Vote To Help Brooklyn College Academy Win $100,000!
KENSINGTON – Farmer’s Insurance challenged teachers across the country to dream big and submit proposals of what a $100,000 grant could help accomplish. The company will give $100,000 each to five schools with the best proposals — and our very own is one of the 15 finalists: Brooklyn College Academy wants to use the money to build on its Mindfulness Center.
“It is a hub for mindful practices and community building programs,” said Linda Noble, a social studies teacher at Brooklyn College Academy, a high school located on Coney Island Avenue in Kensington. “We work with students from different socioeconomic backgrounds; we have low-income students, we have homeless students.”
The Mindfulness Center became a reality last week when the Academy won a $10,000 grant from the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, ThriveNYC and the Fund for Public Health in New York City. But the center is far from complete.
“What we don’t have is the funding to bring trainers in from our community who would work with our students and our teachers and to bring sustainable programming,” Noble said in a video posted on the contest website:
“What the mindful center can provide us is a container, a safe space where [students] can bring these issues in but we can be surrounded with passion and love and kindness,” Noble said. “They can then focus and attend to their academic success.”
You can help the school win by voting daily now through October 30th on this website. Winners will be announced in December.
