Insights to Impact

The Latest from Brooklyn Community Foundation

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June 2020

Michelina Ferrara
Coordinator, Brooklyn Youth Fellowship

On Saturday, June 27th, streaming live from across Brooklyn, our Brooklyn Youth Activists presented the 2020 Youth Voice Awards, honoring eight exciting projects led by youth that offer innovative solutions to the impacts of COVID-19 and systemic injustice in their communities. 

 

As the Mayor and City Council finalize New York City’s 2021 Budget with the pledge to divert funding from the NYPD to youth services and social services⁠ — we are calling on them to prioritize Black-led and POC-led organizations in this critical reinvestment.

 

Liane Stegmaier
Chief of Staff (She/Her/Hers)

Brooklyn Community Foundation will be closed on Friday in observance of Juneteenth. We encourage you to join us as we use the day to celebrate Black liberation, deepen our knowledge, and take action for racial justice.

At Brooklyn Community Foundation, we are deeply committed to achieving our vision for a fair and just Brooklyn. And in this moment, we are seeing momentum build for that vision in new and powerful ways. 

 

Lisa Cowan
Fund Adviser, The College Opportunity Fund

For those of us who have been saving for a rainy day, we don’t need to look out the window to know that it is pouring.

Jameela Syed
Communications Manager (She/Her/Hers)

Older adults across the country and around the world are at a heightened risk of contracting and becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, often facing life-threatening complications from the spread of the disease. Brooklyn has the largest population of older adults of any county in New York state—13.5 percent of the borough’s population—and more than one in five live below the poverty line.

As we demand an end to police brutality and respond to the destructive impact of COVID-19 in communities of color, we should also ask: What does safety, health, and justice look like for Brooklyn?

We hope each and everyone of our partners and supporters is moved to take action right now. Here are two campaigns you can lend your voice to, to fight for necessary changes to our justice system and increase investments in communities rather than policing. 

Here in Brooklyn—home to the largest Black community in North America—tens of thousands of activists have taken to our streets to demand an end to the same conditions that have both led Black Brooklynites to die from COVID-19 at twice the rate of whites and taken the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and so many more.