\t\t\t\t\tOverview:<\/p>\n
In Southeast Queens, longtime Haitian community advocates have created Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8, a nonprofit providing health programs, financial education, food assistance and immigrant support while strengthening connections through the Haitian tradition of mutual aid known as \u201ckonbit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: This article was originally published here<\/a> by Epicenter NYC<\/a> and has been republished by The Haitian Times for its relevance to our readers.<\/p>\n In Southeast Queens in the 1970s and 1980s, Sacred Heart Church<\/a> was the Friday night hangout for teens in the Haitian Creole-speaking community. Marco Solomon, Katia Celifie-Aime, Phillipe P. Titus and many of their peers got their first paid jobs there as camp counselors through a grant that employed young people in the community. Elders also taught them about politics abroad, civic responsibility and self-empowerment.<\/p>\n At the time, Haitians were leaving their homeland in large numbers amid political, social and economic turmoil under the Jean-Claude \u201cBaby Doc\u201d Duvalier dictatorship<\/a>. Neighbors in Queens Village, Cambria Heights and St. Albans eventually channeled that civic engagement into Haitian Americans United for Progress<\/a> (HAUP), which helped newcomers with housing, health education and employment.<\/p>\n More than 50 years later and just down the block from HAUP headquarters,\u00a0 Solomon and his old friends from their Sacred Heart days are taking social services directly to the community with their own nonprofit. In 2022, they founded Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8<\/a>, which means \u201cBrothers and Sisters\u201d in Haitian Creole. Focused on youth and older adults, economic development and mental health, the nonprofit offers workshops and programming that meet the needs of Haitians in Southeast Queens.<\/p>\n Solomon describes Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8\u2019s approach as \u201ckonbit,\u201d a Haitian Creole term for mutual aid. \u201cIt\u2019s like a place where people can come to get advice and get to know each other and get to know how we can still obtain certain services,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause this thing going on right now impacts all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n The founding team sees the community facing similar needs as during the peak of their teen years but in some ways, it\u2019s tougher to serve them. \u201cRight now the community is scared to death \u2014 people are not coming out,\u201d said Solomon, president of Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8<\/a>. He cited the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policies and its recent termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitians. More than 5,400 Haitians in New York City alone have been left vulnerable to deportation by the move. To make things worse, violence and instability have deepened in Haiti even as the government is pushing to return immigrants there.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we\u2019re caught in [between] a rock and a hard place,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cWe\u2019re being persecuted here and yet we can\u2019t go back home.\u201d<\/p>\n Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8\u2019s first event was a health fair. They recruited nurses, mental health providers and other health care professionals to volunteer to take blood pressures and discuss various health topics. For Celifie-Aime, who also runs the Queens\/Long Island chapter of Black Girls Do Bike<\/a>, the health-wealth connection is real.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we come into this country, our diet is different, and then finding our food isn\u2019t as fresh, so people are gaining weight and developing metabolic disease,\u201d Celifie-Aime said, adding that not having health insurance adds another access barrier for many.<\/p>\n In part because of that culture-health barrier, much of Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8\u2019s community-building work happens through food-centered events.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCulture is the glue that keeps us together,\u201d Celifie-Aime said.<\/p>\n A year ago, Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8 moved into its headquarters on Hollis Avenue to more directly serve the community. The team starts with an intake survey in this space or at events, then connects neighbors with resources or partners that specialize in certain services, including HAUP for immigration legal aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n On a Friday in August, they were hunkered down in the Queens Village hub planning for a pop-up thrift event to raise money for programming. Celifie-Aime stopped poring over paperwork long enough to show an impromptu slideshow of a chicken farm in Haiti<\/a> that the nonprofit is is helping to build to support a village\u2019s self-sufficiency. For the team, maintaining \u201ckonbit\u201d with Haitians in the homeland is just as important as doing so with their Queens neighbors.<\/p>\n To run these services and make referrals, the nonprofit draws on its cofounders\u2019 decades of experience in social work, finance, entrepreneurship, health education and navigating stacks of paperwork. That includes Titus, who said he grew into his role as Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8\u2019s treasurer \u2014 handling state registrations and filings and creating a for-profit arm of the organization \u2014 after working as a \u201cregular\u201d limo driver. Their community relationships also extend their reach, including partnerships with Selah Driving School for driving lessons and Taurus Financial for an upcoming financial literacy program in local schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n The group has hosted food pantry events in its headquarters, with the next set for September.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAfter paying the rent, which takes more than 50% of their salary, how do you go about feeding yourself?\u201d Solomon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The financial literacy sessions the group regularly offers have shown them how Haiti\u2019s decades of turmoil have affected practices around money. \u201cOur parents didn\u2019t teach us certain things about finances,\u201d Celifie-Aime said, citing the still pervasive fear among Haitians around risks such as investing and buying property.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, new fears of deportation and the isolation of staying home are compounding existing housing, food and mental health needs, said Solomon, a retired social worker.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a desperate need for what we do here,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause you can\u2019t do this by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n For those affected by the end of TPS, the change has added new worries: What happens to U.S.-born children if their parents are deported? What happens to the house, bank account and belongings of people forced out of the country?\u00a0<\/p>\n And the political situation isn\u2019t just tough on neighbors with a particular immigration status. Under the Trump administration, immigration enforcement has increasingly affected organizations that serve migrants, issuing subpoenas, opening investigations and making visits to legal-service providers\u2019 offices to request records, all of which advocates have called intimidation tactics<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNonetheless, we need to do this job,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cSomebody has to do it. We need to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overview: In Southeast Queens, longtime Haitian community advocates have created Fr\u00e8 Ak S\u00e8, a nonprofit providing health programs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2497,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-346900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-latest-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346900","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=346900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}