Developing Your Dreams
On Thursday, January 8th, 11 youth aged 12-16 from East New York, Brownsville, and Bushwick, attended the 1st DYD session at the Unity Plaza Community Center in East New York, Brooklyn. The 8 week workshop is run in collaboration between Family Justice’s Family Bodega and Globalhood, Inc., and facilitated by Globalhood Actor/Artist Renoly Santiago (Dangerous Minds, Con Air, Hackers, etc…).
During the first workshop, Mr. Santiago engaged and inspired the youth, challenging them to find, and then step out of, their comfort zones. He began by stating: “you applied, and you’re here, so we know you are going to get somewhere in life—you care enough about yourselves to come here”, and played a series of games with the youth to help them to get to know each other, challenge them to begin ‘performing’ and exploring the group dynamic.
Throughout the workshops, youth will have the opportunity to learn and share their talents in the basics of photography, poetry, and spoken word, while learning about creative career opportunities in the arts…locally and internationally. Food from a different culture is provided at each of the 7 workshop session, and Mr. Santiago will be bringing in other expert facilitators to join him in running 4 of the sessions.
We take participants to attend a concert at Lincoln Center, ‘In the Heights’ the broadway musical, and an inspirational film. The program ends at the end of february with the youth inviting friends and family to attend as they showcase their photographs and some of the performance work they have explored. The overall accomplishments of this program include engaging youth who are at-risk of truancy or dropping out of school in new opportunities, in exploring their own talents and self-confidence, and in learning about exciting career possiblities where they can use their creativity for positive purposes.
We know that when the rate of incarceration in a community rises above about 1.5%, it seems to produce more, not less, crime (Clear, 2007). We know that very high rates of arrest and incarceration can make going to prison seem normal and even normative, a rite of passage and a pathway to respect. We know that in high incarceration neighborhoods, such as East New York in Brooklyn, every year one in eight men between ages 18 and 45 is arrested and sent to prison or jail (Cadora, Swartz, and Gordon, 2003). We know that we pay a very high price for these policies: the taxpayers of New York pay over $1 million a year to incarcerate the young men who are arrested on these blocks.
(THE NEW YORK CITY BAR ASSOCIATION, 2008 ORISON S. MARDEN LECTURE, RACE, CRIME AND JUSTICE: A FRESH LOOK AT OLD QUESTIONS, Delivered by, Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, March 19, 2008)
