MALIKAH Self-Defense and Mental Health Classes in NYC Public Schools

In which borough should your idea take place? Queens

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

West Queens (Astoria, LIC, Elmhurst, etc.)

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

Youth

Limited English proficient individuals

Low income individuals

Black, Indigenous, and POC

Describe the challenge you want to address:

Everyone deserves to feel safe. MALIKAH proposes a self-defense and mental health series for parents, teachers, and students across NYC public schools in Queens. According to the New York City Department of Education, there were 45,000 incidents of violence reported in NYC public schools during the 2022-2023 school year. This represents a 15% increase from the previous year. Working-class young people and girls are particularly at risk of violence, with rates of victimization significantly higher than for other groups. We continue to see a rise in hate-based violence and gender-based violence impacting hundreds of people in our communities. We want to build a Queens that is safe for all through community-based anti-violence education.

Describe your idea and approach to address the challenge:

Safety through Self Defense Programs: MALIKAH self-defense programs train members of our community in verbal de-escalation, physical safety, bystander intervention, online safety and conflict mediation. We will train parents, teachers, and students to facilitate safety programming in their own schools through our train-the-trainer model. Parents, teachers, and students will also have the space to discuss community safety issues and learn an array of physical and non-physical self defense skills to help them feel more confident in protecting themselves and others. We plan to engage hundreds of New Yorkers through our self-defense initiative.

Safety through Mental Health: Through community based MALIKAH mental health spaces we will create safe spaces for reflection, healing and relationship building. We know that anti-violence solutions require mental health interventions at scale. MALIKAH's healing spaces will equip parents, teachers and students with trauma informed facilitation skills and mental health guides so that they can host safe spaces in their own school spaces.

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

11103