St. Nicks Alliance (SNA) anchors an array of volunteer and neighborhood groups in Northern Brooklyn which helps kids become lifelong learners, protects tenants from landlord harassment, comfort, and support seniors, and develops skills and prospects for job seekers. Some 17,000 people per year participate in services and 5,200 people live in affordable housing managed by St. Nicks Alliance. 6,000 youth and families are served in 21 schools and community centers. St. Nicks also provides job training, adult education, and placement services to 1,200 individuals each year. The people from the neighborhoods they serve—Bushwick, Central Brooklyn, Northern Bedford Stuyvesant and East New York as well as parts of Brownsville, Greenpoint and Williamsburg—are predominantly immigrant, African American and Latinx.
Amongst the people served by St. Nicks Alliance are 3,500 elderly considered at risk for contracting Covid-19; the initial days and weeks of the shutdown left many without access to food and other basic needs. In March 2020, SNA launched a Senior Wellness and Emergency Food Distribution Campaign to ensure elderly and immune-compromised clients and neighbors had food, were able to address health issues, urgent needs, and loneliness. They made nearly 50,000 wellness calls to seniors. They worked closely with food pantries and other emergency service providers, opened two Emergency Call Centers, and repurposed their shuttered Senior Center and vans to operate an emergency food pantry and delivery service network. They sourced fresh fruit and vegetables from a local community business partner.
SNA also helped bring weekly lunches to residents in public housing for many months and hosted several grab and go meals for children and families at their Community and Afterschool Centers. Perhaps most remarkably, SNA was able to sustain a range of youth, workforce and housing services while working remotely, including afterschool and summer youth activities, and in-person day care for 60-80 toddlers.
CCF helped St. Nicks build out an organization-wide data base that integrated case management so that staff could see how each client and her/his household interacted with the agency’s wide array of workforce, education, housing, and other services. With technical assistance from the CCF consultant, SNA also was able to create a benefit analysis to document how an innovative after school reading program is improving the reading grade levels of its participants.
