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March 05, 2026 Grantee Partner Spotlight: Empower My Hood
In 2024, the Nation’s Report Card scores indicated that fewer than a third of students nationwide were reading at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Proficient level, a level that would demonstrate a consistent degree of understanding and interpretation of written text. The average reading scores for high school seniors fell to their lowest […]
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February 26, 2026 Grantee Partner Spotlight: San Jeronimo Restaurant & Bakery
Nowadays, one can learn any trade online. With endless Reddit forums, step-by-step YouTube tutorials, and even more so with the advancement of artificial intelligence, our bounds are practically limitless. But despite the unrestricted access to information just beneath our fingertips, we seem to have lost the meaning of our craft. While we can replicate techniques...
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January 15, 2026 Grantee Partner Spotlight: CARVE BUNNiES
In 2018, seventeen-year-old Chloe Kim stunned the world with a gold-medal performance in the Winter Olympics women’s halfpipe, making history as the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding medal. Yet as her achievement took center stage, much of the discourse that followed focused less on her technical mastery and more on her physical appearance–offering […]
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December 23, 2025 Youth Leadership in Action: A Citywide Movement for Civic Engagement
Across New York City, young people are leading. They’re organizing classmates, showing up at community meetings, turning school hallways, parks, and public housing courtyards into spaces for dialogue, healing, and action. With support from The Pinkerton Foundation, CitizensNYC is investing directly in that power through a new cohort of 15 Youth Leadership Councils and...
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October 27, 2025 All In For New York Fall Cocktail Honoree Aparna Yenamandra: A Belief in Opportunity—and the Courage to Pay It Forward
When Aparna Yenamandra talks about her work, she starts with gratitude. “My parents ingrained in me that they moved to a country with opportunity—and you owe that back. To whom much is given, much is expected.” That philosophy has guided her from her early days at law school to her current role as a partner […]
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October 27, 2025 All In For New York Fall Cocktail Honoree Jeffrey Finger: Finding Strength in the Toughest Moments
Jeffrey Finger didn’t plan on a career in restructuring. “I found it by accident,” he says with a laugh. “I was sent to New York for a meeting early in my career, and I remember thinking, why is everyone so unhappy? It turned out I’d walked into a restructuring.” That meeting changed the course of […]
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October 23, 2025 Introducing the Elliott Fellows
At CitizensNYC, we believe lasting change starts with people: neighbors, volunteers, educators, and small business owners who know their communities best. For more than 50 years, we’ve invested in those grassroots leaders, providing the funding, tools, and trust they need to make their ideas real. Now, through the Elliott Fellowship, we’re taking that commitment one...
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October 23, 2025 CEO Julie Shapiro in City Limits: Funding The First Step to Community-Led Change
This piece originally appeared in City Limits on Tuesday, October 21st. It can be read here. How do you change your neighborhood? Sometimes, all it takes is a few thousand dollars and someone who believes in you. At CitizensNYC, we’ve spent 50 years investing in that kind of possibility. As one of the country’s first […]
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October 06, 2025 CEO Julie Shapiro in The New York Daily News: N.Y.ers can make our own solutions to problems
This piece originally appeared in The New York Daily News on Sunday, October 5th. It can be read here. When was the last time it felt like New York City was headed in the right direction? As federal funding for housing, schools, and food security gets cut, New York’s leaders are facing crises of their […]
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July 31, 2025 From Floodwater to Forest: Southeast Queens Residents Organize for Environmental Justice
For decades, the residents of Southeast Queens have lived with water in their basements and uncertainty on their doorsteps. Chronic flooding—driven by a persistently high groundwater table—has plagued neighborhoods like Springfield Gardens, Laurelton, Rosedale, and South Jamaica. In some homes, water pumps run constantly just to keep the floor dry. And while citywide...
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