Students from Voyages Preparatory High School held a ribbon-cutting event to unveil a newly renovated basketball court at Playground Ninety in Jackson Heights, celebrating the completion of a student-led effort to transform a run-down neighborhood court into a vibrant public space for their school and broader community. The event brought together students, educators, families, artists, and community partners. NYS Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas and New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan also attended.
The project began at Voyages Prep, a NYC public transfer school in Queens, in an elective class offered in partnership with Hire Cause, a project-based career education program that empowers underserved high school students to build professional skills by solving real challenges for their communities. Students identified Playground 90—a court where many students gather after school to play basketball—as a place they wanted to improve. Over the course of the school year, they organized three bake sales, a carnival, and a basketball tournament, raising $2,100 toward the project.
The students then created a video submission for Every Court Has a Story, a global competition in which participants pitch their vision for why their court deserves a renovation grant. Their submission was selected from more than 50 entries, making it the first student-led submission to win the competition and earning them a $50,000 renovation grant.
The nonprofit Project Backboard renovated the court in partnership with NYC Parks, with students participating in the painting process leading up to the unveiling. The renovation included repairing and resurfacing the court, drawing the court design, and applying colorful acrylic coating designed for sports surfaces. Project Backboard has renovated more than a dozen basketball courts in New York City, including one other in Queens at Long Island City’s Murray Playground.
The finished court features a large-scale mural design created with student input in collaboration with artists Traci Molloy and Claude Viaud Peralta. The design includes colorful flowers representing the diversity of Jackson Heights, wavy blue lines symbolizing New York City’s rivers and interconnected communities, and a day-and-night theme across the court.
Voyages Prep is a public transfer school serving students who have fallen behind in credits or need a different pathway to complete high school. Through the Hire Cause class, students connected service learning and career education to a real community need—turning a court many of them knew as a run-down place to play into a bright, welcoming space for students, families, and neighbors.
“This project shows that the way some people look at transfer school students is wrong,” said William Nevels, a Voyages Prep senior. “People might make assumptions about who we are, but when you really get to know students at schools like Voyages, you see people who are driven, hardworking, and capable of doing something meaningful. This court is proof that students like us can create something real for our community.”
“For a lot of us, basketball is therapy. It brings people together, helps people find peace, and gives students a place to stay focused,” said Kamrin Jones, a Voyages Prep senior. “We put our voice into our video for ‘Every Court Has a Story,’ and people heard us. To know that our voices could lead to a real change in a place our community uses, means so much to us.”
“I’m from this neighborhood, so this is personal for me,” said Joseth Laiz, a Voyages Prep senior. “One day when I have kids, I want to be able to come back here and tell them, ‘I helped do this.’ It feels special to know that something we worked on will be here for the people of this community for many years to come.”
“This project showed us what we can accomplish when we work as a team,” said Sophia Nunez, a Voyages Prep senior. “We started with an idea to improve a court that mattered to students and the community, and we just kept going. It taught us to invest in our community and to believe that our ideas can make a difference.”
Voyages Prep educators said the project gave students a hands-on opportunity to practice leadership, collaboration, communication, project management, and civic engagement while creating something tangible for the school and neighborhood community.
“What made this project so powerful was that students saw their ideas move from the classroom into the real world,” said Yael Glick, teacher of the Hire Cause class at Voyages Prep. “They were not just learning about service or career skills in theory. They were organizing events, telling their story, working with partners, contributing to the design, and seeing the impact of their work in a public space that people will use every day. For our students, that is an experience they will always carry with them.”
“At Hire Cause, we believe young people build confidence, purpose, and career-ready skills when they have the chance to work on real challenges that matter to them,” said David Dvorkin, Founder and CEO of Hire Cause. “These students chose a cause bigger than themselves, and once they tapped into that, nothing was stopping them. They organized, raised money, built partnerships, and helped bring a lasting community improvement to life. That is what Hire Cause is all about.”
Students from Voyages Preparatory High School held a ribbon-cutting event to unveil a newly renovated basketball court at Playground Ninety in Jackson Heights, celebrating the completion of a student-led effort to transform a run-down neighborhood court into a vibrant public space for their school and broader community.