After a recent staff computer upgrade our IT team donated our previously used work stations to a few of our programs including the Go Project, Project Renewal, Harlem RBI, Community Access, & Friends of the Children who will all put them to good use in their communities!!
Last week, Robin Hood was honored to receive the “Anne Vanderbilt Award for Achievement” from one of our community partners, Partnership with Children at their annual benefit gala.
Partnership with Children’s mission is to initiate and support educational enrichment and the transformation of schools. They bring Masters-level social workers into underserved public schools to provide counseling and classroom interventions for students are at risk of academic failure and dropping out. Robin Hood began funding Partnership with Children for what it could do in the aftermath of September 11th. Since then, we’ve continued their funding because their special blend of social work, in-class work and therapy helps students thrive.
The award was accepted by Emary Aronson, Robin Hood’s Managing Director of Education and the Relief Fund, on the behalf of Robin Hood. Upon accepting Emary stated “At Robin Hood we always speak about the privilege of getting to do the work we do and the reason it is a privilege is because we can engage with organizations like Partnership with Children. We are personally honored to have worked with Partnership for the last 12 years and know that the children of our city are better for your being in their schools.”
The award is named for Anne Vanderbilt, who was one of the founders of “Big Sisters” in 1908, which evolved into Partnership with Children. Established in 2004, the award recognizes individuals who’ve made significant contributions to the education and well being of young people throughout New York City. Among those who have received the award in past years are representatives from Citigroup Inc., Bank of America, GE and Joel L. Klein, former Chancellor of New York City Schools. We are certainly in good company!
We thank Partnership for Children for this honor. And for the many children who you have helped but who cannot yet comprehend what you have done for them or do not have the vocabulary to express their gratitude, we say thank you from them as well.
Poor New Yorkers aren’t just food-deprived. Many are facing multiple other challenges that are negatively impacting their lives.
On Wednesday, we spent the morning at West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH) and had the opportunity to get to know a few of our struggling neighbors. People like Ana, an aging grandmother who is caring for her son and his newborn infant, and Leta, a single mother who is helping her son pay his community college loans, but recently found herself unemployed due to a medical emergency. We also met Jessina, a 19 year-old high school graduate struggling to find a job and in desperate need of medical insurance to see a primary care doctor. And, many young parents who missed a rent payment and are now are evicted from their rent stabilized apartment.
WSCAH is not just providing individuals and families with healthy foods, they are attacking poverty by providing free legal, financial, medical and benefits counseling to help with these issues. They do this by partnering with other Robin Hood-funded organizations like Neighborhood Trust, Single Stop, the Children’s Aid Society and Urban Justice.
WSCAH boasts the city’s original, and, perhaps most successful, customer choice pantry with a strong integrated social services component. WSCAH screens all families for benefits before they pick up groceries at the pantry, an important intake routine that other pantries around the city are striving to replicate.
What brought these families into the church basement was food, but because of the smart and innovative partnerships, they leave with so much more.
The @NYCbigapps #jobs Hackathon resulted in several great apps to help low income New Yorkers find work. Here were some of the winners including Child Care Desk, Plexx, App.lied.at, and Helping Hands! (at New Work City)
Excited to help open the new PHI office in the Bronx. This #RHfunded org trains people for jobs as in-home health care aides.
Since 2003, Robin Hood has been investing in programs to encourage entrepreneurship among low-income populations. Currently, we invest around $1.4 million annually to the two leading microfinance organizations in the country – Accion USA and Grameen America – to provide microloans to approximately 6,500 small-business owners and entrepreneurs in New York City.
Today, we had the opportunity to visit Accion and learn about the loan application process from one of their loan officers.
Accion is different from a bank or credit union in that it empowers low-to-moderate income business owners by offering access to capital and financial education that they otherwise would not have. These small business owners, many without a proven track record in business or limited or poor credit history, would be considered ineligible for a loan from a bank. Accion provides these individuals business loans ranging from $500 up to $50,000 along with crucial financial education to help them succeed. And crucially, by doing so, Accion steers these individuals away from predatory lenders that charge exorbitant interest rates or fees for access to capital.
Accion has seen many success stories across NYC, from a woman who started a beauty school and salon in Queens, to a man who leveraged his 15 years of work with the second largest commercial cleaning franchise in the world to start his own firm that serves clients in Brooklyn and Queens. Recently, with funding from Robin Hood’s Relief Fund, Accion has been making loans to small businesses negatively impacted by Hurricane Sandy. By offering low interest rates of 4.99% along with small grants, these business owners have been able to get back on their feet and provide services that their communities rely on. One such entrepreneur, a neighborhood bodega owner in Brooklyn, lost his inventory when the flood waters filled his store. With his loan from Accion, he was able to stock his shelves, get his store back up and running, and serve a community torn apart by the Hurricane.
We are proud to partner with Accion and the entrepreneurs who are creating better opportunities for themselves, their families and their communities.
Education superstars, Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, and Dave Levin from KIPP schools discuss their 20 years of radicalizing education and their outlook on the future at our Robin Hood Unplugged Education conversation.
12-12-12 wasn’t the only event that made music for Robin Hood’s Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund.
Recently, the Gregorian Family, consisting of Ara Gregorian Resnick (Violin), Alicia Gregorian Sawyers (Cello), Ani Gregorian (Violin) and Tom Sauer (Piano), put their prowess in classical music to work holding two private concerts at the Sohotel Artspace Gallery in lower Manhattan. With decades of classical music experience among them, the family together performed works by the likes of Bach, Rachmaninoff, Piazolla, Gregorian, Dvorak and Moszkowski and raised over $7,500 in donations to help families and individuals devastated by Hurricane Sandy. The Gallery, dedicated to increasing awareness for European artists in America, was filled with young music students, many studying under Ani, and their parents who came out to do their part to help their neighbors recover from the storm.
Thanks to the Gregorian Family and all those who attended for helping to make our community a better place!
Working at Robin Hood, most of us eat, breath and dream about fighting poverty in New York City. And now, one staffer has taken that passion and turned it into a book.
Cindy Lamy is the Manager of Metrics here at the Robin Hood – which means she is responsible for creating and updated more than 170 equations that our program officers use to determine the value of each grant that is made. Her new book, American Children In Chronic Poverty: Complex Risks, Benefit-Cost Analyses and Untangling the Knot addresses the multitude of obstacles faced by those, particularly focusing on children, living in poverty. She outlines, what we here at Robin Hood hold as truth, that by comparing the benefit of various poverty fighting programs against the cost of programs, we can determine which programs and policies produce benefits that exceed costs, thereby providing evidence for an efficient fight against poverty. And ultimately, she believes that when we respect and care for the least members of our society we create a strong, successful society in which everyone prospers.
Congratulations on this incredible accomplishment Cindy.
The last regularly scheduled Sandy Relief committee meeting is taking place now. Over $70 million in donations to the Relief fund has been allocated to 400 groups in the tri-state area. Thank you to all those who gave including donors to the 12-12-12 Concert to benefit Hurricane Sandy victims.
