For nearly a decade, Dr. Denise Nu\u00f1ez and her nonprofit have been mentoring young Bronx residents to become the next generation of leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started as kinda more getting involved with the Latino community, but we don’t discriminate,” Dr. Nu\u00f1ez, a pediatric intensivist and founder of Ni\u00f1os de la Caridad. “Anybody that wants to come and join, they can join.”<\/p>\n
Nu\u00f1ez says her mission began after losing one of her teen patients to drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI totally went home, sat down with my husband and kids. I said guys this happened to me today, we either leave or we decide to do something about this,” she said with passion. ” [Even] if it\u2019s one person that we save, it\u2019s very important.”<\/p>\n
According to the Center for Urban Future, just 20% of Bronx residents have a college degree. But Nu\u00f1ez\u2019s nonprofit is breaking that barrier \u2014 seven years later, Ni\u00f1os de la Caridad has helped thousands of students and sent more than 300 Latinos to college.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do this together. there\u2019s hope that not everything is so bad out here in the Bronx,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Inside her classroom, sticky notes fill the walls \u2014 not for the kids, but for the parents. With many non-English-speaking families in the program, Nu\u00f1ez says success depends on empowering parents too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the regular things [ like teaching parents English] before we teach them about FAFSA, about the application to college\u2026 all that and scholarships\u2026. we start slow.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of October, Nu\u00f1ez expects to welcome more than 110 high school juniors and seniors into the free program \u2014 continuing her mission to change the Bronx, one student at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For nearly a decade, Dr. Denise Nu\u00f1ez and her nonprofit have been mentoring young Bronx residents to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,1385,1384,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-rebuilding","tag-rebuilding-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}