El Puente

Leadership centers across our programs and organizing, we strive for the leadership of latinx youth and communities of color to understand systems of oppression, identify challenges, and design and advocate for their solutions at the intersection of the arts, education, environment, and health. El Puente youth leaders organize campaigns and facilitate coalitions of community- based, public, and private stakeholders that advocate for policy and investment in support of community-led solutions. A highlight for this fiscal year was our youth leading participatory budgeting (pb) processes for city council districts 33, 34, and 37 to model positive active voter behavior and engagement in civics from an early age. Young people learn how to follow a project from the idea phase to execution and in the term, they learn about city government, the role of city council, community boards, etc. Our youth also led the peoples money participatory budgeting efforts in bushwick engaging over 4000 residents in the voting process.

Education and training El puentes commitment to culturally responsive education is evident in our work as thecommunity school partner at ms 50 where this fiscal year El Puente activated our experienceand resources to holistically serve the school community including the new wave of asylum-seeking students. Our work in partnership with the school has been highlighted by district 14 in terms of facilitating the transition of the newcomers to the community. El Puente has been successful in leading the attendance improvement efforts in the school along with bringing on a parent organizer to support families in obtaining the resources needed to have their children present in school. The presence of the parent organizer has made a tremendous impact on attendance, student retention, and parent engagement. El puentes integration of the arts in the youth educational experiences was highlighted through our integrated arts project titled: immersive climate justice. This culminating piece combined multiple art forms, technology, and the use of space to engage students and the audience in reflecting on climate issues impacting the students locally but also highlighted how climate change is impacting migration. This innovative production engaged seven academic classes including the newly arrived asylum seekers. Our commitment to education is also present in all of our afterschool programs where El Puente provides educational enrichment through tutoring, homework help, test preparations, and college admissions support.

El Puente community arts through a very active year of artistic performances and events, El Puente channeled the power of the arts at the forefront of community transformation. Young artists and community artists alike welcomed the opportunity to gather and produce pieces that were shared with small and large audiences. Some of the highlights include : 1. The muralistas started the year with designing and painting housing intersectionality, a mural that wraps around the entire lobby at our nycha taylor wythe community center. The mural highlights the history of housing advocacy that exists within nycha communities and in nyc. The muralistas engaged the multigenerational community of taylor wythe in providing their ideas for the mural which they then translated into the beautiful images that are now immortalized on the community center walls and greatly celebrated by the neighbors who utilize the space. 2. Wepa pa'l pueblo series: El Puente hosted wepa pal pueblo, an outdoor concert series in bushwick's irving square park featuring bomba, salsa, bolero & r&b fusion, merengue, & more in partnership with council member sandy nurse, the series showcased the local artists and culture of the bushwick community. 3. Wepa festival: our annual street festival is co-organized by El puentes green light district in partnership with our councilwoman, jennifer gutierrez. Roebling street was closed to traffic -between s. 4th and south 2nd streets- and filled with cultural activities, environmental justice information & resources, as well as a spectacular lineup of performing artists from El puentes c.a.d.r.e. Network (community artists development and resource exchange), and visiting artists. 4. Dia de los muertos: dia de los muertos 2022: offering for our ancestors, linked this cultural celebration to the earth in alignment with our focus on environmental justice. The celebration offered youth activities as well as opportunities for the community to participate. 5. Encuentros: El Puente in collaboration with our crny and cadre artists, hosted our encuentros series: love & grief part one. These were evenings of poetic performances delving into the weight of displacement, the grief of gentrification, and expressions of love for our community - including all of the people and places that form it. 6. 3 kings 2023: El puentes iconic 36th annual three kings celebration:remembering we are of the earth, happened in-person this year at our headquarters in los sures and it was welcomed and celebrated by community members. 7. Manifest 2023: our right to manifest, our right to imagine celebrated womens power and creativity in a series of workshops and performances.

Green light district/ latino climate action network our community led environmental justice work has been at the forefront of our work at the green light district. Over the past year we have engaged in multiple community driven science tours that document the extent of pollution in the neighborhood. Using such data, we continued to advocate for alternative solutions for the causes of pollution, mainly transportation infrastructure (bqe). We collaborated with several city and state agencies such as the mayors office for climate & environmental justice, new york state research & development agency, and new york city comptrollers office, and many more. We won a proposal that established a multi year partnership with the trust for governors island to offer them environmental education. Types of engagements and activities through our work: 1. Activities that are led and directed by young people who are alumni and went through ep programming and membership models, so that the stories and narratives around environmental justice are rooted in youth leadership and those at the frontlines with lived experience. 2 being rooted in bottom-up convenings and organizing, that then impacts and influences city-wide and state-wide campaigns and legislation for environmental and climate justice. 3. Expanding the focus on closing the on-ramp/street onto the Williamsburg bridge to a large suite of demands for the southside community, to include larger visionary and holistic transformations to the brooklyn-queens expressway corridor. 4. Engagement around lived and experienced impacts of historic harms and discussion of environmental injustices as a framing to work towards mitigation and community-led solutions. 5. Aligning the strong history and practice of cultural organizing work with our active environmental justice campaigns we collaborated with the network of El Puente artists to hold cultural convenings called encuentros, in which we activated and brought folks into our campaign around closing the ramp and transforming the bqe. 6. Merging artistic practices with creative approaches to sharing lived experiences and calls to action, through theatrical renditions and youth- led environmental justice walking tours, forum theaters, and open mics.