Help 1000 Low-Income Youth Lead the Way to Justice

This summer, RAP has focused on making sure all aspects of programs are organized for the 2019-2020 academic year. We hope to keep setting up systems and tools so young people and facilitators can keep created magic with the resources provided to them, with your help! This summer we have worked alongside interns on budgets, updating the curricula and creating an alumni program.

 

Some of our amazing interns this summer include -- Grace, who has been working using data collected from our Young Fatherhood Initiative to create a report to share with partners to keep this collective going. Crystal has been working on updating different statistics, laws, and policies. She shares “This has helped me with my knowledge about the different issues going on today, and how things are problematic in the world which makes me great to intern at the Resilience Advocacy Project.” RAP has also worked with Kimberly who was able to practice her Spanish more by translating important documents from RAP curricula for facilitators. Also, there is Evan who is in charge of creating the foundation for our alumni program. He has been reaching out to our alumni network as well as other non-profit organizations to learn from their experience to better navigate what resource and opportunities we should provide to our youth. Finally, there is Boris who has been working on some of RAP’s finances, he has worked with our staff on creating a budget sheet for the academic year.

 

You can only imagine how hard everyone is working and we are so excited to celebrate all their hard work at RAP’s Open House, which is August 15, from 5 till 7 pm at Kimoto Rooftop lounge (216 Duffield street). You are more than welcome to RSVP for this event here (bit.ly/rapopenhouse). 

Links:

• RAP open house RSVP

RAP's record fourteen Youth LEAP programs are finishing strong! All the groups are having groundbreaking conversations about Mental Health, Relationship Violence, Police Interactions and Access of Higher Education. The young people are participating in conversations about self-acceptance and the need to be comfortable in one's skin in order to successfully move towards social change. They have advocated for themselves through pins, T-shirt campaigns, poster campaigns, and social media campaigns.

One of our facilitators from this semester shares: “When I first enter a space I always practice open-mindedness and allow the young people to be themselves. In the beginning, there is always some resistance but after they see me for 2 weeks they start to wait for me and just eager to talk to me. At GWS I noticed the shift when the group gave me a nickname of Ms. Leo due to my zodiac sign. That was their sign of acceptance towards me. After that, they couldn’t wait to tell me how they are doing and just talk to me. At RAP we make sure to allow time at the end of each session to allow the young people to talk to us if needed. At the end of my group, one of the boys literally teared knowing that I wouldn’t be coming back. My honesty and my consistency and lack of judgment allowed for my acceptance into their space.

An afterschool YouthLEAP program located in East New York, Brooklyn for High School aged participants. The young people identified as Latino and Black, not African American because their families are born and raised in the United States of America. A young female was a youthLEAPer and she learned through RAP that technology abuse is real and that harassing someone through social media is not okay. As an impact project they performed a skit about dating abuse specifically using phones. The message that they portrayed was that having access to phones allows teens to bully one another even if they are in a romantic relationship.

At the end one of the boys, Isaiah, age 14 yelled out “ Stop letting it slide at school, it aint our culture”.”

What's next...

We're excited to further honor the young people from all of our programs so follow RAP on Facebook, Instagram to virtually meet some of our current young advocates and alumni. You can hear from them directly about the work they've done with RAP as well as their hopes for RAP as we celebrate our 11th year of youth-led work. With your support, RAP is planning to expand our programs to serve twice as many of New York City's low-income youth, so. keep an eye out as more updates coming your way!

Thank you for your support and partnership!