Upcoming Events
Bronx Impact Food Access Collective
November 24 at 12:30pm
This group of community advocates is working to realize a collective vision of food justice for all Bronx residents by identifying policy and programmatic strategies to address the structural inequities which repress equitable access to food and nutrition. The group meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 12:30pm.
Family Child Care Collective Response Convening
November 30 at 1pm
Join family child care providers and advocates as they strive to streamline resources and communication across NYC to support the workforce that provides early education to our youngest children!
Healing-Centered Schools Community of Learning
December 1 at 2pm
Interested in supporting the mental health and well-being of students as they return to school and navigate online learning? This group meets to discuss best-practices related to creating healing-centered schools and gain insights from SBRT’s healing centered schools pilot.
Partner Corner
New York Public Library: Morrisania Branch
Raising Readers
Raising Readers is a book club program for adults aimed at promoting reading in homes and the community. Contact Edwin Scott or Jasmine Morera to enroll.
NYC Comptroller’s Office
The Comptroller’s Office and A Better Balance are surveying New Yorkers about flexibility in their workplaces. This survey will allow the City to understand how New Yorkers’ relationships to work and family are changing. COVID-19 has upended the experience of work, and we are also tracking the outcomes of new protections codified in City and State law. The survey data will help identify policy recommendations and gain a fuller picture of the New York City workforce.
Complete the survey by clicking here.
Welcoming Mariel Charles: SBRT’s Collective Impact Manager
Mariel Charles is a native-Bronxite with a deep dedication and love for the advancement of student voices at every level. As a former middle-school teacher, Mariel combined her love of language and appreciation for history to provide students with Language Arts and Civics instruction that was relatable to their lived experiences and conducive towards activism and change-making within their collective communities. Mariel brings experience working in the non-profit, philanthropic, and government sectors, and is eager to see how relationships formed between each of these sectors can lead to transformational change in her home borough. Mariel is a proud alumna of Duke University and University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.
Mariel will be spearheading our K-12 work and can be reached at mariel@risingtogether.org.
Honoring and Remembering Indigenous Communities
This week, many of us will break bread with friends and family, both virtually and in person, and reflect on all that we are thankful for. The act of gratitude is a practice highlighted by the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. However, Thanksgiving is also a reminder of the genocide of millions of Indigenous people and communities across North America, the continued oppression of Indigenous communities, and the reality that we occupy stolen land.
This week we lament the ways in which white supremacy, racism, and other vehicles of oppression continue to impact Indigenous people while also extending our gratitude to our partners who continually show up to denounce and dismantle systems of oppression.
Find out what land you’re occupying here and learn more about the history and genesis of Thanksgiving here.
Transgender awareness week
On November 20, 1999, transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith started what we now recognize as Transgender Day of Remembrance - a day to honor the memory of transgender people whose lives were taken by anti-transgender violence. The Human Rights Campaign estimates that at least 37 transgender or gender non-conforming individuals have been killed in the United States this year — the majority being Black and Latinx transgender women. It is estimated the number of instances is greater due to these crimes being under and misreported. We remember the following individuals who were killed in NYC:
Lexi, a 33 year old transgender woman who was fatally stabbed in Harlem on March 28.
Dior H Ova (also known as Tiffany Harris), a Black transgender woman who was fatally stabbed in the Bronx on July 26.
During a time when educators and advocates are doing their best to creatively touch base with students, we are mindful of the increased sense of isolation transgender youth and students experience. LGBTQ+ students tend to exhibit greater depressive symptoms, increased rates of suicidal ideation, and higher rates of attempted suicide compared to cisgender students (Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey). Additionally, reports by the NYCLU regarding violation of transgender students’ rights in New York State schools mirror national surveying tends finding:
73.6% of transgender students reported verbal harassment in schools based on their gender expression.
75% of transgender youth did not feel safe in their school
We envision a Bronx where all youth, regardless of their gender and sexual identities, can thrive and reach their full potential without fear of discrimination or violence. We celebrate the recent success of non-binary and transgender New Yorkers being able to obtain a driver’s license with appropriate gender identification. Though Transgender Awareness Week and the Transgender Day of Remembrance have passed for the year, we can always learn how to better support the LGBTQ+ community in the work we do.
The Bronx Borough President’s Office has compiled a list of helpful resources you can find here.
Additionally, you can catch a glimpse into the incredible work NYC activists are doing by checking out Fierce, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Black Trans Media (to name a few).
For those who work in a school setting, the DOE has set guidelines to support transgender and gender expansive students.