PMSA Mental Health Kit Giveaway

This week, we visited PMSA to hand out more mental health kits. TFD wanted to bring a bright start to the new school year and honor National Suicide Prevention Month this September. The Proviso community has suffered from multiple youth losses due to suicide. Moreover, these kits were inspired to create healthy coping skills for young adults with the intention of promoting mental well-being.

This month is very important for us and the Mental Health Kits. We are so glad to provide 226 kits to PMSA students this Wednesday! Our running total is 2,300+ kits given away. Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

Photography at Quinn Center

As our fiscal year comes to a close this weekend, June 28th, we would love to share the photos the youth have taken at the Quinn Center. For two years now, we have partnered our youth interested in photography with the Quinn Center to take pictures at the event. This way, photographers gain more event photography experience all while working within their community. Our youth were at Quinn’s Christmas event, Turkey Giveaway, Senior celebrations, and more! Thank you to the Quinn Center for always considering our youth to capture meaningful events. Click through the gallery below for more pictures!

Black and Brown Art Convening

Our Black and Brown Solidarity Art Convening was a success! Over a hundred people came through and viewed our youth artist’s work. Our youth team, Adlemy, Amaryani, Jazmynn, Neidalis, Milo, and Savannah planned the entire event. Shoutout to them!

We started off our evening with a chance to view the art gallery. We had 14 art submissions, all by youth who live in the Proviso district. Their work ranged from digital art to drawings and photography. Before the presentations, Jazmynn and Amaryani led our guests through an icebreaker. Neighbors, community members, and guests shared their thoughts. Next, we had our spoken word youth, Jermaine from PMSA, present his piece. He talked about what good allyship looks like to continue to respect African American struggles. Then, Milo, Amaryani, Adlemy, and Jermaine, PMSA students, presented their video, which showed a day in the life of the Latina experience and the black experience. After, the youth team did a Q&A so the audience could learn more about the project.

After our presentations, there was more time to explore the space. We had Tacos Regio food truck making Tacos. Our drink table had aqua frescas and lemonade. We also had a table of black and brown cultural desserts from small businesses from the community (Borinken Cakes, Krazy Grapes, Kribi Coffee, Panaderia Pueblo, Sweet Tooth N Company, Yanira and Emilia's Taste of Puerto Rico).

Thank you so much to the youth team who put on this event. Also, we are so grateful for all our guests who came and supported the youth!

PMSA Mental Health Club Celebration

As the school year comes to a close, we finished our last mental health club with a celebration! All the students were invited to reflect and eat pizza. We learned their favorite workshops, key takeaways, and what we could do next school year. We finished up with a celebratory presentation of all the pictures we had taken throughout the year.

Thank you to the PMSA students, Ms. Gart, and our community partners for joining us this school year. We are so excited for what’s to come next semester.

Yoga | PMSA's Mental Health Club

Hey neighbors! This week was our last session of workshops with PMSA’s mental health club. For our last workshop, we spent it outside with Proviso native, Dasia. Dasia led the students through a relaxing yoga flow after school. Through the series of poses to the ending rest position, the students had fun! We are excited to celebrate all our 23-24 workshops with the facilitators and students!