We are pleased to announce that the Foundation has awarded six community-based organizations in New York City $25,000 to improve the quality of their youth programs. This year’s Youth Service Improvement Grantees are:
- Building Beats, which provides hands-on programs in DJing, music production, and entrepreneurship to help youth succeed in creative industries.
- Christodora, which provides opportunities for young people to learn about the environment and experience the natural world.
- JQY, which empowers Jewish queer teens and young adults to live healthy, joyful lives through culturally competent mental health services.
- The Maysles Institute, a Harlem-based nonprofit organization committed to community, education, and documentary film.
- The Sylvia Center, which aims to create healthy communities by educating young people and families through culinary programming that promotes health and well-being.
- Teens for Food Justice, which delivers STEM education, nutrition literacy, and food justice programming through hydroponic farming to middle and high school students.
The Youth Service Improvement Grants (YSIG) program supports activities to improve the quality of direct services for young people ages 5 to 25 in the five boroughs of New York City. The long-term goal of the YSIG program is to strengthen existing services by helping youth-serving nonprofit organizations address challenges or remedy problems at the point of service, where staff and youth interact.
Within its bbLeaders Creative Pathways program, which provides youth with one-on-one mentorship, Building Beats identified a lack of structured mentorship. Where mentorship within the Creative Pathways program currently develops organically through guest workshops and events, Building Beats aims to implement a structured one-on-one mentorship model. Each participant will be matched with an industry professional who will provide personalized feedback, creative guidance, and career insights.
Christodora’s Community of Rising Environmentalists (CORE) program provides small-scale learning opportunities for middle and high school students. After losing access to permanent facilities to run programming, CORE transitioned to a roving model, meeting in parks across the city. However, staff identified three key challenges with this model: short-term planning, repetitive content, and limited staff capacity and training. Christodora’s improvement project will address these issues by hiring a part-time Science Education Specialist to design a long-term curriculum for CORE, support CORE’s Saturday sessions, and encourage professional development for other staff.
JQY staff observed that its warmline, a confidential phone and text support service designed to provide emotional support, crisis intervention, and resource referrals, did not offer the capability to track information that might improve interactions and follow-ups with callers. At the same time, JQY’s support groups currently operate as open drop-in sessions, limiting structured progression and long-term benefits. Through their improvement project, JQY will transition to an advanced calling platform and establish structured support groups.
The Maysles Institute’s Vanguard DocMakers (VDM) – a documentary filmmaking program for youth impacted by systems of injustice – have historically worked with Licensed Creative Arts Therapists (LCAT) who do not directly specialize in filmmaking-related art therapy. As a result, staff noticed challenges in balancing therapeutic practices with technical film training, limiting student engagement and emotional growth. With this grant, VDM will develop a new curriculum that merges art therapy with filmmaking techniques to improve their programming.
At the Sylvia Center, while many of its educators have culinary and dietic backgrounds, they often do not have formal training in education. Similarly, educators with teaching backgrounds may lack culinary expertise. To address this existing skills gap and the resulting inconsistencies in program delivery, The Sylvia Center plans to implement a series of monthly training sessions for members of their education team.
Through feedback from educators, students, and school partners, Teens for Food Justice identified inconsistencies in curriculum delivery, classroom management, and farm operations. To improve on these shortcomings, the organization plans to develop a standardized training program for their Farmer-Educators. This will include a video-based training series and a four-day Farmer-Educator Intensive to provide all new and existing staff with a shared foundation of knowledge.
“We are impressed by the thoughtful and creative projects these organizations have proposed to strengthen the quality of their programming. As they carry out their work to provide critical services to youth across New York City, we look forward to witnessing how they grow over the grant period,” said Maya Simeon, who manages the YSIG program.
