Brooklyn scored another victory! An initiative focused on fostering the development of the next generation of leaders made a splash in New York’s most populous borough. And this latest initiative involved some of Brooklyn’s best and brightest non-profit organizations.
Belong Brooklyn, one of the Social Justice Fund‘s (SJF) many initiatives, is granting four distinct, Brooklyn-based organizations $25,000 each. The SJF’s endowment comes in recognition of each organization’s efforts in providing mentorship, career mobility, and emotional solace for the next generation of leaders. Partnering with organizations that work with the youth has been a big part of the SJF’s mission, and this latest partnership allows them to take that to a new level.
“We wanted to make sure that organizations that are helping our young people become our next
generation of leaders are supported in a tangible way,” Gregg Bishop, Executive Director of the SJF, said. “Every summer, we find a cause, and reward grants to organizations that are doing the work.”
Bishop has made his mark in dedication to low income neighborhoods, aligning his energy into growing palpable infrastructures that are at the disposal of those who require it the most. Bishop, who has an impressive resume of leadership positions in nonprofit sectors, stressed the importance of outreach to these organizations.
Brooklyn’s champions
Pratt Institute looks to take emphasis on the artistic and technological sensibility of the local youth with their inspiration. Pratt Young Scholars, the university’s need-based, three year program, couples general college readiness with an intense focus of the art and design space to motivated high school students.
“When [people] have children, the first thing they want to give them is crayons, play dough, and little blocks,” Frances Bronet, President of Pratt told The Local W. “Little by little, that creativity is eroded, but from the cradle, children are creative. The question is how do we build a way to think about art and engagement…while thinking about professional practices.” Bronet pressed upon the fostering of an inherent trait that commonly goes dormant, then extinct — creativity.
Having served as dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon, as well as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Illinois Institute of Technology, Bronet has been at the forefront of interdisciplinary learning for almost four decades. As president of Pratt, Bronet is also considering the growing influence of artificial intelligence on art, design, and education.
“This is an incredible time; in this moment of AI,” Bronet said. “These kids are extraordinarily skilled. They know how to make things… they’re in immersive learning practices. They’re welding, and they’re drawing, all while being engaged in critical citizenship, so they actually understand the world that they live in and what difference [their art] makes.”
Given her long tenure within the field, Bronet’s appreciation for arts and tech has fully crystallized, finding the utility of the disciplines in every faction of life. “It’s exciting and almost poetic to be at a basketball game right now… they’re doing math on that floor every single time. They’re making calculations every single time, every second. That kind of sense is exactly what we do in the making of art and scientific breakthroughs.”
Andre Richey’s initiative, New Leaders Hoops, was formed from a particularly intimate, deeply
rooted connection to the sport of basketball. Based in Red Hook, New Leaders Hoops looks to
share and foster that kind of intimacy with the next generation.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was young,” Richey said. “My mother played college ball. It was just embedded. The community I come from is a second home, a second language. It was mandatory that my impact was this.” Richey, who blossomed into an All-State caliber star for his prep school in Indiana, eulogized about his formative years and his lifelong relationship with basketball, citing it as a transcendent “spoken word” that can be shared by everyone.
“After I graduated college and knew what I wanted to do, I figured that if there’s kids experiencing what I’ve experienced, I would want to pay it forward.” Richey continues, “We’ve all got a story, but I want basketball to be the icebreaker to be able to share those stories.”
With each foundation’s imperative to undergird the burgeoning crop of artists and athletes,
PureLegacee has set themselves upon a mission to take specific care of perhaps the most
disenfranchised group — young women. Incarceration, foster care systems, and general systemic
trauma have all been major issues that have left young women without recourse to heal or thrive. That is why Naquasia Jones, executive director at PureLegacee, made the commitment to
putting the needs of these girls on the forefront of the public domain.
“I had an inside connection,” Jones starts, chuckling at the circumstance’s beginning. “I was very persistent, until I got a meeting with Gregg. He saw the vision of what we do here… which is to serve young women who have been negatively impacted by systems and institutions.” Just as Richey and his foundation, Jones cites the connectivity of her own experiences that mirror that of the young women in which she encounters every day.
“When you see a young woman from when she enters our doors, she may have been through something. But in the end, she was able to overcome it because she had a family to support her. That’s what ‘legacee’ [legacy] is.”
A commitment to the future
Belong Brooklyn is bigger than a fiduciary responsibility. It is instead an unwavering, full-time
commitment to the mentorship and guidance of the borough’s bright potential. The main obstacle
has never been the lack of effort, but rather the resource and platform to give programs
the legs to simply do more.
$25,000 is, indeed, a generous sum, but the potential outcomes are simply invaluable. That’s
where the Social Justice Fund continues to keep their efforts — on the children of the greater
Brooklyn area.