Hector Torres’s world was shattered when he learned his 29-year-old son had died. The former Marine and avid runner was driving home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. The loss sent Hector into a grief spiral as he abandoned his life as a truck driver in Connecticut to wander the streets of New York City without a home.
“In the process of losing my son, I lost reality,” Torres says. “For about a month, I was wandering the city not knowing where I was at.”
Ten months later, Torres began to piece his life back together. While residing in the New York City Rescue Mission, Torres became a member of Back on My Feet, a nonprofit that combats homelessness through running programs. Founded in 2007, the organization works with shelters in 12 cities nationwide to recruit members interested in changing their lives for the better. Teams meet three times a week at 5:45 a.m., and members who maintain at least a 90 percent attendance record for the first 30 days become eligible for job training, financial aid and other life-building opportunities.
“Nobody runs alone,” says executive director Terence Gerchberg. “The point of this group is not to outrun somebody; it’s to uplift somebody. It’s meeting people where they are.”
Watch the video above to see how running transformed Torres’s life.
Tag: New York City
For This Century-Old Civil Rights Nonprofit, the Real Work Is Just Beginning
The New York Urban League (NYUL) was founded in 1919, at the start of the Great Migration, to connect blacks who left the agricultural South with jobs in the industrial North. At the time, descendants of slaves poured into a metropolis where they had to fight against housing discrimination and boycott stores where black job applications weren’t accepted. Nearly a century later, Arva Rice, a NationSwell Council member and president of the New York Urban League, is continuing to fight for equality within New York City’s education system and job opportunities. NationSwell spoke to her recently about the ongoing fight for civil rights, as the nation’s first black president leaves office.
New York Urban League is approaching its centennial. What issues are you anticipating will be core to the league’s next century?
One challenge for us is how the conversation about race has changed over time. When I meet with others, I talk about the importance of this particular time in history. The fact that when I first came to the Urban League in April 2009, President Obama had just been elected and we were hearing, “You all have a president. That’s the ultimate level of equality.” Unfortunately, in the last seven years, we have also had Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and all things in between, like the intentional voter-suppression laws and attacks on the Voting Rights Act. The work we do is more critical than ever. There’s a generation that cares about racial equity, but we need to engage them in different ways. Maybe they want to march and be involved in grassroots movements, some want to be engaged in policy discussions and some want to become part of the establishment themselves and run for office. All of those ways are correct and right, and we have to figure out how to support that going forward.
Besides equal access to education and employment, the NYUL’s mission statement references working toward a “living environment that fosters mutual respect.” What does that mean to you?
Envisioning a world of mutual respect means that folks can not only tolerate but appreciate difference. I’m fascinated by how we define diversity and inclusion. Diversity is inviting people to a party, where inclusion is getting everyone to dance. I think that distinction is important, because to get everyone dancing, you have to think deliberately. You need to think about what is going to include people across generations, and most importantly, you need to be intentional in order to create environments that bring others to the fore. You have to be thoughtful, because it’s not going to happen by accident.
The racial biases pointed out by Black Lives Matter and the rising economic inequality in American cities were both on the minds of many voters last year. In what ways does New York reflect and buck the trends of what we expect from cities?
New York is often leading the way. We’re the ones who were really pushing for higher wages, with the Fight for 15 campaign. We’re also second place for technology and innovation. That’s why the New York Urban League is focusing some of our work on STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], giving young people the opportunity to not only play with technology but also be creators. There are some folks that say, “Oh, people of color aren’t interested in tech, because it’s not cool enough.” And I push back on that. This is not about being cool; this is about being accessible. Without having somebody who you know, any experience, any interaction with someone who works at Facebook, Google, Twitter, how can they know that’s something they can do? We’re helping to break through that, and then provide skills. The fact is that people of color will be passed over if, once again, they are not included in intentional ways. The reason why I feel privileged to lead a historic black organization is because you’re constantly focused on making sure that there really is equality. Until the day we feel like there truly is real parity, we’re not finished.
What have you learned about leadership during your time at NYUL?
I have learned that leadership is about doing things that make your stomach hurt. And that just because your stomach hurts doesn’t mean that you’re unusual. If you are doing it right and pushing yourself and the people that you manage and your stakeholders and your donors, there are going to be times when it’s uncomfortable. It’s a growth pattern. The other thing I’ve learned is that the only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who aren’t doing anything. So I need to forgive myself for those times I made mistakes, figure out what I learned, dust myself off and go on to the next thing.
What are you most proud of having accomplished so far?
We have a program called Empowerment Days for our young people, which is basically Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work days. We take 200 girls and 150 boys on the first and last Friday of March, respectively. They’re able to go and meet people at places like O, The Oprah Magazine, black enterprises, the Yankees, Google and Microsoft. Basically, they spend the day with people who may look like them or have similar backgrounds and experiences, and find out how they got into those careers. And one of the reasons I’m so proud of that is because we have a level of access, as an organization that has a 97-year history of impact on communities. So I can call people and get my calls returned at a level that I wasn’t able to in any other position in my career. Every time we do an Empowerment Day, the young people are excited about a senior vice president or a receptionist that they met. That’s fantastic, because we would not be able to do that, if it were not for the relationships that the Urban League has within the city.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
Continue reading “For This Century-Old Civil Rights Nonprofit, the Real Work Is Just Beginning”
Working Their Way to Independence
On a recent Monday afternoon, in an office tower in Manhattan, Judy Matthews sat around a table with three other domestic violence victims and talked about her résumé. Through a nonprofit, she’d recently taken a Microsoft Word course for the formatting, but Matthews, a black, middle-aged mother from Brooklyn, was worried about the content. The problem? A 10-year gap, the result of pressure from her abuser to drop out of the workforce.
“For the past decade, I spent most of my time near the window, while my husband went to work,” says Matthews. “I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t have a career. I completed my degrees and I put them in a box. I didn’t know who I was, other than who [my husband] told me I was, which was a woman who’s got nothing to offer. It was a sense of: ‘Why did you even waste time going to school?’ That’s why I spent my time at the window, watching everybody else walk their kids to school, go to work, do everything they need to do.”
About a year and a half ago, Matthews (whose name, like other survivors quoted in this story, has been changed) packed a few belongings into a plastic Marshall’s bag and made her way to Sanctuary for Families, New York’s largest nonprofit for victims of domestic abuse, sex trafficking and other gender-based violence. There, she enrolled in the Economic Empowerment Program (EEP), a workforce-development program to help survivors regain the self-sufficiency and financial independence they lost during an abusive relationship. Today, Matthews, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who was once too scared to take the subway, has an internship with the city’s Human Resources Administration, which distributes public assistance.
Founded in 2011, EEP’s 15-week program prepares survivors for entry-level openings in fields with potential for significant career growth. During the first two weeks, sessions focus on workplace readiness: punctuality, email etiquette and proper attire, for example. But the bulk of EEP’s training focuses on math, literature and computer programs. Throughout, the women revise their résumés and practice mock job interviews.
“We don’t want them working in fast food or at a clothing chain. Not that those aren’t honorable work, but it can’t get a person off public assistance,” says Judy Harris Kluger, who was a New York State judge for 25 years before becoming Sanctuary’s executive director in 2014. After EEP, she says, “I hope they’re in a position to support their children; to live on their own in an apartment, not a shelter; and to find healthy relationships and people who care about them.”
Nationally, an estimated one in four women and one in seven men will experience serious violence at a partner’s hands. Within New York City, police responded to 279,051 domestic violence incidents in 2015 — roughly 32 calls every hour. For each of these victims, an intimate link binds her checkbook to the risk of abuse by her partner. When a couple’s finances are strained, the chance of violence triples. An abuser who can’t find work for months may lash out at his spouse, the one aspect of his life he can ruthlessly control. The victim, meanwhile, her bank account depleted, can’t afford to stay at a motel for a few nights, much less pay for her children’s basic needs or see a psychiatrist or divorce lawyer. Money, in other words, can force victims to stay with their abusers.
And when battered women do work, holding down a job is a constant struggle. In one survey, nearly two-thirds of victims said abuse interfered with their work performance. Of that group, two-fifths were harassed by a partner’s phone calls or in-person stalking. For others, the difficulty started before they even left home. To disrupt a victim’s schedule, an abuser might deprive her of sleep, unplug the alarm clock, hide clothes or car keys, refuse to babysit the kids, cut and bruise her or physically bar the doorway. Distracted or depressed, these survivors showed up late or not at all; one study showed these women earn less as a whole.
Faced with these challenges, how does EEP perform? In its five years of operation, 564 survivors enrolled in the program, and nearly all of them — 88 percent — completed it. By the end, two-thirds of the graduates land internships or jobs. A year later, at least 65 percent of those alumnae report keeping the position. EEP aims to place enrollees in fields such as workplace administration, construction management and medical billing. On average, EEP graduates are paid $13.71 an hour, well above New York’s $8.75 minimum wage.
Angelo J. Rivera, EEP’s director, believes the model works because it establishes a clear path off welfare. When a person starts the program, Rivera’s team sits down with a chart of seven “keys,” which demonstrate career readiness and includes benchmarks like reaching a 10th-grade reading level, earning a high school diploma or GED, and gaining intermediate computer skills and prior work experience. (On average, participants enter with only three or four of these skill sets.)
To start meeting the seven keys, EEP readies survivors for office culture, beginning with how they dress. At the program’s start, each class heads to Macy’s to pick out a suit and two blouses, which they’re required to wear to class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dressing professionally — or in other words, putting on the appearance of success — is an important first step in the transition to the business world, explains Sarah Hayes, EEP’s deputy director. “A number are homeless and living in shelters. They’ve had to leave their possessions behind to flee an abusive situation,” she says. “Being able to put on a suit is dignifying. They don’t feel like they’re different from anyone else traipsing around Wall Street. It’s a powerful anonymity that you get to wear, and it helps you envision yourself as the professional that you want to be.”
Once they look the part, the women in EEP run through a crash course in sophistication, in part by catching up on well-known literature. Under Rivera, the reading list is a guide to power relations: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Animal Farm” and writings by James Baldwin. The group also recently toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, many for the first time.
Though EEP’s classes avoid discussions of the women’s abusive relationships — a marked shift from other social programs that deal with trauma through support groups — counseling and other services are available at Sanctuary. Immigrants who need work authorization can seek remedies from the legal team, for example, and someone facing an eviction can receive emergency monetary assistance and defense in housing court.
But there’s another reason why EEP so clearly divides its efforts from the rest of Sanctuary’s services. Below the surface, EEP’s architects have an ambitious plan: To see their workforce-development program applied to other demographics, like foster youth, single mothers in public housing and the formerly incarcerated. The victims of gender-based violence that Rivera sees regularly come in believing they are worthless, after hearing it repeatedly from their abusers. The 15-week program works to reverse that by convincing battered women they’re worth a decent salary and empowering them to work their way to independence. The question for Rivera and his cohorts now is whether the EEP model can uplift other struggling populations toiling under their own trying circumstances.
If you are experiencing physical violence, emotional abuse or financial control at home, you can call 800-621-HOPE in New York City, 877-384-3578 in San Francisco or 800-799-7233 for all other locations.
Where Does the YWCA Go From Here?
After the YWCA of the City of New York sold its uptown Lexington Avenue headquarters — its home for nearly a century — and moved downtown in 2005, the organization was looking to reinvent itself. Enter Danielle Moss Lee, a former teacher and administrator with a doctorate in education and decades of experience in nonprofit leadership. After taking the reins as the YWCA’s CEO in 2012, Moss Lee expanded the nonprofit’s after-school and summer programs while redoubling efforts to reach out to girls of color in underserved neighborhoods. NationSwell spoke with Moss Lee about the new direction for a 158-year-old charity at the YWCA’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
What’s the YWCA’s biggest need right now?
Ensuring the future sustainability of the organization. We’ve been out of the game for a little bit. How do you make something that’s 158 years old new again, so that people care about it and want it to continue, in terms of manpower, woman-power, volunteerism? We’ve got 2,500 kids whose lives we hope to impact in some way. It’s not all the kids in the city, but we can do our best to do our part.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I like the questions that young activists are asking, because it positions us for a different America. We can say without a doubt that all of our lives have been materially and visibly changed by the civil rights movement. But now we’re addressing issues around institutional and structural racism that I don’t think prior generations fully understood: Health services, education, the police and the banking system all really conspire together to advantage some and disadvantage others. I’m excited about these new movements. Protesting and social media campaigns are important. I hope that, at the end of this, the way we live and experience our daily lives will be similarly transformed like they were with desegregation and all of the access and opportunities that civil rights opened up.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
The best advice I’ve gotten over my career was to be someone that I would want to follow myself. It’s been important advice because it’s made me more conscious that who I am and how I show up is really important to the people around me when I’m in a leadership role. It keeps you honest and conscious.
Where do you find your inner motivation?
It’s always different, but one thing I think about is all the kids I’m not serving. I hear lots of folks in this sector say of college-access or girls’ programming: “We have 200 girls” or “We have 1,000 girls,” whatever the number is. But then when I think about how many girls actually live in this city, that’s what keeps me going.
Years ago, I was teaching a graduate course on urban youth policy, and one day the discussion got really personal. A young woman getting her master’s degree told this story of how her family’s apartment had burned down in Brooklyn. At first, friends and family were willing to house them. As the months dragged on, they went into a homeless shelter. At some point, her mother, in a desperate attempt to provide for her kids, made the decision to join the Armed Forces. The student said, “Do you realize we lived in that shelter with no adult and nobody noticed?” And then she said, “I didn’t know that there were middle-class black people. I didn’t know for a long time that something else was possible for my life.” A lot of mentoring is focused around Manhattan. Let’s be real, people aren’t going out to Coney Island (where the YWCA has programming) or other far-flung Brooklyn neighborhoods like Flatbush, East New York and Brownsville. It’s always at the convenience of the volunteer, but that’s not necessarily where the greatest need is. I can always recall that student’s voice asking, “Where were you?” — to which I didn’t really have an answer. She said, “All these civic organizations are always talking about all the work they do in the community, but I never saw them.” Nobody asked her if she wanted to go to college. That’s our job.
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What’s on your nightstand right now?
“Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently” [by Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur]. It’s really about how you develop teams with people who just think differently. I started to think about this because there’s been a lot of emphasis in some new progressive nonprofits in the sector around organizational fit and building a specific kind of culture within their organizations to drive results. There’s a value in that. But a lot of those organizations have challenges around having a diverse staff.
I was listening to two managers have a semi-debate. A young white woman was talking about two of her staff members: Her white staff member was really great with data, Excel spreadsheets and metrics — things she really valued — but this staff person wasn’t as good at relating to young people and doing outreach to families. And so while the person of color was much more relatable with the young people in the organization, it was almost like her skill set wasn’t seen as a value. We all operate predominantly with different sides of our brain. How can we tease away some of the judgment that comes with very different strengths and make sure that we’re not using this idea of “fit” really to only work with people who look like us, share our experiences and perspective? You’re probably not growing if everyone agrees with everything you say.
What’s your perfect day look like?
No bad news, and a big check in the mail — in that order.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I recently had the opportunity to have a reunion with students I previously worked with at another organization. First of all, to see them now as college-educated adults and hear all the amazing things they were doing was a reward in itself. Back when I was working that job, I was also raising my daughter and going to graduate school. I remember one of those kids saying, “I didn’t know anybody else who had a doctorate. When I came into your office and saw your degrees on the wall, I knew I couldn’t just get a bachelor’s. Tell me: What do you have to do to get a master’s degree? What’s a dissertation?”
I’m just blown away by the number of students, many first-generation college students, who have graduate degrees. That changes not just the trajectory of their lives, but also their families’ for years to come. It was nice to know that I had that kind of impact.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
Homepage photo courtesy of YWCANYC.
Meet the Couple Caring for Uninsured Families
New York City has long been the final destination for incoming immigrant families. Today, that population totals over 3 million people, and nearly 35 percent of them lack access to health insurance. Now one married couple is aiming to provide these families with the pediatric care they otherwise can’t afford.
Dynasty Pediatrics is a private practice with an office in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood. Its founders, Dr. Marina Klotsman and her husband, Schmeil, provide affordable healthcare services for the borough’s newly settled immigrants, many of whom lack health insurance. As a result, the Klotsmans often end up waiving co-pays and other medical fees for those families struggling to make ends meet.
“We put a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of our own energy into this place,” says Marina. “It’s not even for business; it’s for the feelings we have. We want to help everybody.”
Schmeil agrees, adding, “The money’s not the main subject in this office.”
Dynasty Pediatrics is open Sunday through Friday, with hours late into the evening. The goal is to make it easier for working-class parents — many of whom support family members living outside the US — to bring in their children without disrupting their work schedules. The Klotsmans also help families explore insurance plans as well as local services like NYC’s universal pre-K program.
That sense of duty goes back to the husband-and-wife team’s own journey to the US from Kyrgyzstan. Schmeil left his home country in 1989 during the dissolution of the USSR, a period he remembers as marred by “chaos.” Marina left eight years later, in 1997, to further her medical career. They would eventually meet in Brooklyn through Marina’s uncle and marry soon after.
Learn more about the Klotsmans’ passion for helping others in the video above.
This Millennial Is on a Mission to Unleash the Next Generation of Techies
In the next four years, economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the country will add more than 1.4 million new technology jobs. Yet, based on current graduation rates, there will be only 400,000 computer science majors to fill those jobs. NationSwell Council member Jessica Santana sees that gap as an opportunity for the 1 million children who attend public school in New York City. At the nonprofit she co-founded, New York on Tech (NYOT), students from more than high schools (and counting) learn the digital skills employers desire. NationSwell spoke with Santana, herself a product of the city’s public-school system who has worked in the tech industry, about how the next generation can diversify tech’s booming business.
What’s on New York on Tech’s curriculum?
From September through June, the program provides about 152 hours of training, which consists of markup and programming languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python. But we also realize that not every student wants to be an engineer, so they learn about project management, quality assurance, digital media — all these different career opportunities. Afterward, our students get the opportunity to do paid internships over the summer with some of our corporate partners; this year, those included The Bank of New York Mellon and Warby Parker. They get to apply their new skills in a way that’s professional, in a way that gives them the social capital to keep on getting internships after the experience.
About 85 percent of the tech workforce is white or Asian, and 74 percent are male. Do the students you meet express that they don’t see role models in tech?
At the beginning of our program, we survey how many students know somebody in the industry or participate in a technology extracurricular program. Last year, about 90 percent said that New York on Tech was the first time they ever did anything technology-related as an extracurricular program. For many, they’re the first [in their family] to go to college. There’s a huge disconnect in where they can access career advice. So while they don’t formally say they lack mentors, the information we collect shows they do.
On the other hand, it’s also important to know that some students in our program don’t realize they are the only African-Americans and Latinos in technology. We intentionally place mentors of color from diverse backgrounds into their lives, so they won’t feel alone in their journey. If we come from the school of thought that they can’t be what they can’t see, then it’s our job to make sure that we recruit mentors intentionally.
Only 1 percent of New York City students are receiving computer science education. How should public schools be teaching the material?
There’s an opportunity for schools to explore how they teach 21st-century skills outside the actual computer science curriculum. To be a real technologist, what’s currently being offered [in computer science classes] in under-resourced schools is insufficient to move the needle on diversity in the tech workforce. Schools need to ask themselves whether their lessons are industry-aligned, that they’re actually going to prepare students for jobs, as opposed to just meeting educational standards.
Tech is so often associated with Silicon Valley. How does New York’s scene, on the other coast, differ?
The biggest difference between the valley and here is that New York City has diversity. Over there, it’s very homogenous. But here, there are so many pockets of diverse talent that can be employed. Most of the engineering departments stay in Silicon Valley, so you’ll notice there are a lot of opportunities in New York in sales, media and business development, a lot of non-technical jobs, too. It’s not the biggest industry yet in New York. Do I think it has the potential to get there? I’m not sure, to be honest. FinTech (or financial technology) is huge here, and we’re seeing a move toward tech in fashion and food as well.
How did you personally get involved in this work?
I’ve always been a technologist. I got a MacBook in eighth grade through PowerMyLearning, which was founded by fellow NationSwell Council member Elisabeth Stock. My parents were very strict. When my friends couldn’t come over, it was me and my computer. Having access to that first computer ignited a curiosity in me that wouldn’t have been possible for my friends, who didn’t have machines of their own.
I was a first-generation college student. As soon as I graduated with a master’s in information technology and started working in the industry, I was making four times my parents’ household income. When I realized that, in one year, I was going to make what my parents were making combined in four years, I asked myself, “How did I get here?” That question quickly became, “How do I get others here?” Because going into a technical program was an avenue out of poverty for me. I see how transformative it is for students, who came from communities like mine, to have these skills.
Was it tough for you to break into the tech industry?
When I was still working in the industry proper, as a technology consultant, I learned that the things that made me different made me powerful. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. Oftentimes, I was the only woman, the only person of color, the only woman of color. As I matured, I started owning that difference: the fact that I was a Latina with curly hair and an accent who wouldn’t let those things stand in my way.
What are you most proud of having accomplished?
To this day, the greatest thing I’ve accomplished, honestly, is graduating from high school. Then being able to go to a four-year college completely transformed the way I saw opportunity, the way I set goals, the way I thought about business and the way I saw myself as a global citizen.
The Test-Prep Program That’s Helping Low-Income Students Get to College
It’s one of the most glaring indicators of inequity in the nation’s education system: Students from low-income families tested 166 points below the average on last year’s SAT and 396 points behind than their wealthiest peers. Put another way, the poorest students (whose parents earned less than $20,000) could barely meet the baseline for applying to California State University, Northridge, while most rich kids (whose parents rake in over $200,000) would have the same shot of getting into the higher ranked University of California, Los Angeles.
CollegeSpring, an eight-year-old San Francisco–based nonprofit with offices in L.A. and New York, is trying to upend those inequalities by helping low-income high school students boost their SAT scores, navigate the college admission process and complete four-year degrees. While the organization can’t make up all the differences that exist between the rich and the poor, CollegeSpring’s 80-hour prep program has helped 15,000 high schoolers in California and New York improve their SAT scores by an average of 183 points, effectively erasing the statistical disadvantage usually seen among poorer students.
“The SAT isn’t a test that’s trying to trick or trap you. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate what you know how to do,” says Julie Bachur Gopalan, CollegeSpring’s senior vice president of strategy and impact. “You can put up a number that you can improve pretty quickly over a short period of time. You can’t do that with a GPA by the time you get to junior year.”
Garrett Neiman, CollegeSpring’s co-founder and CEO, agrees. Upping SAT scores, he says, is a “point of leverage in the system” that has been overlooked by other educational nonprofits. Meanwhile, for-profit test-prep companies, like the one Neiman once worked for, have cashed in.
The need for CollegeSpring, which is free for qualified students, became apparent during Neiman’s sophomore year at Stanford (the school accepted him after he nailed a perfect 2400 on his own SAT), when he befriended several classmates on full scholarship. “They all credited some catalyst: a teacher, parent, mentor or a specific college-access program,” he says. “On one hand, it was disheartening. From a meritocratic lens, if they came from an inner-city background, [their acceptance to Stanford] wasn’t possible without that help. But at the same time, it felt like if there were more or better programs, the gap could be closed.”
Neiman decided to quit his lucrative job as an SAT coach. Tutoring had been “a great way to pay for school,” he says, but only a rarified group had the money to sit in on his lessons. In other words, he’d been exacerbating an economic disparity. During a social entrepreneurship course at Stanford, Neiman and his co-founder, Jessica Perez, crafted a new test-prep curriculum. After three pilot programs that summer, CollegeSpring emerged.
Recognizing that the simple tricks taught by for-profit SAT companies (like knowing how many choices to eliminate before randomly guessing) wouldn’t sufficiently boost scores to erase the gap, Neiman devised a curriculum that would help students sharpen the academic skills they already possess: High school juniors and seniors would take 40 hours of SAT prep, tailored to the needs of those with low-income backgrounds; follow that up with four full-length practice tests; and then receive another 20 hours of instruction about the college application and financial aid processes.
“We meet our students wherever they are when they enter the program, which is often at a lower baseline score, with a lot less knowledge of the test and the way it’s scored and not much information about the college application process in general,” says Bachur Gopalan. “That means that our curriculum itself has a lot of scaffolding; it doesn’t assume they know certain concepts. What we do is remediation, then apply the core academic concepts in an SAT setting.”
Unlike Kaplan and other for-profit tutors, CollegeSpring’s curriculum is taught by classroom teachers. That personnel choice is important because students need a foundation of trust before they dive into the forbidding world of college admissions, says Bachur Gopalan, a former high school teacher. “They don’t want to learn from people who make them feel they are not smart,” she says. “They don’t want to feel like charity cases.”
Besides arming teachers with the curricular resources to coach low-income students, the nonprofit employs top undergraduates from area colleges to reinforce the teacher’s lessons in a small-group setting. In what’s known as “near-peer mentoring,” these students, who’ve successfully enrolled in college, instill confidence in the younger students who are just embarking on their post–high school journey.
That’s exactly how it went for Karimah Omer, a Yemeni immigrant who came to the US in 2000 to live with 17 relatives in a one-bedroom apartment in East Oakland. “Coming from a family of nine siblings, it was hard to think about my parents being able to afford college,” says Omer, who thought, if anything, her parents could save up for her younger sister’s education. But her CollegeSpring mentor, a junior enrolled at UC Berkeley, entranced Omer with her description of the university as another world unto itself — a message that resonated because the mentor was from Oakland too. “We’re so underestimated. We’re expected to get local restaurant jobs and live off that. The whole group was happy we had someone from our city, doing really great things, who went to Cal. She showed us what it means to be a leader for the community.”
With CollegeSpring’s help, Omer devoted her energies to improving her SAT score in the hopes a school would notice her determination. She watched the tallies on her practice test rise, “little by little,” until her final score on the real exam rose 325 points. With that score, Omer matriculated to Mills College, an all-female liberal arts school in Oakland. She’s now a sophomore with an eye toward earning a master’s to work with autistic children. She’s also paying it forward, having become a CollegeSpring mentor herself.
Since 2008, about half of CollegeSpring’s students have gone on to four-year colleges, which generally have higher graduation rates than community colleges. (Nationally, 52 percent of low-income students who finish high school enroll in either community college or four-year programs.) About 80 percent of those alumni, Neiman adds, are on track to finish their degree. With each additional correct answer on the SAT, thousands of first-generation college-bound students are springing out of their disadvantaged circumstances.
Bringing Foster Care Into the 21st Century
Since 1869, The New York Foundling has helped foster children and at-risk families. Established by the Sisters of Charity, the organization has expanded its programs and services to respond to the city’s greatest needs. It now serves more than 27,000 children, families and other individuals each year with educational and vocational programs as well as mental health and family support services.
But The New York Foundling’s newest initiatives tackle the digital divide. The Digital Inclusion Program, launched in 2015, provides basic tech education, free laptops and five years of internet service to foster kids between the ages of 12 and 19. The Foundling’s Tech Workforce Development Program, for ages 18 and up, selects promising youth from among 15 area foster-care agencies and enrolls them in tech-training programs at Per Scholas, Year Up or General Assembly.
“These youth are very capable,” says Olivia Jones, the tech program coordinator for The New York Foundling. “They just need a chance to prove it.”
Check out the above video to learn about one foster youth’s journey toward a fulfilling career in software development.
Democracy by Design
New York City’s housing court might not be the most obvious subject for a comic strip. But for tenants doing battle with landlords, the colorful, often whimsical illustrations contained in “Housing Court Help,” an animated booklet that educates renters on their rights, can mean the difference between staying in their homes and getting evicted. It’s just one of many creative projects developed by the Brooklyn-based Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit that uses art and design to increase civic engagement. Under the leadership of executive director Christine Gaspar, the small team works on roughly three dozen projects a year; most recently, a documentary about trash infrastructure, a bilingual guide for immigrants buying health insurance and a comic book about succession rights on apartment leases. NationSwell spoke with Gaspar at CUP’s offices in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood.
How have your views on leadership evolved over the course of your career?
I once had a colleague who went through an assertiveness training for women, where the tagline was “Die Before You Cry” — which is really intense! I thought about that during an emotional moment a while back, when I was talking to the staff. It was the day the ruling came down that there wouldn’t be an indictment in the Michael Brown case, and I just started crying. We ended up having a really powerful conversation. Afterward, two staff members emailed me saying how proud they are to be part of an organization where it’s okay to show you’re vulnerable, particularly around issues that are important to you. I realized then that there are other ways to show leadership. Namely, the ability to not just focus on the day’s workload, but also having the freedom to say, “You know, something really bad happened today, and we need to talk about it.”
What innovations happening in cities are you most excited about right now?
One cool thing that New York has been doing, and that CUP has been involved with, is participatory budgeting, where public funds are allotted according to how community members want to use them. Rather than representatives choosing for us, we’re voting ourselves, picking what the projects are and developing the proposals. New York City Council members have been doing this for the last two years, and it’s growing: more and more districts are doing it every year. It can be labor-intensive, but it really engages a lot of people, especially those who aren’t traditionally involved with political processes. There are more low-income individuals, people of color, undocumented people who normally have barriers to civic engagement, and younger people who aren’t old enough to vote. It’s broadening the scope of who gets to be civically engaged.
Where do you find your inner motivation?
The combination of getting to do things that are creative and visually expressive but that are also impactful and meaningful to people is so exciting. I feel really lucky to work with such an amazing group of people on the CUP staff. We also collaborate with a group of partners and many community organizers, all of whom represent different perspectives. Then there is our work with talented artists, designers and visual thinkers. It’s an interesting combination of people, fields and topics. There’s never a day where you feel like, “I got this. I already know everything that’s going on today.” It keeps things exciting.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I wish someone had told me to go home more. When I first started working here, CUP was really small — a three-person staff at that time — and it was the first time I was running an organization. I felt this incredible sense of responsibility, which I still do, but also fear of doing something wrong. I worked a lot of hours, because I was so nervous about making sure that I wasn’t missing something. The truth is that you’re always going to miss something. At the same time, one of the things I contributed to CUP is making it an organization where we don’t all work crazy hours. We work really hard, people are incredibly committed to the organization, but they also have families and hobbies and outside lives. It took me a while to make it sustainable as a place for me to work.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
When I started at CUP, there were only three of us on staff, and now there are nine. Every day, they go out and work on projects, and together, we continue to build this organization. That feels really good, that I played a big role in bringing us to where we are today.
What’s your favorite book?
If I’m being honest, I’d probably pick a children’s book, because I really like the illustrations in them. I feel like they speak to my work in that they use visual storytelling to achieve clarity and accessibility. Some of my favorites, which I think of often and now share with my child, are the Richard Scarry books, like “Busy, Busy World.”
What don’t most people know about you?
I’m from Waterbury, Conn., which used to be the brass capital of the world. When I was growing up there, the town was the brownfield, Superfund capital of the Northeast, with heavy-metal manufacturing and abandoned factories. I grew up in a fairly low-income, working-class family, and my parents are immigrants. I can relate on a personal level to a lot of the projects I work on today, because they’re consistent with my own experiences. These are qualities that aren’t visible to people, but I believe that my background has informed the way I work and the things I think about.
Artificial Intelligence Protects First Responders, How Birth Control Is Stopping the Spread of Disease and More
This NASA-Developed A.I. Could Help Save Firefighters’ Lives, Smithsonian Magazine
Disorienting scenes where a single move can be deadly is a common experience for both space rovers and firefighters. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built an artificial intelligence system for navigating unfamiliar landscapes, is sharing its technology with fire departments — warning first responders about hazards they might not notice in the smoke and flames.
Man v. Rat: Could the Long War Soon Be Over? The Guardian
A New York City subway rat carries a host of dangerous contagions, and its reproductive capacity — up to 15,000 offspring in a year — spread disease through city sewers and alleyways. A biotech startup in Flagstaff, Ariz., has developed a humane way to deal with Gotham’s infestation where rat poison has failed: birth control.
Generational Poverty: Trying to Solve Philly’s Most Enduring Problem, Philadelphia Magazine
Can Mattie McQueen, an unemployed 52-year-old raising three grandchildren in a largely unfurnished apartment, escape the destitution that’s dogged her ancestors since the postbellum years? One Philadelphia nonprofit is using what’s being called a “two- generation” model to assuage her financial stresses to make space for the children’s learning.