Brothers@

After my peers and I struggled our first year at Bard College, I created a support group for young men of color (YMOC)—Brothers@Bard—flagship of the now overarching Brothers@ organization. Brothers@Bard offered a safe-space for healing and peer mentorship for YMOC in college. With growing attention to the plight of YMOC, we resolved to support other YMOC by implementing this model at a local high school in Kingston, NY. The following semester, our impact grew as we launched our outreach mentoring program, connecting high-school YMOC with collegiate men of color (MOC) at Bard. Upon graduation, Brothers@Bard received a grant from the NYS My Brother's Keeper Initiative—inaugurating my role as Executive Director at age 21. In 2019, we received a grant from the Kenan Charitable Trust to support Brothers@Bard’s transition to a statewide Brothers@ organization. With the mentorship and expanded network facilitated by Elevate, I plan to expand our work and create a consortium of five Brothers@ colleges in NY State by 2025. The Elevate community offers critical professional guidance to obtain consultants for organizational planning; expertise and capacity to refine our methodology and implementation model; diversify funding sources; and leverage strategic partnerships with targeted colleges.

Raised in public housing projects in Harlem by immigrant parents, I believed education would lift my family out of poverty. Having witnessed how the lack of support and guidance shaped the lives of my closest friends, I began mentoring and running workshops for YMOC when I was 16. Like many of my friends, I was labeled “at-risk” by 9th-grade; however, my access to brotherhood programs and supportive mentors ultimately contributed to becoming the only one of my friends to make it to college. The everlasting racial and socio-economic conditions of our society reinforce why my work is needed now more than ever. With few leaders in the field of youth development and education who are actually YMOC, I am driven not only to increase access to the kind of safe-spaces that Brothers@ creates on high school and college campuses nationwide—but to create an organization that institutionalizes the opportunities and the platform for more YMOC to own and lead this work themselves. My passion is fueled by the desire to create the mentorship opportunities that would have improved the lives of my friends and countless other YMOC from communities like mine. https://www.metmuseum.org/150/...

Brothers@ is a dual-beneficiary high-school retention and college persistence organization with the mission of improving the academic and social-emotional conditions of YMOC—providing access to meaningful opportunities, and creating pathways to full-time employment on college campuses, local communities, high schools, and youth-serving nonprofits and organizations. Because most predominantly white & historically exclusive institutions are not designed for YMOC, they continue to face barriers in their academic, professional, and psychological development. Through cross-sector collaborations and partnerships with public and private institutions, corporations and nonprofits, Brothers@ is a blueprint for addressing the ever-growing opportunity gaps YMOC face, improving the outcomes of YMOC in both secondary and post-secondary education, and challenging historically exclusive and predominately white institutions to become inclusive spaces for all young people. I founded Brothers@ after personally experiencing these barriers as a first-generation student and nearly dropping out of college. Since 2014, my co-founder and I have scaled Brothers@ from a student-led program and institutional initiative, to a state-wide model focused on expanding to college campuses and local communities across NY State and all 5-boroughs of NYC. Today, Brothers@ works with nearly 200 YMOC annually—recruiting, training, and hiring collegiate MOC to become mentors and positive male role models. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-bo...

At Brothers@, all programming is created, delivered, and coordinated by YMOC, for YMOC. Brothers@ uses a unique blend of near-peer mentoring, culturally-specific facilitation, and an organizational leadership team that created and has been directly impacted by the program, to design innovative pathways for YMOC. National youth-development models focus almost exclusively on secondary education and “college-readiness” instead of creating an asset-based approach that directly addresses these disparities in higher education. This has created a new phenomenon that the field has failed to solve and that Brothers@ was created to address: there are more YMOC attending college than ever before but, consequently, more dropping out than ever before as well. To speak directly to the needs of YMOC, Brothers@ developed the “Our Space” methodology. The Our Space methodology taps into the deep, experiential knowledge of YMOC, creating a space for open discussion that empowers YMOC to be vulnerable and speak their truth, heal trauma, and foster positive identity development and academic persistence. All programming is designed and facilitated by YMOC under the age of 25, creating an opportunity for participants to move beyond being centered as a “problem”—as we are often viewed by society—to feeling a sense of ownership and dignity. 

We serve nearly 200 YMOC annually—and our impact over the last 7 years includes maintaining a 94%+ 4-year graduation rate for both highschool and college students, and creating college-to-career pathways. The journey through higher-education for many YMOC is filled with self-doubt and the excruciating experience of navigating an institution not designed for them. YMOC drop out of highschool at twice the rate of their white counterparts. In higher-education, only 40% of YMOC complete their degree within 6 years. Brothers@ builds a mentorship pipeline of collegiate YMOC to serve as professional mentors to highschoolers and collegiate peers. Brothers@ addresses the persistent opportunity gaps that plague YMOC in higher education—specifically the lack of supportive spaces, and limited access to financial resources. Our dual-benefit model provides critical support services for mentees and mentors. Through Culturally-Relevant Mentorship, Social-Emotional Development, and Professional Development, Brothers@ taps into the unique potential of YMOC: their ability to provide guidance rooted in shared lived experiences. By extending socio-emotional support and empowerment to peers, there is a natural shift in perspective that pushes scholars to move beyond their own limitations. This brotherhood is used as a vehicle to provide vital support for YMOC navigating collegiate life at primarily white institutions.