Grantees
and Partners

RSVP (Please Respond)

Overview:

DYKWTCA (Do You Know Where The Children Are?), co-founded by artist/activist Mary Ellen Carroll (MEC, studios), is an ongoing initiative that develops programs and public policy addressing critical issues in migration and climate that are affecting the most vulnerable— immigrant children and their families. Terra Firma, Mary Ellen Carroll (MEC, studios), and other collaborators established RSVP (Please Respond) to introduce the arts to recently arrived unaccompanied immigrant children seeking humanitarian protection as an acculturative “path-marking” experience in New York City.

Terra Firma is a nationally recognized model of care for newly arrive unaccompanied migrant children and migrant families that integrates non-profit legal services into a community health center such that medical, mental health and immigration attorneys work side-by-side. The model was designed to facilitate access to all services in one place, at one time to improve outcomes. Located in the South Bronx, Terra Firma’s mission is to ensure that unaccompanied migrant children and newly arrived migrant families have access to quality mental health and medical care and legal representation, attain safety and stability, and enhance their resilience to achieve their full potential. Terra Firma’s youth enrichment programs are designed to help facilitate acculturation and normalize lives that have been traumatized by violence and upheaval. To date Terra Firma has served over 1,300 unaccompanied migrant children and members of migrant families in NYC.

The Bronx historically has been a pathway for migration in New York City. This continues to this day, and the borough has witnessed increases in the numbers of refugees from the triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, among other locations. This year, we have seen 120,000 unaccompanied youth, an unprecedented number, entering the United States.

The mental health challenges for asylum seekers are significant. The impacts are even more challenging for children, particularly for those children who have been traumatized by often violent events that led them to flee their country, their arduous journey to the US, intentional detention and, resettlement and acculturation stress in a new country. Lastly, US immigration policy continues to make entry into the country a traumatic experience for children and families e.g. family separation and prolonged detention. There is a seemingly insurmountable layer of trauma that manifests as toxic stress. As noted by the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard, “Toxic stress can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support.”
The population of unaccompanied immigrant children and families seeking US protection being served by the project faces all these hardships and more. The physical and mental development of children going through the trauma of migration can be disrupted from toxic stress, resulting in impacts on the very architecture of their brains. It can also exacerbate and impair cognitive development and increase the risk for disease that can continue into adulthood.

Grant:

Purpose: To support the development of RSVP (Please Respond).

For RSVP’s pilot program in 2022-23, participants experienced the arts (Architectecture, Art, Music, Performance/Theater) through a combination of weekly field visits to organizations, institutions, and businesses. These visits were complemented by hands-on workshops where the participants engaged in exercises related to the particular discipline and entity that was hosting their visit. In addition, the participants would map (using a variety of materials and mediums that included: videos/photos/drawings/writing) to reflect on what they did, what they want to do, and how they imagine New York City as their new home and the role that the arts can play in the process of acculturation.

Examples of the partnering organizations for the field visits include: Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (Architecture), El Museo Del Barrio (Art), National Sawdust (Music), and Times Square Arts (Performance and Theater). A key component of the field visits was that the youth engaged in related activities of ‘making and doing’ while at these sites of cultural production. Mapping exercises incorporated the places and activities that the youth discovered and that would make New York City a home for them, as well as becoming a guide to ‘their NYC’ that could be shared with future participants in the program RSVP.

The collaboration was designed to introduce the arts to the lives of these youth as new arrivals in New York City, and to introduce them to the cultural realm as a place where they can share their personal experiences through the arts while being provided with assistance in adjusting to their new home.

Impact:

RSVP participants were enrolled as clients in Terra Firma’s program for unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) seeking asylum. RSVP introduced the youth to the arts as an acculturation “path-marking” experience in New York City. There were eight participants in the original cohort for the RSVP pilot program and ranged in age from 12 to 17. The participants were from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The program was structured into three phases. Phase I introduced the cohort to the arts in NYC and included a mapping exercise of their routes and interests as a resource for themselves in NYC and for future UIC’s, as well as meetings and hands-on workshops at Terra Firma’s clinic and the sites of the partnering entities. The participants then chose to focus on a specific discipline in the arts and for Phase II and Phase III there would be iteration and they would have a deeper understanding of their chosen discipline. For Phase II the RSVP participants met with two organizations, institutions, or businesses in that respective discipline and spent a period of time to complete an activity that reflected the working process of that entity. For Phase III they had one-to-one experiences at the partnering sites and programs were developed specifically for the participant to be actively engaged in work within that discipline.

Detailed notes of all meetings and visits with the RSVP participants were done with Spanish speaking coordinators who were hired to facilitate the program. This also included meetings with the clinical staff and psychology team at Terra Firma. More than 45 coordination meetings amounting to 750+ hours took place in 2022-2023 and cumulative attendance at public presentations on RSVP was 525. One-on-one exit interviews were conducted with the RSVP participants after each of the three phases were completed.

In exit interviews for each phase with the RSVP participants they expressed that:

• The program was very meaningful and impactful on their lives in New York and their experience of the city. This ranged in how they went to parts of NYC that they had never been to before, and also that they saw and did things that they never imagined they would do, or knew about, in the arts.
• They were concerned about their education post high school and how to make a living and be successful in their new home of NYC. They also desired for RSVP to evolve to include workforce development and additional educational opportunities because as recent immigrants they think it is important that they are able to take care of themselves and their families.
• The other point they made was they did not know any of the other RSVP participants before the first meeting at Terra Firma and that they became friends and helped to develop their social network with other newly arrived youth who had a similar experience. As unaccompanied immigrant children RSVP is their new shared experience and it is in their new home in New York City.

As a result of their participation in RSVP, they have an understanding of the importance of the arts in New York City, and not only what the arts are to New Yorkers, but how this can impact their well-being and sense of selves as recent arrivals to the city where culture is foundational to the inhabitants.

The feedback that Terra Firma received in the clinic and the impact RSVP had in terms of the mental health and response of the RSVP participants was extremely positive. As one outside observer noted, “it was being built and they all came,” and that reflects the commitment, courage, and agility that is foundational to survival and the well-being of the RSVP participants and the partnering entities.”