Riley’s Way Foundation invests in and supports the next generation of kind leaders. Through our blogs, we spotlight youth voices as they work to make the world a better place.

Riley’s Way Chapters bring together a group of young changemakers within one high school, college, or community group to create opportunities for them to model leading with empathy and kindness and to create a positive change on a social impact issue that matters to them. Hear from the Riley’s Way Chapter at The Brearley School in New York City on their past year of kind leadership!

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By Orli Schwartz, Brearley Chapter Co-Chair

The Brearley Chapter is in its 3rd year as a Riley’s Way Chapter, and has had one of the most productive years to date! This year, we had 10 new members join our Chapter, which doubled our size from the previous year!

For the 2023-2024 school year, our Chapter prioritized strengthening our existing partnerships. What distinguishes our Chapter is the ongoing partnership we’ve maintained with BronxWorks, a community center in the Bronx that works to build a better borough by leading programs related to health and wellness, child enrichment, care for older adults, and food-insecurity. Members of our Chapter volunteer at BronxWorks on Saturdays, helping to teach their wellness programming and staffing their food pantry. This is now our third year working with BronxWorks, and a turning point in our partnership was designing an intergenerational technology class for their Saturday participants to teach basic computer literacy, such as navigating Google searches, creating an email address and sending emails, and how to recognize Internet scams. Through our three years of working with BronxWorks, we’ve developed mutual trust through our continued work together, allowing us to design our own activities. This project marked a completely new stage in our partnership made possible by our multi-year work with them and consistent volunteering by our members.

Each week, our Chapter would create an agenda for the class based on what we, as teenagers, think are the most important skills to have when using a computer. We would draft a lesson outline, and then send the draft to the Program Specialist at BronxWorks. Alongside him and the BronxWorks interns, we worked to refine the agenda and create a set of slides to accompany the programming. Then, some of our volunteers would spend time in the BronxWorks computer lab with participants, leading the class through the slides and helping to answer any group or individual questions that may arise.

The class exemplified the Riley’s Way values of community and empathy. The programming brought together teenagers and older adults to build connections and relationships with each other, and it prioritized teaching older adults ways to stay connected through technology such as emails, video chats, or Google searches to find events in their community.

Being at BronxWorks allows our members to put the Riley’s Way values into action. It is an incredibly special thing to have a multi-year relationship with an organization and return each month to interact with the same people. I’ve built relationships with participants and our BronxWorks visits have shown me how impactful and necessary kind leadership is.

Martha Higgins, one of our co-chairs, says that: “I’m very proud of the work we’ve done with our community organization. BronxWorks entrusting us with their new technology class demonstrates to me how far our relationship with the organization has grown over the past two years. Our Chapter members always show up with enthusiasm for the community and curriculum there and I cannot wait to see how the partnership will continue to develop next year!”

Within our Riley’s Way community, our Chapter met with the Browning Chapter to package and deliver sandwiches to community fridges in East Harlem. We also did this event last year and are excited to continue this Brearley-Browning tradition!

Overall, our Chapter has benefited enormously from our focus on partnerships with other Chapters and with BronxWork this year. Building sustained relationships outside of our Chapter has increased the meaningful discussions of service and how best to serve our communities within the Chapter. Our members particularly enjoyed getting to connect with older generations through our intergenerational work at BronxWorks. One Chapter member said in our closing meeting, “Seeing people take the sandwiches we made immediately upon putting them in the community fridge made me recognize how meaningful taking one Thursday afternoon every two weeks to do service is. In one hour, we were able to make 150 sandwiches and deliver them to a local community fridge, which means that 150 people in our community will be able to take some food that would not have otherwise been there.” Being able to branch outside of the Brearley community through Riley’s Way has instilled in our members a deep commitment to service and a passion for making both their own and other communities a better place. I am thrilled at the year our Chapter has had and cannot wait to see what next year will bring!

This blog is available to read on the Riley’s Way Foundation LinkedIn page.