Last Friday the 15th of November our social justice group went to the McSilver Institute for poverty policy and research, and interviewed Mary McKay and Ammu Kowolik. Mary McKay is the director of the institute and Ammu is a volunteer coordinator. Ammu and an intern told us about MsSilver’s mission and how they are one of the very few organization that conducts studies and surveys that directly affect people in poverty. They track drop out and graduation rates of public high school and have outreach program that councils and helps kids stay in school. They are more a research-based institute than hands-on and they gave us lots of sources and ideas for our project. For example Mary told us that when she was in high school she made a toy drive and assigned each class a family that they could donate toys towards, then on Christmas she went and delivered them herself. I want to do this same thing at our school and donate toys and coats to families in need. We also talked about documenting personal narratives of people in poverty and finding out the stories of where they came from and how they got into their predicament. They told us that public housing in New York it is at its maximum. This really showed us the struggles to try to make it in this city when you are poor.
They couldn’t directly help us when we asked about doing hands on work but were more than happy to have someone from the institute come to our class and speak about poverty. An organization that they recommended to us was Alley Forney, a homeless shelter that has outreach programs and soup kitchens. They also said Hunter College does this thing where they go out on one of the coldest nights of the year and physically counts people who are on the street. It would be really interesting if we got to participate in this. One organization we have contacted and are yet to hear back is Holy Apostles Church, they are a soup kitchen and would be good to make ties with.
Mary McKay and her associates gave us lots of valuable information and we hope to have them speak to our grade in the near future.
Update: Ammu and Greg, he works for the institute as well, came to our class and spoke to us about various states of poverty around the world. It was far from what I had expected. Greg presented the information in a gameshow he had created called “Poverty Around the Globe!” He had a slide show to accompany it with questions which contestants would answer, and while having a really good time, we were also learning a lot about the unbelievable state of poverty in our world. Each contestant was awarded with a t-shirt for every question answered correctly. Their presentation was so much fun while still being respectful and insightful, we hope to do something similar for our teach in.
