SBU’s mission is to develop the leadership of youth in the Northwest Bronx community who are concerned with the conditions in their neighborhood, interested in developing creative ways to address these problems in concrete ways, and believe in their own ability to build people power to hold all public officials accountable for the decisions they make. SBU’s leaders fight for educational justice, more jobs for youth and community residents, and for more community-based resources.
“Our money is spent on war while the concrete streets in our neighborhoods crack and crumble. Our education decays because there is a lack of resources in our schools and little motivation for the students. I live with struggles all around me. I feel like a prisoner in my own school. There are no jobs in the Bronx for a young person like me. In SBU, I watched mentors help youth move forward with their lives and then I became a mentor too. Now I want better lives for all of the youth. Together we can overcome challenges and break through the obstacles that are holding us back.”
--Elizabeth Vincent, SBU core leader
Major organizing activities in 2007:
In 2007, SBU began to work in new and exciting ways. As the base of core leaders has grown more experienced they have explored new and innovative ways to organize in schools and in the neighborhood. We now provide more training for middle and high school students and we are building better relationships with staff inside the schools. This has given our program a more diverse base of leaders who are organizing to make their schools better, some of them as young as the fifth grade!
Goal # 1: To open a Student Success Center in at least two high schools in the neighborhood
Outcome: For the past two years, SBU has worked as a member organization of a citywide group called the Urban Youth Collaborative to open a program called Student Success Centers. The main focus of an SSC is to increase high school graduation rates by creating a center on a school’s campus that acts as a “one stop shop for success.” The SSC will ideally house a guidance counselor, a social worker, a career counselor, and a college counselor in one location in a school that students can access both during the school day and after school. Our youth leaders have discussed this idea with the Principal Councils at Walton, Kennedy, and Roosevelt Campuses to identify which small schools could benefit from this program. Through an ongoing series of one-on-one and group meetings, we have started to work with the Principal at the Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy on the Kennedy Campus and the Principal at Teaching and Professions on the Walton Campus. We will be meeting with staff and students from both schools in the coming months to finalize plans for planned openings of the SSCs in 2008. In UYC, our negotiations with the city have been going well and they have already opened one SSC on the Bushwick Campus and have agreed to provide funds for one to open at the Lane Campus in Brooklyn. We have secured funding commitments from three private foundations to fund the SSC program: Gates Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and Deutsche Bank.
Goal # 2: Improve school safety in local schools and to open conflict mediation and peer mediation courses at local high schools and middle schools
Outcome: Last spring at PS/MS 20 we trained thirty fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in peer-to-peer conflict mediation. The students met on a weekly basis and were able to discuss their own personal conflicts and come up with creative ways to support each other. At Clinton High School, students have decided to work on a peer mediation program that will be available to all students.
Goal # 3: To open a pilot Art and Technology Program featuring a film class and a spoken word class
Outcome: SBU’s leaders have worked for three years to develop the concept for an art and technology center called BronXchanges. Students developed this idea by working with professionals from the Museum of Modern Art, Eyebeam, and artists they’ve met at the Bronx Museum of Arts and other community based arts institutions. Youth want the center to have an artist residency program that encourages community artists to work with people in the community to develop projects that integrate arts and technology fields using social justice themes. This year we completed an outline for two initial classes that will be run by youth in the spring. They will use the feedback they get from these first classes to structure the next phase of the program.
Goal # 4: Conduct a neighborhood campaign to turn the Old Fordham Public Library into a community youth center that expands SBU's current program and provides space for an Art and Technology Center and a Bronx Workers Center
Outcome: The youth leaders from SBU are in the forefront of a very important community development project in the Northwest Bronx – to reclaim the vacant Old Fordham Public Library as a new site for a youth and community center. The building is adjacent to the bustling Fordham Road shopping strip, the third largest neighborhood shopping district in New York City. Tens of thousands of youth travel along Fordham Road every week. It is critical that this old library remain a community asset (instead of being sold by the city to a developer who will lease to yet another jeans and sneaker store) given its unique location in the life of the Northwest Bronx community. On May 19th 2007, SBU held a community meeting on the issue, attracting more than 150 youth and adult community members who received commitments from State Assemblyman Jose Rivera and City Council members Joel Rivera, Oliver Koppell and Robert Jackson to support the transformation of this vacant building into youth and community center. They have held several community events promoting this project and collecting signatures of thousands of residents who want this library to be turned into a community center for our youth. They have also met with City College’s Architecture Department and they’ve agreed to work with us to complete a design for this new community youth center.
Major Victories in 2007:
Secured a commitment from Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf to open Student Success Centers in NYC public schools
Secured a commitment from Assemblyman Jose Rivera, City Council members Joel Rivera, Oliver Koppel, and Robert Jackson to support our campaign to turn the Old Fordham Library into a community youth center
Trained thirty fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in conflict mediation
Mobilized 200 community residents at a summer anti-violence speakout in Van Cortlandt park
Finalized a curriculum for film and spoken word classes to kickoff the BronXchanges art and technology program
Major Organizing Activities for 2008:
In 2008, our youth will be focused on gaining commitments from mayoral candidates to:
Open Student Success Centers in ten high schools throughout the city and support their ongoing growth and development with central funding from the DOE
Turn the Old Fordham Library into a community youth center
Open an art and technology center called BronXchanges
Support our May 2008 UYC youth conference with hundreds of students throughout the city
Contact info
Mustafa Sullivan, mustafa@northwestbronx.org, 718 584 0515 x242
