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Connecting Communities, Creating Jobs

June 17, 2010

By Nicole Seiferth

Earlier this year, a city playground in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn made news for a telling piece of playground equipment. For years, children in this community – one of seven in New York City that contribute more than half of the population to New York's state prisons – had been playing in a barred enclosure with the word "Jail" written on its side.

On June 12, Trinity Wall Street convened a group of faith, business, civic, and youth leaders from Bedford-Stuyvesant and the other seven communities to talk about connecting children with a different kind of future: a future of education, training, and work, rather than prison.

"Trinity is called to raise up a generation of leaders. We're here today because we think it's possible for faith communities to be partners in developing jobs for young people," said the Rev. Matthew Heyd, director of faith in action for Trinity Wall Street.

The day's conversation focused on the challenges of jobs and training for disconnected youth, defined as 16-24 year olds who are not working and not in school.

Barnabas Shakur, founder and CEO of Project Re-Generation, a non-profit that serves teens in Bedford-Stuyvesant, grew up in that neighborhood. His organization provides its young participants with a stipend in return for working to clean up the neighborhood. He has no problem "taxing" his kids, as they put it, for not going to school or keeping their grades up.

"The program helped me with school," Dominique, now a junior in high school, said during a panel discussion. "It's good for a lot of teens because they don't do anything but hang out on the block. I want to be in the FBI and so I'm looking into Stanford and other law schools."

Shakur said creating Project Re-Generation was challenging, citing the fact that politicians weren't really interested in it and that the program runs on less than $200,000 a year. "When you're creating a program for disconnected youth, you have to step out of the box."

Those gathered were particularly interested in how they could take what they learned that day and turn it into action.

"Let's have the young people leave here today with some possibilities and hope," said Trinity parishioner and educator Lonny Shockley.

Bret Halverson, who has devoted his career to employment development in the nonprofit sector, said, "You have identified part of the solution in identifying these seven communities. Some of them are so fragmented. The Church in those communities can be a connecting entity."

Edwin Hong, vice president at Seedco Financial, a community development financial institution, agreed with Halverson on the need for connection. "Some problems we face are too big to solve alone," he said. "With that comes the acknowledgement that money only goes so far."

Hong said that the small working group discussions Trinity convened around the issue of jobs in the seven communities helps him find a greater understanding of the problems in communities where Seedco is providing small business loans. "I see a bigger picture than me operating individually. It's not just about money. It's about awareness."

The Rev. Dr. Julius C. Clay, senior pastor of Williams Institutional Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, was excited by the connections he saw being made in the room around him. "I've been a pastor for 30 years and I've seen these problems all over the country," he said. "I'm with you all the way. To the young people I say: don't give up on the Church and don't give up on us."

To learn more about connecting disconnected youth with jobs in the Seven Communities, contact Anita Chan at achan@trinitywallstreet.org or 212.602.0846.

Nicole Seiferth is assistant editor for website and parish publications.