School to Prison Pipeline Prevention Program

In which borough should your idea take place? Manhattan

Do you have a specific neighborhood(s) in mind?

Harlem

Which audience(s) does your idea help? Select as many as apply.

Youth

Parents

Justice impacted individuals

Veterans

Low income individuals

Black, Indigenous, and POC

Older adults

Unemployed individuals

LGBTQ+ community

Immigrants and/or migrants

Public housing residents

People with disabilities

Describe the challenge you want to address:

Youth and young adults who struggle in school settings and/or are justice involved/gang affiliated/engaged in criminal activity, putting them at risk of incarceration.

Describe your idea and approach to address the challenge:

I would like to do a series of community engagement workshops, presentations, and performances, in school settings as well as public safe spaces, designed to:
-Train parents, educators, and young people on restorative practices.
-Teach the value of investing energy into education.
- Connect young people with professionals, creatives, and entrepreneurs to form mentorship opportunities.
- Open opportunities to explore creativity through the arts.
Ideally the initiative will open lines of communication between parents and leaders in the community with at risk young people in the population, to discuss pressing issues, celebrate the arts, create mentorship opportunities, and invite new possibilities to further personal growth that will steer them away from criminal activity. Combining 3+ decades of outreach work with being a full time creative/author/performing and visual artist, has allowed me to see success in doing this work with incarcerated young people, nyc homeless population, lgbtq youth, and low performing students. The implementation of this community building initiative in areas that are most impacted by crime, would increase academic performance and encourage creativity amongst high risk young people, lower the number of youthful offenders, decrease the overall crime rate in the community, and produce more culturally creative, forward thinking members of the community.

Write the zipcode that best represents your New York City community:

10030