Spring has sprung! The weather is getting warmer, the leaves are returning to the trees, and our teens want to share what they have been up to at YouthBridge-NY. Over the past few months, we have continued to see engaging dialogue and growth from our teens in our Skillbuilding Workshops and Social Action Committees. Keep reading to hear from our teens about how they relate what they have been learning in our program to their own lives.
MAKE A CHANGE AND BREAK CYCLES
By Aishah Awotubo Qasim
Image source: https://stringfixer.com/tags/debate
I applied to YouthBridge last year with so much enthusiasm that it was a leadership program. I was so fascinated as I have always wanted to be a leader, now not just any leader I’ve always been someone that wanted to make a change, and break cycles. To offer someone something however you need to be skilled and passionate about your way of helping. The place I feel I'm skilled at is hospitality, and making someone feel cared for. The best way for me to demonstrate this is through the health field. That's why upon joining YouthBridge I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join the Health Care Disparities committee, and dive deeper into the healthcare system. Not to my surprise, it has been just amazing, I have had the opportunity to look up various healthcare conditions in different parts of the world, and see how much of an impact status and race had on our healthcare provisions in America. Not only that, I have gotten to work with my mates, who are just as goal-oriented as me, if not, more.
One specific activity that stood out to me was when we had to debate and take a stance for or against the healthcare system in America. This activity stood out to me because during this debate, my peers brought up different countries' healthcare systems like Canada, Afghanistan, etc. This experience helped me learn that arguing on the least favorable side of a debate doesn’t hold your success. It taught me that every country is striving for their healthcare but America is choosing to deprive a certain group from getting a good one. As a whole, being part of the YouthBridge community and this committee has helped me learn to challenge the healthcare system in America. It has made me feel a greater sense of community, and also helped me see what a good leader is as I have perfect examples of leaders (my mentors). I look forward to gaining much more from this program, and I know it’s going to be awesome!
BRINGING A COMFORTABLE AND DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT
By Angelina Acevedo
A screenshot from the Criminal Justice Reform Committee’s session on the School to Prison Pipeline
I really appreciate how devoted YouthBridge is to bringing a comfortable and diverse environment. We handle heavy topics like environmental and criminal justice. Even though these topics can be heavy, we always learn how each of us can play our parts despite our ages. We have also talked about ways that we, as people, escalate and de-escalate situations, which is an important skill in the real world.
YouthBridge has three really outstanding committees that are both significant and relevant to today’s world. I joined YouthBridge because I am interested in becoming a lawyer when I am older, but specifically one that deals with criminology, which is why I applied for the Criminal Justice Reform committee. My favorite memory from the committee thus far is the game that we played in person to learn about the school to prison pipeline. This activity really brought into perspective how education can lead to or influence incarceration, and other outcomes. It was appalling to see how just one bad choice can lead to an unjust lifestyle.
In the end, I wanted to learn how to be an active leader in my community and YouthBridge is definitely getting me there. We build new friendships and connections and will continue to have them for the next two years. Overall, this has been a positive experience.
A CALL TO SOCIAL ACTION
By Noah Baruch
A screenshot of what we’ve highlighted during the Food Justice Committee
One of the highlights of my junior year of high school thus far has been being part of YouthBridge-NY. The organization has allowed me the opportunity to connect and communicate with new faces and break down barriers in a judgment free arena of acceptance. Being amongst a group of young leaders in a diverse environment has given me the chance to explore and delve into community issues that I had not yet had the opportunity to fully understand. One such issue is food insecurity. As part of the social action committee focused on food justice, I am learning about injustice in a way that empowers me to take a leadership role in both improving peer awareness as well as taking actionable steps in actual future prevention. Food security is a public health crisis across America. It is a largely neglected issue of great importance. There are so many families that lack access to adequate healthy food causing devastating effects leading to obesity, mental health problems, hunger, and diseases like hypertension and diabetes.
In order to design appropriate interventions with successful outcomes for diverse populations, it is essential that people have an understanding of the problem. Food policy education is of utmost importance in fixing this problem. Hunger and food insecurity are pervasive throughout New York City impacting more than 1 million New Yorkers even before the COVID 19 pandemic which of course greatly exacerbated the already dire situation. Food insecurity and poor access to healthy food disproportionately impacts underserved communities of color.
As part of the Food Justice Committee, we were fortunate to hear from the founders of Foodstream Network. What started as a pandemic project resulted in a tool for hunger relief. These two innovators created a social networking platform to simplify the way nourishing food moves through the community. It is a way for those in need to connect and collaborate with local food services, community groups and public institutions. Foodstream has opportunities for community groups to access donations, funds and food supplies. Farms and gardens can find organizations looking to purchase fresh produce. Restaurants can give back by providing healthy meals to organizations on greater scales. Hearing from community leaders on projects like Foodstream is truly inspiring and allows me to understand that anyone can work hard and make a difference when problems and issues are properly examined and understood. I look forward to my continued education and call to social action as part of YouthBridge-NY.
TAKING THE STEPS TOWARDS ADVOCACY
By Stefan Inderbitzin
Advocacy 101 at Mercy College
On February 17th, we, the YouthBridge Fellows, met at Mercy College to listen and learn from the Citizens’ Committee for Children about advocacy. Based in New York, the CCC believes in empowering advocates through in depth research into market trends, community opinions, scientific data, and more; voter outreach and registration; communities organization and mobilization; and the creation of platforms that can allow all people to share their voice.
The representatives from CCC started by asking what advocacy means. While being a seemingly simple question, we soon realized that there was much more to advocacy than first thought. Advocacy is both organizing hundreds of thousands to fight for civil rights and telling a friend how kind another friend is. The discussion led to a shared understanding that advocacy is the set of tools from which average citizens can affect change. That advocacy and organizing is the “people’s” response to lobbying.
We then talked about how the CCC has been advocating for summer programs for New York City’s children as a tool to look into the steps necessary for change. The CCC, along with other organizations, compiled research into summer learning loss, along with talking to low income members of the New York community to hear how underfunded after-school and summer programs affects students. Using social media and protests, the CCC has helped spread the word, and still seeks to do more. We then learned about Participatory Budgeting, which allows community members to directly vote on a project from a preset budget, allowing people to directly affect their communities.
Towards the end, we discussed how to find the people who retain power in various problems and how to work with and around them to create change. We ended with an activity in which we were given a problem and had to figure out a plan to solve it. This plan started with compiling information, by surveying community members, researching any relevant data, and anything else of importance. Then, using the information we gathered, we had to figure out who is affected by the issue and who maintains power to fix the issue. Then we had to work through solutions that involve all who will be affected by the changes.
For my group’s scenario, Jahric and I had to deal with mass amounts of trash spread around the city. It was quite interesting because there are so many potential causes and solutions. The increased waste could be caused by failure by the sanitation department, increased consumption by the community, or many other causes. Because of that, our process was unclear, but we worked through it. I was very impressed by how in-depth we got, and learning how accessible change can be.
The Citizens’ Committee for Children presented clear and detailed information on creating change, which can only serve to benefit us both during our time in YouthBridge and for the rest of our lives. To me, the most important takeaway was that because everyone’s perspective is important, everyone should have the right and duty to be an advocate. That it is important to create spaces in which all people can directly affect the world.