An attempt to organize Red Hook do-gooders

Summit Academy founder Natasha Campbell is frustrated by low community turnout at the many local events that are intended to be a service to the neighborhood. She invited Red Hook residents to the school meeting to talk about working together.

“When you have a million people working on the same project for different organizations, there is little collaboration and what happens is no one has a great event because there are 20 great events happening on the same day or meeting in the same week,” Campbell said. “It has been our dream to figure out how we start working collectively.”

“Last year Janet Andrews did a phenomenal father and daughter dance at the school,” Campbell said. “The turnout was low for all the energy that went into it. She catered food from local restaurants. The reason there was a low turnout was because three other organizations threw barbecues for the same thing, celebrating dads and kids.”

Summit’s goal is to replace competition with collaboration among Red Hook’s various organizations.

“The vision is for partnering to bring opportunities to the community versus everyone having their own moment.”

At a school meeting, a group of parents, Summit school representatives, elected officials and representatives from community organizations split into three groups to brainstorm ideas for the future.

One group was led by Falinia Adkins, the special projects coordinator at Summit. One of their ideas was a community town hall so that everyone would have an opportunity to voice what they would like to see happening.

Group Two, which included a representative from IKEA, brought forth the idea of a toy drive. It was originally discussed to do this collaborative toy drive during the holidays but since not everybody celebrates Christmas the decision was to do it on Valentines Day and get letters from parents.

The third group included the Red Hook Initiative and PortSide, Carolina Salguero’s nonprofit organization that supports the red oil tanker sitting in Atlantic Basin. It was proposed that a community Google calendar be created with all community organizations so that everyone can know what is happening (this could also prevent similar events). Also, that a meet-and-greet that is currently hosted by RHI and the Justice Center be conducted more than once a year at different youth organizations.

The local assemblymember, Assistant Speaker Felix Ortiz, made sure everyone knew that he has supported Summit since their inception.

“You try to help the best you can schools you think will perform well and this was one of them,” Ortiz said. “We need to concentrate on how we can make our children do better. I speak with the teachers, the principal and the parents and ask them what you think are the most important needs of the school.”