JobsFirstNYC, a workforce, and community development organization, has worked for over a decade to support New York City’s most vulnerable populations. Part of their mission is to help young people disenfranchised from work and education due to systemic racism and redlining. For the last two years, they’ve been hard at work, right in our neighborhood, the Jerome Avenue Corridor in The Bronx.
“We believe every community has to drive its version of success,” says Roman Jackson, Vice President of JobsFirstNYC. “In The Bronx, we’ve partnered with key stakeholders like Spring Bank to make sure the community is heard and writes its own story.”
Most recently, we’ve worked together to address the rezoning of the Jerome Avenue Corridor. The Jerome Avenue Corridor is currently undergoing the most extensive rezoning in New York City’s history, spanning 93 blocks and impacting 93,000 residents. While typically implemented to spur economic development, rezoning also needs to account for more vulnerable community members’ needs. With high unemployment and poverty rates along the Jerome Avenue Corridor, some community members could get left behind–without advocacy.
JobsFirstNYC is hard at work to make sure this doesn’t happen. By fostering partnerships between residents, employers, and workers, JobsFirstNYC spearheaded the Jerome Avenue Revitalization Collaborative or JARC. Made up of 60 members, JARC is working to ensure that small businesses and community members can collectively leverage new and existing opportunities resulting from the rezoning. Through it all, JobsFirstNYC has never lost sight of its goal to expand access to opportunity.
“At JobsFirstNYC, says Roman Jackson, “community projects are vital to our practice. We recognize that for JobsFirstNYC to advocate for systems to change, we need to start at the community level. JARC is a key part of that practice in the Bronx.”
Although founded to address the rezoning, JARC also supports the Jerome Avenue community during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has disproportionately impacted the Bronx, with only 2 percent of the Payment Protection Program funding that went to New York City going to the Bronx. We are working with JARC to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Together, we want to ensure that Bronx businesses have access to the funds they need to stay afloat, now and always. We are proud to work with JobsFirstNYC to ensure that the Bronx is a place where all people can reach their full potential.
Learn more about JARC here. Read about our PPP Lending program here.
