Skip to main content

Celebrating Summer Youth Programs

The Justice Center played host yesterday to two celebrations of the amazing young people that we have worked with this summer. Our first event was the graduation of sixteen interns from our High School Summer Internship Program.  The seven-week program involved two weeks of training at the Justice Center in skills like resume and cover letter writing, interviewing, and other skills necessary to succeed in the working world. For the following five weeks, interns were placed in a variety of sites throughout our catchment area including the Groundswell Community Mural Project, Community Board 7, The Diamond Law Firm, The Red Hook Star Revue, Youth Made Media, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Fireflies New York, Caselnova Restaurant, Beth Elohim Summer Camp, and SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Family, friends, internship supervisors, and Justice Center staff all came together to congratulate the interns on their hard work. A highlight of the event was hearing from the interns themselves on what they gained through the internship program: Justina, describing her experience working on a mural in East New York through the Groundswell Community Mural Project, told the audience that “everybody was proud, and it gave us more confidence in ourselves and our work. Sasha, in addition to working on a number of challenging projects at the Diamond Law Firm, “learned from my supervisor that you shouldn’t let anybody tell you what you can do, and who you can be.”  And Gregory, intern at Youth Made Media, perhaps best summed up our goals for the program when he described how “this program helped me grow as a person, and take a step forward towards what I want to do with my career.”

Our second celebration of the day was in honor of the hard work the 11-13 year old participants did in our JustARTS Summer Drawing program. This art program is part of the Red Hook Community Justice Center’s Positive Youth Justice Initiative, which reframes the conversation about juvenile delinquency. Instead of pathologizing court-involved youth and adolescent behavior, we work to serve all young people within a positive youth development framework, which draws on their strengths and contributions to their communities. The art exhibit was attended by the participants’ friends and family members, Justice Center staff, and Joan Eastmond, Community Liaison of the 18th District Office of Senator Velmanette Montgomery.  Juvenile Justice Corps member and teaching artist Monet Miley led the group in ten sessions of drawing instruction, which culminated in a collaborative project on a book called "The Short Life of Popularity." Participants described gaining confidence in their abilities to express themselves artistically, and their plans to pursue art and design in school and in their future careers. 
The Summer Internship Program graduates with their certificates of completion

Intern Sasha, with her supervisor Yitzi Diamond of the Diamond Law Firm

Participants in the JustARTS Summer Drawing Program, in front of their work

Draft of a storyboard for a comic book participants designed and wrote, titled "The Short Life of Popularity"
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Supporting the Staten Island Youth Justice Center at "Inside/Outside Legislative Theatre" Performance

On June 4th, a group of the Red Hook Youth Court members and staff went to see the "Theater of the Oppressed NYC" performance at the New School. Before attending this event, the youth court members had no idea that anything like this went on! While there, we learned that 12 different legislative laws were changed through something called "Legislative Theatre." The audience members get to be "spect-actors," which is great because the actual audience members got to participate in the play themselves and share their ideas. The performances last night were put on by members of the Staten Island Youth Justice Center (part of the Center for Court Innovation Family). These two plays dealt with real life issues such as getting stopped for not paying your bus fare, arriving late to school and getting sent to the principal's office because of the "zero tolerance policy," getting into fights at school, not knowing one's rights, and being raciall...
97 comments
Read more

Peacemaking in Red Hook

Raymond Deal, Traditional Program Specialist, Shiprock District Court, Navajo Nation and Gloria Benally, Program Coordinator, Navajo Nation, train future Red Hook Peacemakers After an intensely trying period in Red Hook in the weeks following Hurricane Sandy, building, strenghtening, and healing relationships between residents and organizations has become crucial. This past weekend, we took a step towards preparing the neighborhood for the hard work ahead with a two-day workshop with peacemakers from the Navajo Nation for residents we are training to serve as peacemakers here in Red Hook. A new project from the Center for Court Innovation's Tribal Justice Exchange , peacemaking is a traditional Native American approach to justice. While the exact form peacemaking takes varies among tribes, it usually consists of one or more peacemakers—often community elders—who gently guide a conversation involving not only those directly involved in an offense or conflict but family ...
21 comments
Read more

Rent, Repairs, and Rights: A Guide to Housing Court for NYCHA Tenants

 Lillian Marshall, Tenant Association President of Red Hook West (left) and Naureen Rashid, Director of Court Operations Dorothy Shields, Tenant Association President of Red Hook East (Left) and Naureen Rashid, Director of Court Operations  Hon. Alex Calabrese, Presiding Judge of the Red Hook Community Justice Center   Graphic Designer Jenny Kutnow  Clara Amenyo from the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)  
64 comments
Read more