Photographer and local resident Destiny Mata sent along these photos from a recent Lower East Side Resource Fair for Migrants. The event was held at PS 20 last weekend and Mata was there to document it.
One of the organizers, Lilah Mejia, President of the Community Education Council for District 1, wrote this note about the event:
“As President of the Community Education Council for District 1, I have been working alongside Carry Chan, our Superintendent, looking at our school numbers and waiting for migrants to show up since we did see an influx in other districts.
In December we had about 1 or 2 and in a matter of a couple of months that number kept increasing. The Superintendent wanted to do something to support these families and she asked for help. I came up with the idea of having a resource fair.
I called all these organizations … to provide tangible resources to our community. The orgs who attended were University Settlement, Henry Street Settlement, Grand Street Settlement, Educational Alliance, GOLES, HRA (Human Resources Administration), East Harlem Tutorial and RYAN – NENA Community Health Center.
We also had elected officials [with] tables: Harvey Epstein, Carlina Rivera and Dan Goldman. Grace Lee stopped by.
We used the CEC1 platform and put out a call through our schools for donations and we had parents donate toiletries and clothes.
Our superintendent had an organization in New Jersey donate toiletries alongside a Synagogue who donated, as well.
This was a community led effort I just happened to spearhead.
Our volunteers were people from the community, alongside Parent Coordinators who brought their families and stayed to help out. We had students volunteer. We saw a foot traffic of 500 plus people who came to our event. Families received clothing, shoes, food, toys, books and haircuts and toiletries.
Blessed for the partnership with PS 20 who helped to make the event successful. Principal Pinto and Custodian Gil were instrumental in helping with this event.”
