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June 2024

Solution: We agreed on establishing recreational events such as movie nights, game activities, and social activities that would bring a sense of unity in the Stapleton community, helping to combat concerns consisting of safety, as more community interactions would take place as well as helping bring this Stapleton Park a positive and overall welcoming presence for all of Stapleton! To truly brings a welcoming presence in Stapleton green spaces, unity has to occur, as union of the people starts the strong bond and start of a stable community.

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January - February 2024: This marked the start of building a strong team.

Process of getting to know each other

Social interaction activities were done (Ice breakers, two truths and a lie, and exercises involving social interacting with our peers.)

March 2024: Prior to our research, we would settle and focus on Stapleton. To fulfill this, we utilized exploration and observance in the Stapleton community.

We went on walks around the community taking down notes of any abnormal features it had.

We found a surprising high amount of abandoned buildings and bussinesses.

High amounts of litter

Lack of social union in open green spaces (Tappen Park), a park centered within Stapleton.

---> It was through this that helped us move forward towards our investigation, "How can Stapleton residents and people who spend a lot of time in Stapleton feel more welcomed in the neighborhood's green spaces?"

April 2024: In order to answer our research question, we ensured that we made it possible for interactions to occur between us interns, the youth, and the community, Stapleton.

We relied on the method of conducting interviews.

Time was spent on mapping and creating questions for our interview process that we would be conducting in May. This is where the Stapleton playground, Hill Street Garden, La Colmena, and Tappen Park, would be the major target areas for our focus to answer our research question.

May 2024: We began our interviewing process.

In our interview process, it required introducing ourselves to an individual.

Do an audio recording of our questions and their responses.

Afterwards, we transcribed our interviews.

Challenges & Achievement:

Many of us were in a state of nervousness to approach the people as well as many refusals from people to be apart of our recorded interviews. Despite this challenge, we continued to strive against these obstacles and were amazed by the ending result of high amounts of conducted interviews done, with Saturday, May 18th, of 2024 being our biggest record, of conducting 50 interviews at an event hosted by La Colmena, a community organization.

Findings:

Tappen Park received common complaints:

Lack of activities or entertainment in the park. (Major complaint.)

High rates of litter

Concern regarding homeless people settling in Stapleton's green spaces

Low maintenance of the park

Lack of beauty

Lack of safety

This helped us have an in depth thinking that overturning these factors, mainly there being low presence of activities and entertainment in Tappen Park, can contribute to a rise in a welcoming presence in Stapleton.

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When making the FFAY team we were taught skills to support the Stapleton community regarding the issue they faced. We learned a lot of skills such as better planning, interviewing, canvasing, and public speaking. The final step where we are most excited about is to finally give back to the community, that will be done in our neighbors market. This is where YPAR comes into place. For this support, commitment, and conversion in improving Stapleton as a whole, bringing a welcoming presence to it's green spaces, it is us the youth who lead on this change. The two groups involved are the youth and the community, a relationship that was essential for this youth participatory action research done.

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As interns, we prioritize teamwork to a large part. Throughout this internship process, we initially started with getting to know one another. As we moved forward, we prioritized team building and have learned to grow and improve our social skills as well as carrying determination to truly carry out our solution to the conflict of lack of green spaces in Stapleton, our major focus in this process.

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This neighborhood - based project was student led and was a chance for us to demonstrate everything we have learned (hands on, skills, communication organizing and leadership) and share it with the neighborhood.

In this event, we accomplished one of our major projects, that includes bringing unity to the Stapleton community, and this social community event helped construct this goal!

At the Neighbor's Market, our held workshops utilizing the knowledge us interns learned throughout the internship which helped us connect with the community at a greater scale revealing a welcoming presence in Stapleton's green spaces

Workshops that were displayed at the market was:

Community organizing (the interns informed people about future plans for Stapleton community, told them how we came up with recreation events at Tappen park, and also told them about what we did at FFAY )

Gardening (we allowed people to color pots for plants and get to choose between four plants(mustard green,scallions, basil,chives) and we transcribed them to pots and filled it with soil and told them how to take care of it

Culinary: We provided the Stapleton community a chance to observe the cooking process of rice with vegetables and provided them with a cooking kit to learn a new recipe and style of cooking.

Produce was given to the Stapleton community through the use of a sliding scale:

$10 for families who want produce but are financially stable

$5 for families who want produce and sometimes face obstacles that prevents them from receiving need food sources

Free produce for families of low income and are not financially stable to support their needs and obtainment of fresh produce

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YPAR: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an empowering research approach that positions young people as active contributors in social change. YPAR centers youth and their development at every stage of the research process.

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YPAR Question: How can Stapleton residents and people who spend a lot of time in Stapleton feel more welcomed in the neighborhoods green spaces? 

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YPAR Question: How can Stapleton residents and people who spend a lot of time in Stapleton feel more welcomed in the neighborhoods green spaces? 

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YPAR Process Steps:

Step 1: Form a strong team

Step 2: Reflect on prior experiences

Step 3: Meet with key players and develop critical perspectives on "what could be."

Step 4: Figure out what you know/don't know and identify research questions

Step 5: Design research protocols

Step 6: Collect data

Step 7: Analyze + Decide + Discuss key findings and implications of data: "so what?"

Step 8: Map who has power in relation to the problem/Select actions steps: "now what?"

Step 9: Engage in adult dialogue with adult personnel about your findings/ Evaluation on what was accomplished

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Our goal is making green spaces welcoming for the Stapleton community. Why was this our goal? Stapleton has green spaces consisting of Tappen Park and Stapleton Park. We viewed a major difference. Why was Stapleton Park more appealing and visited by other Stapleton residents, whereas Tappen Park was isolated and lacked a social environment? In the process of finding the why to our question, we found a common denominator, the state of a welcoming presence. Therefore, helping us construct our question and marking the beginning to our journey of research and action.

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FFAY stands for "Forgotten Foods and Youth." It is an educational space and organizing hub for neighborhoods and street corners that are overlooked within Staten Island, done by the youth who lead this change.

In other words it's taking our roles as local change makers to make Staten Island unforgettable for the next generation.

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Important words we learned along the way 

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Important words we learned along the way 

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Remembrance:The skill to teach what you know to others and utilizing our skills to impact other lives positively.

Re-imagination:A rebirth of new ideas by using your perspective, experience, ideas, knowledge and imagination to create something fresh and different so it could be used by the next generation. For example, we created a drawing of what a neighborhood looks like and came up with research questions and interviewed Stapleton residents.

Local Change maker:  A local change maker is anyone who works toward improving the environment and society around them. Change makers are those who are intentional about identifying a problem, whether it be societal or environmental. (To sum up, it’s someone who sees a problem and wants to make a change towards it.)

Community Organizing: Community organizing is a set of methods, practices and strategies that address public problems and also strengthen people's capacity to work together and exercise power. (It’s bringing people together and using their power to care for an issue and make a change for that issue.)

Green Spaces: Overall free spaces and areas settled in a community consisting of green land such as parks, gardens, and open fields, that consist of green spaces.