FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tree of Life Center Partnership Awarded Robin Hood Foundation FUEL for 50 Phase Two Funding—January 13, 2023
The Tree of Life Center Partnership, which includes Cornell University Cooperative Extension-NYC (CUCE-NYC), is receiving $250,000 to continue building its program focused on children’s health. The award comes from the Robin Hood Foundation’s Fund for Early Learning and will support the Strong Together: Tree of Life Center Partnership for Young Children’s Health. CUCE-NYC is the lead agency for the award, which also funds Tree of Life Center (TOLC) partners: the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, the First Jamaica Community and Urban Development Corporation, the NYC Community Healthcare Network, and the Queens Public Library.
This is the second round of awards from Robin Hood’s FUEL for 50 initiative, which provides funding and resources to non-profit programs that support families in New York City with children ages 0-3. This funding will enhance the reach of the Strong Together initiative by creating new resources and an ecosystem of support for the parents, grandparents, and kinship care providers of children ages 0-3.
“Strong Together’s partnership model promises reach and impact beyond Jamaica. This approach builds on community assets and aspirations and works to secure equitable access to healthcare, food systems, and educational resource,” says CUCE-NYC Executive Director Jennifer Tiffany.
Each TOLC partner has served the community for decades, including collaboration on the Tree of Life Center- a new mixed-use building housing 174 affordable apartment units, the Community Healthcare Network’s Jamaica health center and dental clinic, and space for multiple programs that provide resources to the Jamaica community. It opened on December 9, 2022, and provides the community setting for the Stronger Together initiative.
“This initiative affirms that working in grounded intentional partnership makes us stronger together. We model a vibrant village which can meet the challenges of the coming decades through the promotion of early childhood and lifelong health, equity, social justice, climate responsibility, and capacity by engaging TOLC families as community-building partners,” says Tiffany.
Strong Together is one of 10 efforts citywide receiving a second phase of support from FUEL For 50. In 2022, Strong Together received $25,000 of funding in the first phase which enabled the TOLC partnership to build a unique effort of creating a village for young children to thrive, a needed asset according to Rev. Patrick O’Connor, lead pastor of the First Presbyterian Church.
“We center our work on a commitment to breaking down organizational silos and on our long-standing practice of listening to how the Jamaica community defines and prioritizes needs and aspirations,” O’Connor says.
Fuel for 50 Phase Two funding will support active engagement with families currently living in Jamaica as well as with families moving into the TOLC apartments. Families moving into the TOLC apartments will be welcomed with gift packages that introduce them to the suite of TOLC services and resources available. Community meetings will introduce staff from each of the partners as resources for accessing programs and as members of the TOLC community.
The Fuel for 50 funding will draw on the resources of all the TOLC partners to build an ecological model that prioritizes young children’s health and development which can be replicated as New York City strives to meet its housing crisis. As Queens Borough President Donovan Richards stated at the TOLC ribbon-cutting on December 9, 2022, “You’ve created a way in which people can relate to each other, have services and form the kind of community where people have better outcomes in our city. If it can be done here, then sure enough it can be done throughout our entire city.”
Contact:
Natalia Rommen, Communications Specialist: ncr35@cornell.edu (CUCE-NYC)
Jennifer Tiffany, Executive Director: jst5@cornell.edu (CUCE-NYC)