A busy beginning...
We have started off the programming year with a bang! Beginning with our orientation retreat in August we welcomed new eleventh grade fellows into the Fellowship and twelfth grade Bridgers into their second year. Fellows and Bridgers have been busy attending skill-building sessions, committee meetings, hearing from our alumni, and joining together for team building and bonding activities. Read more below and check out some photo highlights of the year so far!
I found myself excited at the thought of my next two years with YouthBridge!
By Asha Lawrence
As the long, hot summer of 2019 was drawing to an end, there was one final thing to look forward to before I had to start thinking about school and the stresses of junior year - the overnight YouthBridge retreat. Having met a couple of the other fellows at the Popsicles in the Park event, I wasn’t going without knowing anyone, but I was definitely still nervous about what people would think of me and what the retreat had in store for us. However, these nerves were soon quelled when I arrived at the meeting spot and was met by smiling, friendly faces.
We kicked off the retreat with some awesome ice breakers and soon enough we were all laughing and engaged. A lot of the things I was initially worried about, such as learning names or making friends, seemed much less scary and I found myself excited at the thought of my next two years with YouthBridge. As someone who has only lived in New York for five years, it has been hard making friends outside of school but over the retreat, I was able to get to know some awesome teens, passionate about leadership and social justice just like me. A highlight of the trip for me was the bonfire where we all shared an object we felt was important to us - it was a great way to connect on a more personal level (and the smores were delicious!). We also had workshops on racism and discrimination in which we delved deeper into our unconscious biases and discussed our experiences in our schools and communities.
The retreat was a fantastic experience and made me ten times more excited to be a part of YouthBridge. Since then, I have got even closer to the other fellows and I am learning a lot in the Cultural Eye Committee.
Spotlight on...
Cultural eye
By Ilana Drake
Above is one of Ilana’s photos from her Cultural Eye collection!
Upon being accepted into the Cultural Eye group, I had thought we would simply look at photographs, discuss their significance, and, perhaps, connect these photos to the modern world. However, throughout the past four meetings, our group has bonded over potato chips and cups of water, while we discuss so much more than just the photos. We have learned a great deal about each other and our different communities that are all situated within the same city. Although our city prides itself on being a diverse melting pot, we have begun to realize that diversity does not necessarily mean desegregated or inclusive.
Viewing photographs and discussing them as a group has enabled us to practice our public speaking and have meaningful conversations based on particular details in a photo. Each of us has opened up about our challenges and hardships through our session ice breaker (at 5:05 pm), and this has highlighted our similarities, even if we attend different high schools and live in different neighborhoods that may only be separated by a single block.
One of our first tasks this fall was to depict our daily lives through a series of five photographs. We then were able to present these photos and provide a detailed explanation of the photos to the rest of the group. We certainly had a lot of laughs and giggles during that meeting as we all heard each other’s stories and began to establish our own community. Another assignment was to depict our families through photographs. We learned more about each other’s culture and home lives through this assignment, and some of us took videos, which enabled us to glimpse into that person’s life in more detail and depth.
In our last meeting, our assignment was to illustrate how our communities can overlap. New York City neighborhoods may dramatically differ simply by one city block, as being on one side (or the other side) of a given street or block may have dramatic implications with regard to being associated with a given neighborhood. While we are all separated by zip code, address, and school, we all come together when we gather at West 34th Street. When we take the subway or bus to and from school, we are crossing paths with others, who may be on their way to an unfamiliar destination that could be made more familiar with an ice breaker and a photo.
We have grown as a group and, during our last meeting, we had a long, authentic conversation about how our particular cultures are portrayed in the media. We discussed the pros and cons to social media, and we watched a video on how the Internet has changed us in ways we might not have anticipated.
Having to talk about these things in such an unguarded fashion lowered some walls
By Viyan Poonamallee
When I walked into the main space for Project Reach for the second time of the year, on the fourth floor of the what is quite possibly the shadiest building in Chinatown, I can’t say I was expecting much. The place had atmosphere, sure. The dimly lit hallway leading into a rickety graffiti smacked elevator that sounded like a microwave when it moved made it seem like we were entering a safehouse for the mob. This made for quite the ambiance and was—to put it with eloquence—totally rad, but my previous experience with the actual activity wasn’t anything special. As per routine, we did the usual light intermingling and team building exercises relating to some skills regarding either friendship or networking.
Honestly, it wasn’t anything particularly different compared to the other skill building workshops that we had at the YouthBridge office, so when we went back to Project Reach, I was expecting more of the same. However, that’s not what I got. For the first time, the session had a sense of intimacy. Rather than some TedTalk styled group work about career building, the topic was mainly on issues of homosexuality, and we had to speak about it on a very personal level.
Throughout the talk, we reflected on our own sexualities, our thoughts on bigotry against the LGBTQ community, and how those topics affected us in our own lives. Having to talk about these things in such an unguarded fashion lowered some walls that made our interactions somewhat duller before. For other sessions, the majority of YouthBridge members serve as coworkers at best—people that interact purely by a circumstantial assignment but for which who would never connect with each other. But for once, I felt like I understood my peers at the fellowship program at a deeper level. There was a degree of truly endearing honesty in the collective apprehension and eventual addressment of the topic, without the screen of social posturing segregating every interaction. That earnestness isn’t something I get to see very often from this group, but I hope to see more of it in the future.
Winter Retreat at Escape the Room NYC
On Sunday, January 26, YouthBridge-NY teens enjoyed a day of mysteries and puzzles at Escape the Room NYC! Everyone braved the winter weather to enjoy a Sunday afternoon of bonding. Fellows and Bridgers put their brains together to solve each problem to figure out how to escape the room. It was so fun to see everyone working together to win and make it through the rooms! We definitely could not have done it without each other! Check out some photos below:
