The transition to middle school was not easy for one Arthur Project mentee, Chance. Being on the autism spectrum made a completely new environment overwhelming for Chance.
“Chance was really lost when he started middle school. He had to make all new friends, and everything was so different for him,” his mom Cassandra explained. “I cannot even tell you how thankful I am for The Arthur Project. They gave him a real sense of belonging, having the chance to connect with other kids on Saturday outings and then having a mentor to talk to…not just on weekends, but during the school day, was invaluable to him.”
Chance participated in many Arthur Project activities, traveling all over the city on the train, going to museums and visiting places his mom says he never would have had the opportunity to visit. Chance grew by leaps and bounds in 6th grade and became very close to his first Arthur Project mentor.
In 7th grade, Chance was matched with a new mentor who he says was like an older brother to him. His mom, Cassandra, also joined our pilot Family Advocacy Program, which provides whole family support to the caregivers and families of our mentees. Cassandra and Chance were both working so hard and making so much progress. Then the world turned upside down.
COVID-19 closed the schools and Chance was faced with another big and sudden transition.
“Chance cried when the school closed, and he couldn’t meet with his mentor. Chance never cries for anyone. To me that was such a testament to the program” his mom said.
Shortly after schools closed, The Arthur Project quickly adapted to an all virtual mentor program.
“When Chance got to start meeting with his mentor and being connected, that was truly a God-send. I got very sick with the virus and The Arthur Project was a real support,” Cassandra said. “Not only did they support Chance, but we received a financial grant for groceries and necessary items and got a laptop for Chance’s schooling. I was amazed by how supportive The Arthur Project was in such a dark time. They went above and beyond for our family and more than I ever expected. It felt like The Arthur Project truly cared about us. They were like family.”
Jasmine and her children’s story is one of strength and dedication.
In 2017, Jasmine was an expecting mother with two young children, living out of her car and struggling to make ends meet. Without a permanent home, Jasmine made the tough but necessary decision to move her two older children to North Carolina to live with their grandmother. Rather than feel defeated by this, Jasmine resolved to work with HABcore, a Pascale Sykes Foundation grantee, to help ensure her children’s return.
HABcore is a nonprofit agency dedicated to providing permanent housing and individualized support to low-income families, veterans, and individuals with special needs who have experienced homelessness. Part of HABcore’s mission is to help set goals to move families with children from crisis to stability. HABcore paired Jasmine with Stephanie, a Case Manager in HABcore’s Family Strengthening Initiative. The two collaborated on a plan to get Jasmine back on her feet, including finding a permanent place to live, a stable job to cover her living expenses, and setting financial goals.
The Strengthening Families Initiative uses the Whole Family Approach to support families with finding a permanent home and provides the tools for maintaining that home. The program encourages a healthy lifestyle for both caregivers and children and aligns objectives focused on improving children’s academic success and bolstering the family’s financial position. Recognizing that family members’ challenges and successes are interdependent, the Whole Family Approach addresses goals collectively to improve the entire family unit’s well-being.
HABcore helped Jasmine secure a safe and affordable home – her first step toward family reunification and financial independence. Once settled, Stephanie helped Jasmine find work as a Certified Nurses Aid (CNA) to establish a steady income. Finally, Stephanie encouraged Jasmine to enroll part-time in a Licensed Practical Nursing program to build her resume and set the foundation for her career. By connecting Jasmine to the right resources, Jasmine achieved her goals of becoming financially independent, making significant progress toward paying down her debt, and establishing a home of her own to raise her family.
“Truly, if it wasn’t for HABcore, my babies still wouldn’t be with me,” Jasmine said. “It is because of this program that we are all together under one roof, and that is what I am thankful for the most. I can’t thank them enough.”
Two years later, Jasmine continues working as a CNA while excelling in her Licensed Practical Nursing Program. She’s found a stable partner to help raise her family, and her oldest daughter is thriving in her school’s Gifted and Talented program. Upon graduation from her nursing program, Jasmine plans to continue her education to become a Registered Nurse and is working toward a promotion.
Parenting is a difficult job that receives little-to-no training. For many working families, the pressures of everyday life on top of the demands of raising children can be difficult and that the pandemic has only added to this stress. Parents Anonymous of New Jersey – Father Time (Father Time) offers a community where parents can find strength and hope to get through these difficult times together.
Hector first joined Father Time through an invitation from his friend, and long time member of the organization, J. J continuously spoke of Father Time’s mission and his positive experience with them for three years before Hector agreed to join him for a meeting.
Since then, Hector has joined three Father Time hosted events and formed lasting relationships with other members along the way. Parents and families, like Hector’s, have been left reeling after the effects of the pandemic caused schools to close, after school activities to be cancelled, and introduced new financial uncertainty due to job losses. Losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic caused Hector to seek more support and pushed him to attend Father Time’s weekly support group meetings.
“The casual format along with a more serious focus on family stresses, is comforting to me,” he said of his experience attending the weekly community-based support groups for parents. “As the man of my family it’s hard to acknowledge my feelings of fear, sadness, and isolation [due to the pandemic], but these settings make it easier because I’m speaking with men who feel the same way.”
In addition to needing support for himself, Hector also sought out advice on how to support his five children, all under the age of 14, who were struggling to complete school assignments remotely. While Hector and his wife attempted to work with the children, the remote work and digital learning environment was especially difficult for two of his children who have learning and behavior problems.
This added stress on Hector and his wife was profound. Choosing to attend the weekly father support groups was the first step in changing his situation. Stress relief from the meetings and learning of other parenting experiences through his new Father Time “brothers” has enabled Hector to work through his stress and to be a better support to his children at home as they work through remote learning. Hector now looks forward to the support and ideas he gets from the men in his weekly meetings.
Bigs & Littles NYC Mentoring is not only a place where children thrive — it’s a place where moms who feel isolated know they will find a community of support. It’s where moms can access the resources they need — to be strong for themselves, and for their children.
Two years ago, Martha came to Bigs & Littles NYC a strong willed, single mom of two boys ages 10 and 4, all sharing the living room of their grandmother’s one bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side. Martha was struggling to cope financially, and striving to be the best mother she could be. Over the past two years, joining Bigs & Littles has meant Martha’s family was slowly growing. Dilim, Martha’s Bigs & Littles Social Worker, got to know her well – her strengths, her needs, and her aspirations, and soon became a close sounding board and trusted resource.
Martha’s son Kevy, a bright, fun loving boy, was struggling to focus in school, given a diagnosis that made learning difficult. With the help of Bigs & Littles NYC, Martha advocated for Kevy to move to a school that offered a smaller class size and a more conducive learning environment; where he is now thriving. Dilim found Kevy an amazing Big Brother, George. Since being matched with his mentor, Kevy has had the opportunity to try new things, like exploring different cuisines, and seeing the view of the city skyline for the first time when they visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. With George now a part of their family, Kevy has made tremendous strides socially, emotionally and academically.
As Kevy began to flourish, his mom felt inspired to grow as well. She knew that she too would benefit from some extra support and soon enrolled in our newly launched Mentoring Moms Program, and Martha’s family grew to include her own caring volunteer mentor, Kate, whois helping her reach her life goals.
“Kate has been such an amazing support system for me. Without her I would not have been able to prioritize taking care of myself. She holds me accountable. She is always there to give me advice and encouragement. I feel comfortable talking to her about anything.”
Martha sought out a new job and is now also enrolled in a GED/college program, determined to obtain her Associates degree in Paralegal Studies. Dilim connected Martha to a community resource for professional clothing and interviewing tips, and Martha has attended several Bigs & Littles NYC workshops on career development, healthy relationships and self-care. Thanks to Kate, Martha’s family has grown even stronger.
Comments Off on How to Adjust Messaging in Current and Changing Environments
The Pascale Sykes Foundation hosted its annual grantee conference virtually this year on September 22, 2020. The conference centered on how grantees can adjust their messaging in current and changing environments as the funding landscape quickly changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion topics included: how to talk to donors, ways to use communications as a tool for donor engagement, and how to fundraise in a COVID-19 world, among other topics. Thank you to all the presenters for sharing their insights and lessons learned! Watch the videos below to catch the day’s insightful presentations. Reference the agenda listed under the videos to know at what time in the video each presentation occurs. Click here to download the presentation slides.
Agenda
Video 1
00:02:15
Welcome/Introductions/Agenda Review
Richelle Todd-Yamoah
00:11:08
Update on the Foundation
Fran Sykes
00:30:49
Masterpiece Advertising
Phyllis Lacca, President
00:35:59
Question and Answer
00:44:52
How to Talk to Donors
Andy Carroll, Moderator; Sheena Solomon Executive Director, The Gifford Foundation; Caroline Brown Wertz Senior Director of Foundation Programs, The Scheidel Foundation; Question and Answer
Jackie Edwards, Moderator; Vidhya Kelly Executive Director, Bigs & Littles NYC Mentoring; Tamanna Vaswani Chief Development Officer, Bigs & Littles NYC Mentoring; Cori Solomon Executive Director, Appel Farm Arts & Music Center; Question and Answer
Video 2
00:00:00
How to Pivot in Fundraising continued…
00:46:16
Break
00:50:40
How to Get on a Donor’s Radar
Jeanie Lazerov, Moderator; Michael Gower Executive Director, United Way of Gloucester County; Andy Frazier Executive Director, Community Foundation of South Jersey; Question and Answer
Thanks to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to NJ TRANSIT, Atlantic County has received a grant to support transportation efforts in the county. Atlantic County is a member of the Atlantic County Community Shuttles Work Group, a collaborative, cross-sector effort led by our grantee Cross County Connection Transportation Management Association. The grant will supplement funding from the Pascale Sykes Foundation to ensure the much needed Route 54/40 Community Shuttle continues running smoothly for the long-term.
In a statement, NJ TRANSIT announced it received $1.4 billion in funding to continue providing public transit service throughout New Jersey. Counties, like Atlantic County, who are subrecipients of NJ
TRANSIT’s programs are eligible for some of this funding in order to reimburse operating costs and lost revenue, as well as purchase protective gear and equipment for operational personnel. The rural transportation element of the CARES Act allowed NJ TRANSIT to allocate $245,000 to Atlantic County for the Route 54/40 Community Shuttle operation. These crucial funds will help maintain a much needed reliable source of transportation for families in the region to access jobs and other essential services, during the pandemic and beyond. Launched by Cross County Connection TMA in collaboration with South Jersey Transportation Authority, Atlantic County and First Baptist Church of Richland, the Route 54/40 Community Shuttle is a free deviated route service serving Hammonton, Hammonton Rail Station, Buena Vista Township, Folsom, Collings Lakes, Newtonville, Buena Borough, Buena, Landisville, Minotola, and Richland. Learn more about this valuable shuttle program here.
This piece was originally in The Bronx Times, you can find it here. By Jason Cohen
The Arthur Project, based in The Bronx, has found a way to redefine youth mentoring in this new era.
Cofounded by Liz Murray, whose life story was made into a book and Emmy-nominated television film, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story,” The Arthur Project uses chronic absenteeism as a basis for program eligibility, provides therapeutic mentoring services to middle school students and their families to work toward more positive outcomes in school and at home.
Pascale Sykes Foundation is a supporter of The Arthur Project and helped make their transition to online programs during the COVID-19 crisis.
Most students, many Black and Latinx, remain enrolled in the program this summer and are working with clinically-trained mentors on activities like one to one mentoring, moderated discussions on current news and town hall-style events, where students analyze and present on issues that are important to them, such as racial justice, police violence, unemployment, education and housing.
“We are very much driven from the bottom up,” said Jessica Greenawalt, executive director of the program. “We take very seriously what kids, parents and our school partners think. These relationships are like two-way relationships. Everybody benefits from it in some way.”
Greenawalt spoke with the Bronx Times about the program and its impact on kids. The Arthur Project, which has partnered Richard Green middle school and the North Bronx School for Empowerment, uses graduate social work student to mentor teens and they meet one to two times a week and on Saturdays to do community outreach.
“We know students who are chronically absent are likely to have their challenges,” Greenawalt explained.
While it is not easy to get them all to enlist in the program, the ones that do get to participate reap the benefits, she said.
According to Greenawalt, a major reason why the Arthur Project has been successful is that the mentors are not volunteer based, but rather young adults who are trained to deal with kids.
Each student has a different mentor over their three years in the program.
“We have these committed social worker students who are going to stay with us,” she stressed.
When COVID-19 arrived in March, program organizers adapted and began to do everything virtually. Greenawalt said she and her colleagues were worried there would be less participation, but much to their surprise, the majority of the kids have been present.
She noted they are concerned about some families as the staff as not been able to reach them.
“It’s been an adjustment,” Greenawalt said. “We want to be able to address the needs of our students and families.”
The program has garnered such a reputation there is a waiting list to join.
Moms Vanessa Graciani and Cassandra Quick spoke about the impact it has had on their sons. Graciani’s son Raymond Dejesus is entering ninth grade and just finished the Arthur Project this past school year.
Graciani told the Bronx Times Dejesus was often late to school and bullied, so this gave him an outlet where he could communicate and feel good.
“He was really struggling and feeling bad about himself,” she said. “He’s very self conscious and hesitant to ask for help.”
Quick’s son Chance Lowrie is heading into eighth grade at Leaders of Tomorrow this fall and in his third year with the Arthur Project.
She feels the mentoring has given him “a sense of belonging” because it was hard for him to transition from elementary school to middle school. Quick stressed that having graduate students as mentors to her son has given her peace of mind.
“As a parent, you are nervous about who you hand your child over to,” she said. “For them to have mentors who are actually grad students, it makes you feel more comfortable as a parent.”
Take a moment to imagine your middle school self. What comes to mind first? Perhaps you think back on what it was like to adjust to a new school and academic pressures. Or you remember navigating difficult social situations with your friends, or the less than stylish haircut you had when you were 12. For many adults, middle school years are not a time looked back on fondly.
Now, imagine being a middle schooler in today’s world. An already isolating time of physical, mental and emotional growth is amplified by a global pandemic that’s keeping young students at home, away from their friends, teachers and support networks. Many young people are wondering about their place and future in a country that’s experiencing a national reckoning on racial, social and economic justice. Young people of color who live in marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by these challenges and uncertainty.
Jessica Greenawalt sees the impact these stressors have on youth and their families in her work every day. She is the new Executive Director of The Arthur Project, a New York City-based organization that provides youth mentoring and other resources for underserved middle school students and their families, and a grantee of The Pascale Sykes Foundation. We had the chance to connect with Jessica about The Arthur Project’s unique youth mentoring program, what these programs look like during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how adapting the Whole Family Approach has strengthened their services.
1. What kinds of services does The Arthur Project provide for youth in The Bronx?
The Arthur Project provides therapeutic mentoring services to middle school students and their families to support a number of outcomes later in life. Our Whole Family Approach sets the foundation for our work with students, families and service providers, ensuring we all work together. While we try to make room for anyone to join our program, we use chronic absenteeism as a flexible parameter for determining eligibility in our program, meaning we invite students to join who may be experiencing challenges with attendance. Most students join at the beginning of sixth grade and stay through their eighth-grade graduation.
When a student first enters our program, they and their parent or guardian meet with a Family Advocate to set collaborative goals related to school performance, such as improving attendance or grades, or developing a better relationship with a teacher. They can also choose to set additional family goals in five categories: (1) School and Career; (2) Finance; (3) Family, Friends and Relationships; (4) Community and Culture; and (5) Health and Wellness.
Next, students are matched with a therapeutic mentor with whom they meet one-on-one for one to two hours each week during the school year. Mentors are graduate social work students who are clinicians-in-training. They work with students to set and achieve individual goals, and discuss anything from family, friends and school to identity, trauma, or anything else going on in that student’s life. Students and mentors also participate in extracurricular and community-based activities together, ranging from art therapy, to improv, and cultural events. These activities are curated to help students work toward =goals and develop essential life skills.
2. Why does your service model focus on middle school-aged kids?
Emerging research in adolescent development indicates that a number of academic, neurological and social-emotional milestones converge during the middle school years, forming a unique and critical juncture in the lives of youth. A strong performance in middle school — marked by regular attendance, satisfactory grades, and positive engagement with teachers and peers — is correlated with a high level of academic engagement in high school, which has a significant impact on their life trajectory.
In other words, the adolescent brain is still “under construction,” which means youth interventions during middle school are likely to have a powerful and lasting impact. Despite this uniquely important time in a child’s life, middle school educational programming remains one of the least well-funded areas in youth development. The Arthur Project is designed to provide a strong base of support to youth during this often-overlooked inflection point.
3. What are the most significant ways the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted The Arthur Project’s ability to provide services?
This has been a time of great uncertainty for the students and families we serve, and we’re hearing that our services are more important than ever. While we are still learning about best practices for meaningful remote engagement, generous support from the Pascale Sykes Foundation allowed us to quickly pivot from in-person services to online individual and group engagement. For the most part, this has taken the form of video sessions via Zoom or Google. In some instances, mentors and mentees hold sessions over the phone.
This process has been successful largely thanks to the established trust between mentors and mentees. The way students and their families are accessing services may have shifted dramatically, but the foundation of trust they have built with their mentor is more important now than ever. Looking ahead, we will spend time reflecting on the value of remote services and consider how we might permanently integrate them into our service model to improve the flexibility of our services and engage families in ways that may work better for them.
4. What have you found are the greatest challenges facing young people and their families at a time when our country is experiencing a national reckoning on racial, social and economic justice, and communities across the country continue to face immense hardship in the wake of COVID-19?
As an organization situated in The Bronx serving primarily Black and Latinx families, we recognize that the issues that are now at the center of the mainstream national conversation have long been the experiences of many of the children and families we serve. Issues such as racial abuse, brutalization at the hands of the police and mass incarceration of Black men and women, as well as systemic inequities like discrimination in employment, education and housing, disproportionately impact our students and their families. They are surviving and thriving in a society that was designed to oppress them.
Racial disparities in COVID-specific health care and mortality rates are further examples of our society’s ongoing inability to care for and value Black and Latinx lives. The vast majority of the challenges our students and families face are not characterological, pathological or psychiatric; they are a direct result of centuries of racial and economic inequity. Our program is designed to create space for families to process and heal from the traumas that are still being inflicted while creating opportunities to build access to important opportunities and relationships.
6. The relationship between adults and children is instrumental within the Whole Family Approach. Why is relationship building such an integral part of your approach?
We believe that positive relationships are a vehicle for growth and change. Through a trusting mentor-mentee relationship, students are given the space to tap into their strengths and capabilities, safely process the traumas that have been inflicted upon them, and develop an expanding sense of self and the impact they can make in the world.
To drill down further, mentors work with students to help them internalize a sense of “mattering,” which affects how they view themselves and whether they believe they have an impact on the world around them. By reinforcing to students that they matter, students are in turn more likely to take positive actions like supporting their families and taking action in their communities.
7. What prompted The Arthur Project to want to incorporate the Whole Family Approach into your work helping middle schoolers?
We have always understood that meaningfully supporting our students meant building connections with and supporting their caregivers as well. At first, we were delighted to see important relationships between mentors and caregivers develop organically. However, we had no structure in place to strengthen The Arthur Project’s relationships with families, nor the tools to support the caregivers of the children we worked with. It seemed serendipitous when we had the pleasure of meeting Fran and Jackie from the Pascale Sykes Foundation during our second year. We partnered to launch a pilot program to provide Whole Family Approach therapeutic mentoring services shortly thereafter.
We recently completed our first year of Whole Family Approach programming for a small subset of families. As a result of many lessons learned and ongoing support from the Foundation, we are excited to expand our implementation of the Whole Family Approach to offer services to all families whose students are enrolled in our mentoring program.
8. How is The Arthur Project adjusting its services as much of the country remains closed and schools strategize about the potential of reopening in the fall?
Thanks to generous and responsive support from the Pascale Sykes Foundation, we were able to offer our mentors the opportunity to continue under paid contracts through the end of summer, even though our programs typically break for the summer in June. In addition to the individual and group services from our mentors, our Family Advocates are facilitating a virtual Whole Family Approach summer workshop series intended to help our outgoing 8th graders and their families prepare for high school and beyond. Through the summer program, students and families will receive support in developing technology skills, organizational and study skills, along with skills related to financial literacy and independence.
9. The Arthur Project emphasizes the importance of community service as a core component of each child’s development. What impact has the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing racial justice movement had on this part of the program?
In the last three years, we have learned a great deal about meaningful, appropriate social justice issues for our students to tackle. In response, instead of one-off volunteer engagement opportunities, we have re-orientated the service component of our program to focus on the development of students’ long-term organizational and leadership skills. For example, we formed a Student Leadership Council of 8th grade students who act as an advisory council to our organization. This group facilitates The Arthur Project Town Hall events, where they present and analyze current issues that are important to them. Students learn to assess needs in their community and how to communicate those needs to appropriate audiences. For example, one Town Hall series focused on understanding and promoting the U.S. Census, as The Bronx is a historically undercounted — and thus under resourced — community.
We also create space for students to process difficult topics in the news individually and in groups. Police brutality, for example, is an issue too close to home for many of our students and their caregivers, and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, many sought an outlet to process their feelings. In one of our student activity groups, MadRaps, students participate in facilitated discussions on issues like police brutality, and how they connect to greater systemic forces of oppression. Group participants then write out their thoughts, pair them with a rhythm and beats, and perform them in an end-of-year showcase.
10. Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon for The Arthur Project? Do you have any new programs or research in the works?
As we wrap up our third year of operation, we are taking time to reflect on the successes and challenges we’ve faced, with a particular eye toward identifying what has really worked for our students and families. We are also beginning to harness and contribute to research around the particular nuances of a healthy, happy and impactful adult-child relationship. Our hope is that in the years to come, we will be able to provide a model of service for others doing similar work who are interested in the positive impact of intergenerational relationships.
“Listen to the grantees. They are the experts, we aren’t the experts.” In our role as a funder, listening to our grantees and the communities we serve throughout South Jersey, Jersey City and The Bronx has always been a cornerstone of our work. This approach has become all the more important as funders across the country respond to the fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. When we listen, we can appropriately adjust and take action in the best interest of our grantees and the working, low-income families they work with. Throughout this journey, we have done our best to keep ourselves and our grantees nimble with the understanding that we will emerge from this pandemic together, even if philanthropy does not look like what it looked like before.
Listen to President and CEO, Frances Sykes’s discussion with Exponent Philanthropy about how the Foundation pivoted in the face of COVID-19, and what the future looks like for other small foundations.
“Once COVID-19 started, we at the Foundation had three goals. One was that our grantees and their families maintain as much of their gains as possible. Second, was that our families successfully address their new goals. Thirdly, that our families have proactive responses. To make sure they’re not just responding to crisis after crisis, but staying ahead of the curve.”
On May 26, President and CEO of the Pascale Sykes Foundation, Frances Sykes, joined the Ascend network of family well-being advocates and service providers to share lessons around the Foundation’s response to COVID-19 and how the Whole Family Approach is supporting our grantees and the communities they service stay afloat.
To speak on her own family’s experience with the Whole Family Approach, Sykes was joined by Heather Crotty, a busy New Jersey mom working through the impacts of a pandemic on her job, her home life, and her son’s learning abilities. By collaborating with her family advocate, she was able to set, implement, and achieve financial and educational goals for her family and herself.
In these challenging times, applying the Whole Family Approach has never been more important to advance the well-being of our grantees and their communities. View Fran and Heather’s full presentation here.
