have the added benefit here in the South Bronx because so many of our kids come from that [sports] culture and have that huge passion for soccer,” says So, a former high school teacher.
After joining the club in 2010, Kyei learned that his father had decided not to stay in the U.S. If he left, his children would be obligated to leave as well. However, Kyei, a sturdy central defender whose grades were improving through participation in the club’s tutoring and summer-school programs, had his heart set on something higher — a college scholarship. But that would require proper paperwork.
Through South Bronx United, pro bono attorneys helped him declare special immigrant juvenile status, which allows children to obtain green cards without mandatory parental approval. “At the beginning they tried to work with my dad, but he kept switching his mind about whether he wanted to stay [in America],” Kyei says. “Eventually, I just had to prove in a court that one of my parents, my dad, had abandoned me.”
ALSO: Meet the Undocumented Immigrants Who Created an App to Press for Immigration Reform
By the time his senior year came around, Kyei had a green card. He was also on the radar of a number of local colleges. During a game organized by South Bronx United, he caught the eye of Bloomfield College, a Division II college in New Jersey. After the school reviewed Kyei’s grades, which had drastically improved over the previous two years, it offered him a scholarship.
“We have a lot of immigrant youth who bring enormous challenges [around] language skills and things like that,” So says. “So we have kids who are very talented, but have not done well enough on SATs to qualify for a scholarship yet. That’s another reason educational components are so important for us.”
A higher degree helps down the line as well. Immigrant athletes who are in the U.S. on a visa need to be employable to keep it. A college degree helps with that. Meanwhile, players without the proper documents — many of whom may study in college through programs like Golden Door Scholars — may one day be eligible for amnesty, particularly if Congress passes new legislation similar to the DREAM Act (a bill that proposed giving legal status to illegal immigrants but was defeated in the Senate in 2010), which would grant residency to undocumented immigrants with a higher education.
DON’T MISS: Meet the People Hoping to Change the Face of Immigration in America
Kyei wouldn’t be headed to college without South Bronx United, he says. He is almost certain that he would be back in Italy or Ghana by now were it not for the club’s help. The same is true for other students in the club, such as Innocent, 21, and his 15-year-old brother, Paul, who came to the U.S. from Nigeria in 2008. (The club asked for the boys’ surname to be withheld in order to safeguard their efforts to gain residency.) They are working with the club in hopes of finally getting their green cards.
“We didn’t ever have Mommy and Daddy around,” says Innocent, whose parents returned to Nigeria in 2008, leaving him and his brother in the care of an uncle in New York. “[South Bronx United is] the reason I’m where I am, and there was no way we were ever going to get our cards without them.”
Innocent is now a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Paul is a winger for the club’s competitive travel team, and also aspires to receive a college scholarship one day.
“I don’t know where he would be without this,” Innocent says of his brother. “Nowhere, really. And the one thing he truly loves to do is play soccer.”
MORE: Paperwork Stood Between Immigrants and Their Dream, So This Group Stepped In