Uptown Fund: 8 CBOs serving Harlem receive Manhattan DA Bragg’s gun violence prevention grants

By TANDY LAU

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member and SHANNON CHAFFERS

Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

Eight of the 10 communitybased organizations chosen to receive $20,000 each in gun violence prevention funding from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office currently serve Harlem.

“The focus here is just on engagement for the youth,” said D.A. Alvin Bragg. Projects include “everything [from] murals to youth engaging with food justice and environmental issues… The thought is ‘let’s engage them so they don’t turn to any form of gun.’”

The grant winners were announced this past Monday, July 31, and include four first-time recipients: Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis), Not Another Child (NAC), New Future Foundation, and the Police Athletic League (PAL). All of them operate at some capacity uptown. The participating youth each receive a stipend.

Many groups selected are smaller, grassroots organizations. Justin Napper, NAC’s director of Youth and Young Adult Services and Programs, spoke to the importance of funding for such organizations. “I definitely think that grassroots [organizations] need to be supported by government officials and city agencies,” he said. “We need to see those who are from the community supported, because it gives others from the community a close insight for hope. It gives the closest insight for inspiration.”

Not Another Child will use its grant money to help 10 young men they have previously worked with who now face pending gun possession or violent offense charges, “Being that funding is so sporadic, it’s difficult for us to engage with as many youth and families as we would like to, so a lot of these gentlemen have been former participants of the program that we’re now able to re-engage [with] and set on a positive track,” Napper explained.

The men will participate in a 10-week workshop with personal and professional development programming designed to help them create individualized success plans. On completion of the program, each participant will receive a $1,500 stipend to help them achieve the goals they set.

PAL offers 10 children—five male and five female—weekly workshops for documenting what gun violence means to them. The goal is to develop conflict resolution skills.

“We’ll start to explore the conversation of gun violence and what it looks like in their community, through film, books, poetry, [and] music—taking things that they see that they’re familiar with and turning it around [with] what’s happening here,” said Meredith Gray, PAL director of education and training.

According to Khary LazarreWhite, BroSis co-founder and executive director, the program will be an extension of the organization’s usual work in encouraging young people to “articulate and speak about their feelings and emotions,” specifically through its environmental program.

“We have 50 young people working throughout the summer in our Environmental Educa - tion Center in our garden. They are planting fruits and vegetables, and there are 35 fruits and vegetables out there,” he said. “There’s [an] aquaponics system, a composting system, a food drop-off system, and they’re learning about issues of environmental sustainability. They’re being engaged in developing a sense of self; they’re developing a skill.”

New Future Foundation is expanding its Graffiti Against Gun Violence program for seven new young people through its grant. Beyond creating art, the participants will also tend a community garden and learn financial literacy, said Patreinnah AcostaPelle, the organization’s spokesperson.

“The program basically encompasses lots of financial literacy, because we know that for young people, their number one thing is a job,” she said. “We know that is the beginning of all the troubles: housing, social inequities, health, anything [in] an urbanized area—the main issue is always financials and young people always looking for jobs.”

Another four organizations serving uptown—Street Corner Resources, the Children’s Village, Emergent Works, and Exodus Transitional Community—will return as grantees. Grand Street Settlement and Henry Street Settlement, which both serve the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and the East Village, are also getting second-year funding to round out the 10 grant recipients.

Similar to last year, Harlem and other uptown neighborhoods were a priority, along with the Lower East Side. And like many of Bragg’s grants, funding comes from forfeiture money seized from banks during white-collar crime investigations.

Coinciding with the fund is a citywide roadmap for gun violence prevention in neighborhoods with the highest amount of shootings, which Bragg said is a separate initiative. Six precincts have been singled out for priority: the Bronx’s 40th, 42nd, 44th, and 47th and Brooklyn’s 73rd and 75th. None are in Manhattan.

“Today, we are taking our ef - forts to end gun violence to the next level with this new ‘Blueprint for Community Safety’—a more than $485 million plan that will double down on our public safety efforts, invest in our most impacted communities, support our young people and get them on the right path, and activate every level of city government to prioritize prevention-based approaches to public safety,” said Mayor Eric Adams.

Of that amount, $118.3 million will go toward “early intervention” efforts—in other words, preventive measures like mentorship opportunities to keep children from ever picking up a gun. As of June 30, the NYPD reported 592 shootings this year, with a total of 704 victims.

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1