Make the Road New York

The Youth Power Project at Make the Road NY supports youth between the ages of 14 and 21 in:

Leading community change efforts on issues of concern to them
Developing critical skills in the areas of leadership, literacy, group work, community organizing, and self expression
Setting and meeting ambitious personal and academic goals

Our work occurs in four program areas:

I. Youth-Led Organizing on issues of concern to low-income immigrant youth

Education reform: In collaboration with a handful of other youth organizing groups citywide, our youth members in Bushwick have established the Urban Youth collaborative, a citywide network of youth organizations that are working together to address the need for safe and secure school environments, increased support for college access programs, and much-needed school construction. We anticipate that this work will crossover into Queens in the coming months.

Gentrification: In the face of rising rents and displacement of low-income families, youth members in Bushwick are documenting the progress of gentrification in our community and developing a youth-led response to its ill effects on their families and neighbors.

Community policing: In the wake of the unlawful arrest of over 30 young people in the Bushwick community, our youth leaders have joined together to develop a campaign strategy to address issues related to police harassment and profiling. The campaign will likely lead to the formation of a community monitoring committee to review neighborhood complaints against the local precinct and advocacy for legislation to reform the city’s dysfunctional Civilian Complaint Review Board.

The DREAM Act: For years, our youth leaders in Queens have been at the forefront of efforts to ensure access to college for undocumented students. Their advocacy, focused at the federal level, occurs in collaboration with other youth organizations citywide with support from the New York Immigration Coalition.

II. Arts & Media Programs

Our Arts & Media Programs bring the voices of immigrant and low-income youth to the fore, support our youth leaders in more deeply exploring the issues on which we organize, and provide deeply engaging opportunities for youth to develop skills of group work, literacy and self-expression.

To date, our Arts and Media Progams include a quarterly youth-written newspaper titled The Word on the Street, a film production project called Ojo de Agua Productions (Eye of Water Productions), the Bushwick Social Justice Theater Collective, and a photography project called Soñando con Cameras.

Our Arts and Media Resident Facilitators are selected based on their professional and activist experience. Each one works with a group of young people at one of our sites over an academic year during afterschool and weekend hours, to complete project-based work on issues related to our ongoing organizing campaigns. Our central Arts & Media program staff provide support to them to ensure that the work produced by the young people is informed and strengthened by our organization’s ongoing work and over all mission, that it effectively integrates literacy building techniques, that they can learn from and be inspired by one another, and that their projects are truly driven by the vision and ideas of our youth leaders. Additionally, the we bring together these facilitators and the groups they work with periodically to share the work of these young people publicly.

III. In-School Programming

For the past four years, we have partnered with the Bushwick School for Social Justice, a new small school designed with the support of our youth and parent leaders. In the coming year we will deepen and expand this work, while developing a new partnership with Pan American International, a high school program which opened in the Fall of 2007 in Queens. In schools, our staff work to support students in exploring themes of social and economic justice, engage parents in the life of the school and community, and work alongside teachers in supporting their students’ success. In partnership with the Hunter College School of Social Work, we support several graduate student interns in working directly with students at these schools to bring our programming their to fruition. These interns work four days per week with teachers, parents and students and play a critical role in promoting school engagement with our organization’s programs among these stakeholders.

IV. Academic Support and College Access

In the Fall of 2007, Make the Road by Walking established a Student Success Center at theBushwick High School campus. Open to students from throughout the campus, the Center supports students with an array of services, with a primary focus on college exploration and college application. The Center will also eventually support the work of part-time academic support associates in each of our three community offices, who will work directly with the youth leaders active there, in order to support their successful transition to college. Because the Port Richmond community is made up largely of very recently-arrived Mexican immigrants and almost all of these recent arrivals must work, we anticipate that many of the youth with whom we will work in Staten Island will not be enrolled in high school. In that location, we will strive over the coming year to develop a program to draw these youth into educational opportunities as appropriate and support them in ways that they most need.

Make the Road New York is a multi-generational, base-building organization.

Like the adults with whom we work, young people who participate in all of our activities are oriented to our mission and encouraged to join our membership. Membership for youth under 21 is free, with a commitment to begin paying dues after one’s 21^st birthday. Youth members of Make the Road by Walking, like other members, may access our wide array of services, may elect representatives to our Board of Directors, and may participate in decision-making about our organization’s community organizing campaigns and other strategic questions.

At each of our sites, we introduce participants in our activities to the possibility of becoming "core members" of our project. Core members commit to attending activities with us at least twice per week, and based on their commitment and accomplishments, may graduate through our 4-tier leadership structure.