Hola,
So many people have heard of Miracle on Craig St. and what we have been doing here but many people do not know who the woman behind the movement is or what my story is. So spirit says I must share with you how this all even began and how I even began. So here is your closeup, personal and in depth!
My name is Rosa E Rivera. I am 29 years young. I am from a small-ish town called Schenectady in the Capital Region of New York. I was born in St. Peters Hospital and raised here in the “ city” (it’s really too small to be a city.) I come from a strong, female, single head of household, working class/working poor, family background. I am the oldest of four on my mom’s side and the oldest of five on my dad’s side. I never met my father as a child until just a few years ago when I was able to track him down through Facebook. I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault which I feel is important to say because it can be a silent killer. I’m a farmer, a doula, an avid reader, a teacher, and a pretty decent human being.
I love to write. There is no critical voice, no shame, and no insecurities when pen hits paper, it’s just me and the pen. I’m a way better writer than I am a speaker and I'm totally fine with that. I am teaching myself how to love better one day at a time...reading, writing, meditating, praying, saying affirmations, doing yoga, therapy, practicing positive self talk, doing things on my own for myself, making new friends, believing in myself, exploring the world, taking missed steps along the way, practicing being still and just trying to come more and more into full awareness.
The pain of having an absent father and not being able to get the emotional security I needed caused me to look for a sense of belonging I needed elsewhere. I put myself in many unsafe situations, around a lot of violence and drugs. I ran away from home at 14 and eventually left again for good at 16. I dropped out of school in 10th grade because none of my friends were in school and school seemed to be moving way too slow for me.
I took the GED test when I was 16 years old, just a few months after dropping out of High School. I passed the test and immediately enrolled in Schenectady County Community College. I always experienced a sort of cognitive dissonance, a real depression and anxiety from my trauma and all the pain that seemed to surround the people around me, coupled with the conviction to be something better. I graduated from the Liberal Arts Program at SCCC in 2010, the youngest person in the class to graduate at 18. I transferred to SUNY Oswego as they were the only school that had a Philosophy and Psychology Program (plus I had a dream about it). There, I completed my B.A. in Philosophy/Psychology and started to realize that the further education I sought the less and less I seen people who looked like me. I took an elective course my last semester of the program called Social Justice in Education. It explored the American Education System from the beginning of its history to the present and how social injustice was practiced and implemented in our institutions and classrooms. I loved the course, it opened my eyes, it was really the only class that I could strongly relate to. Being a part of several minority groups I thought “I’ve seen this happen”, “I understand this”, “I get it”, “I could tell you about this from experience.”
I ended up going back home for about a year to look for work as a caseworker but, I never really found anything and most places wouldn’t even hire me without any experience. I ended up working at a Jewelry Shop all the while I was dating Raeshelle. She became the woman in my life in 2009, around the time I decided to really get more serious about the direction of my life. I wanted to go back to school for Social Justice. I felt that was where I was supposed to be and that was/is the most important work of our time.
I fell in love with Chicago, the big city, the food, the culture, and so there I was a small town girl in a big city. I went to Loyola University in 2013 for my M.A. in Social Justice and Community Development. I started to make a lot of friends in Chicago, I started to learn the city, I was volunteering at a local center and if my heart wasn’t set in making a change in Schenectady, I would have stayed. Someday you never know I may end up back.
It was a hard decision to make coming back home. I was a bit fearful because at one point I had only experienced what Cornel West calls “the underside of the human condition” here. And now I was going to come back home and talk about how I wanted to create change in the community? “Who the hell do I think I am” I used to think. But, now I know that was all just my own insecurities I had to face. So, I faced them and I came back home in 2014 and finished my classes online as I searched for an internship to complete my degree (not to mention graduate school was really less diverse than undergraduate and I struggled with feeling very out of place in my program).
In 2014 I pursued and landed an internship at The Schenectady Foundation. In 2015 after graduation, I was hired as a full time employee at the foundation, in charge of their grant programs. I thought that I would be there forever. I thought “I made it”. This job was all I wanted coming out of college (maybe about $15,000 more dollars a year but I was going to make due.) As time went on I got very heavily engaged in my community. I was going to all of the neighborhood association meetings, the community forums, affirmative action meetings, city council meetings, etc. I started to meet some other great people and was happy to call them my colleagues, friends and family.
All that kept coming up was Carver, Carver, Carver. It is a community center named after George Washington Carver that had been around since the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the institutions in this city were birthed out of Carver. Carver was truly a mecca for the public service sector in Schenectady. The center focused on uplifting the quality of life for residents in a predominantly African American/"minority", low income demographic. I remember the center when I was really young and I would go sometimes to use the library. It closed down while I was away at Loyola in 2013.
In 2015 after a long foreclosure process, the center went up for auction. After speaking about it a few times, a group of people showed up at my apartment in Lincoln Heights and said “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now.” I wasn’t totally sold, I was very skeptical at first. I knew it was a huge endeavor. But, a few days passed by and the possibility of re-opening the center through grassroots fundraising crossed my mind and I couldn’t let it go. I thought to myself “we could raise this money”. I gathered my friends back up, all folks who have stories similar to mine and are still working in the community and said “we should do this.” And they all said “I’m in.” The next day we started the “48 hour miracle” as it was two days before the auction and we set out to raise $150,000.
I think we ended up raising maybe a few thousand dollars but, more importantly than that we showed up at every auction with community support letting folks know we want this building to stay in our community and we want it back open as a community center because that is what our community needs.
At the end of 2016 I put in my resignation to my job. I felt that I had knowledge, insight, and expertise that my community needed at a more intimate level than what I could offer at the foundation. It was one of the hardest decisions I had to make at that time. I was fearful. I had no plan b. In fact I couldn’t have a plan b because I was just at the inception of this and I had to believe in myself fully. I had a little bit of savings and the most supportive partner in the world who I leaned on and cried to and she said “everything is going to be okay, you got this.” Without Raeshelle’s love, support, and encouragement I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am now at this speed and pace to be quite honest. I really could not have done it without her.
Fast forward a whole heap of learning curves, commitments, planning, networking, meetings, and energy to May of 2018, Miracle on Craig Street was awarded our non profit 501 c(3) status. Our mission is “to root a culturally responsive network of people, resources, and opportunities focused on wellness for children and families in Schenectady.” To date we have raised $345,000 for the renovation of the Carver Community Center. We have leveraged a development team, a legal team, and an architect for the project. We have worked with hundreds of volunteers for fundraising and planning. We continue planning and networking for the center and are finally on our way to closing on the property in September of 2019!!! We have $110,000 left to raise! Woohoo!!!
Fundraising can be daunting and really many grant processes need a revolution. As I write this I can’t believe how far we have come and how close we are to seeing this center back up and running. It has been such a powerful experience for me to see that 1. Whatever I want is waiting for me 2. Whatever I need I already have 3. We create our own reality and destiny 4. There are others out there who are giving, loving, generous, caring, and who believe. As a young person who has had to work very hard to workout resentments towards life and has had to come into faith and trusting the universe kicking and screaming, this is probably the best path I could have chose to help me grow. We have done our very first clean out of the building after 3 years and it is so surreal and confirming.
We are renovating the community center and then also applying to get it on the historic federal registry as we know many black historical spaces are less likely to be preserved and recorded. Our project is estimated to be around $1.5 million dollars for a good renovation. I have been persistent. I am not taking any “No’s”. I just keep coming back, doing what is asked, and keep coming back!
This project is so much bigger than me. I found out by committing to this project I was committing to being vulnerable and putting myself out there. I have to show people that I care about this place and the people here. The trauma that I have experienced and I believe also our society teaches us conflicting views, especially for women about how we’re allowed to show our feelings and emotions in public. There is so much shame around being human, having feelings and experiencing discomfort. But I learned so much about myself through this project. I learned that I was looking to be a hero because that is what Rosa needed. I needed to be my own hero. And so that is who I have become, my own hero and I realized that has nothing to do with the outcome of my work on this project or any project. No matter what happens my effort, faith, worth, and work ethic speaks for itself.
Our community needs this community space. It’s not just a good idea or something honorable to do. My community needs to see people like me, the amazing volunteers, residents, board members, and all folks involved, caring about each other, healing each other, healing ourselves. They need to see people from this community taking action and believing that we all can make big change, for ourselves, for our families and for our communities. The revitalization of The Carver Community Center and it’s legacy to improve the quality of life for people in this neighborhood is an absolute necessity. This project has always been for us by us and that is the most significant type of transformation and inspiration that any community can have. The reality is that our communities are fighting extermination from violence, from disease, from joblessness, from homelessness, from displacement, from mental health disorders, all rooted in lack of care, accountability and strategic intentionality!
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not perfect. I am still growing everyday. But, I know that I am a love child. I know that I was put here on this earth to teach people how to love, including myself. I surely know that “I come as one but, I stand as ten thousand.” I know that I come from generations of traumatized women and yet in my healing, I heal the trauma of my line. I also know that my personal journey and the journey of other young women are connected to this project and the vision and culture of “wellness, health and healing” that we have already began to facilitate.
My hope is that you get to read this message of pure transparency, if nothing else happens, my hope is that you know that this generation is out here---fighting for social justice, fighting for change, fighting for quality of life, fighting for equity, fighting for health, fighting to heal ourselves, fighting for our lives and we are asking for help, but we are not giving up. Our ancestor’s prayers and dreams are not lost on us. “They are our convictions.”
Abundant Love & Blessings,
Rosa E Rivera
So many people have heard of Miracle on Craig St. and what we have been doing here but many people do not know who the woman behind the movement is or what my story is. So spirit says I must share with you how this all even began and how I even began. So here is your closeup, personal and in depth!
My name is Rosa E Rivera. I am 29 years young. I am from a small-ish town called Schenectady in the Capital Region of New York. I was born in St. Peters Hospital and raised here in the “ city” (it’s really too small to be a city.) I come from a strong, female, single head of household, working class/working poor, family background. I am the oldest of four on my mom’s side and the oldest of five on my dad’s side. I never met my father as a child until just a few years ago when I was able to track him down through Facebook. I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault which I feel is important to say because it can be a silent killer. I’m a farmer, a doula, an avid reader, a teacher, and a pretty decent human being.
I love to write. There is no critical voice, no shame, and no insecurities when pen hits paper, it’s just me and the pen. I’m a way better writer than I am a speaker and I'm totally fine with that. I am teaching myself how to love better one day at a time...reading, writing, meditating, praying, saying affirmations, doing yoga, therapy, practicing positive self talk, doing things on my own for myself, making new friends, believing in myself, exploring the world, taking missed steps along the way, practicing being still and just trying to come more and more into full awareness.
The pain of having an absent father and not being able to get the emotional security I needed caused me to look for a sense of belonging I needed elsewhere. I put myself in many unsafe situations, around a lot of violence and drugs. I ran away from home at 14 and eventually left again for good at 16. I dropped out of school in 10th grade because none of my friends were in school and school seemed to be moving way too slow for me.
I took the GED test when I was 16 years old, just a few months after dropping out of High School. I passed the test and immediately enrolled in Schenectady County Community College. I always experienced a sort of cognitive dissonance, a real depression and anxiety from my trauma and all the pain that seemed to surround the people around me, coupled with the conviction to be something better. I graduated from the Liberal Arts Program at SCCC in 2010, the youngest person in the class to graduate at 18. I transferred to SUNY Oswego as they were the only school that had a Philosophy and Psychology Program (plus I had a dream about it). There, I completed my B.A. in Philosophy/Psychology and started to realize that the further education I sought the less and less I seen people who looked like me. I took an elective course my last semester of the program called Social Justice in Education. It explored the American Education System from the beginning of its history to the present and how social injustice was practiced and implemented in our institutions and classrooms. I loved the course, it opened my eyes, it was really the only class that I could strongly relate to. Being a part of several minority groups I thought “I’ve seen this happen”, “I understand this”, “I get it”, “I could tell you about this from experience.”
I ended up going back home for about a year to look for work as a caseworker but, I never really found anything and most places wouldn’t even hire me without any experience. I ended up working at a Jewelry Shop all the while I was dating Raeshelle. She became the woman in my life in 2009, around the time I decided to really get more serious about the direction of my life. I wanted to go back to school for Social Justice. I felt that was where I was supposed to be and that was/is the most important work of our time.
I fell in love with Chicago, the big city, the food, the culture, and so there I was a small town girl in a big city. I went to Loyola University in 2013 for my M.A. in Social Justice and Community Development. I started to make a lot of friends in Chicago, I started to learn the city, I was volunteering at a local center and if my heart wasn’t set in making a change in Schenectady, I would have stayed. Someday you never know I may end up back.
It was a hard decision to make coming back home. I was a bit fearful because at one point I had only experienced what Cornel West calls “the underside of the human condition” here. And now I was going to come back home and talk about how I wanted to create change in the community? “Who the hell do I think I am” I used to think. But, now I know that was all just my own insecurities I had to face. So, I faced them and I came back home in 2014 and finished my classes online as I searched for an internship to complete my degree (not to mention graduate school was really less diverse than undergraduate and I struggled with feeling very out of place in my program).
In 2014 I pursued and landed an internship at The Schenectady Foundation. In 2015 after graduation, I was hired as a full time employee at the foundation, in charge of their grant programs. I thought that I would be there forever. I thought “I made it”. This job was all I wanted coming out of college (maybe about $15,000 more dollars a year but I was going to make due.) As time went on I got very heavily engaged in my community. I was going to all of the neighborhood association meetings, the community forums, affirmative action meetings, city council meetings, etc. I started to meet some other great people and was happy to call them my colleagues, friends and family.
All that kept coming up was Carver, Carver, Carver. It is a community center named after George Washington Carver that had been around since the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the institutions in this city were birthed out of Carver. Carver was truly a mecca for the public service sector in Schenectady. The center focused on uplifting the quality of life for residents in a predominantly African American/"minority", low income demographic. I remember the center when I was really young and I would go sometimes to use the library. It closed down while I was away at Loyola in 2013.
In 2015 after a long foreclosure process, the center went up for auction. After speaking about it a few times, a group of people showed up at my apartment in Lincoln Heights and said “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now.” I wasn’t totally sold, I was very skeptical at first. I knew it was a huge endeavor. But, a few days passed by and the possibility of re-opening the center through grassroots fundraising crossed my mind and I couldn’t let it go. I thought to myself “we could raise this money”. I gathered my friends back up, all folks who have stories similar to mine and are still working in the community and said “we should do this.” And they all said “I’m in.” The next day we started the “48 hour miracle” as it was two days before the auction and we set out to raise $150,000.
I think we ended up raising maybe a few thousand dollars but, more importantly than that we showed up at every auction with community support letting folks know we want this building to stay in our community and we want it back open as a community center because that is what our community needs.
At the end of 2016 I put in my resignation to my job. I felt that I had knowledge, insight, and expertise that my community needed at a more intimate level than what I could offer at the foundation. It was one of the hardest decisions I had to make at that time. I was fearful. I had no plan b. In fact I couldn’t have a plan b because I was just at the inception of this and I had to believe in myself fully. I had a little bit of savings and the most supportive partner in the world who I leaned on and cried to and she said “everything is going to be okay, you got this.” Without Raeshelle’s love, support, and encouragement I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am now at this speed and pace to be quite honest. I really could not have done it without her.
Fast forward a whole heap of learning curves, commitments, planning, networking, meetings, and energy to May of 2018, Miracle on Craig Street was awarded our non profit 501 c(3) status. Our mission is “to root a culturally responsive network of people, resources, and opportunities focused on wellness for children and families in Schenectady.” To date we have raised $345,000 for the renovation of the Carver Community Center. We have leveraged a development team, a legal team, and an architect for the project. We have worked with hundreds of volunteers for fundraising and planning. We continue planning and networking for the center and are finally on our way to closing on the property in September of 2019!!! We have $110,000 left to raise! Woohoo!!!
Fundraising can be daunting and really many grant processes need a revolution. As I write this I can’t believe how far we have come and how close we are to seeing this center back up and running. It has been such a powerful experience for me to see that 1. Whatever I want is waiting for me 2. Whatever I need I already have 3. We create our own reality and destiny 4. There are others out there who are giving, loving, generous, caring, and who believe. As a young person who has had to work very hard to workout resentments towards life and has had to come into faith and trusting the universe kicking and screaming, this is probably the best path I could have chose to help me grow. We have done our very first clean out of the building after 3 years and it is so surreal and confirming.
We are renovating the community center and then also applying to get it on the historic federal registry as we know many black historical spaces are less likely to be preserved and recorded. Our project is estimated to be around $1.5 million dollars for a good renovation. I have been persistent. I am not taking any “No’s”. I just keep coming back, doing what is asked, and keep coming back!
This project is so much bigger than me. I found out by committing to this project I was committing to being vulnerable and putting myself out there. I have to show people that I care about this place and the people here. The trauma that I have experienced and I believe also our society teaches us conflicting views, especially for women about how we’re allowed to show our feelings and emotions in public. There is so much shame around being human, having feelings and experiencing discomfort. But I learned so much about myself through this project. I learned that I was looking to be a hero because that is what Rosa needed. I needed to be my own hero. And so that is who I have become, my own hero and I realized that has nothing to do with the outcome of my work on this project or any project. No matter what happens my effort, faith, worth, and work ethic speaks for itself.
Our community needs this community space. It’s not just a good idea or something honorable to do. My community needs to see people like me, the amazing volunteers, residents, board members, and all folks involved, caring about each other, healing each other, healing ourselves. They need to see people from this community taking action and believing that we all can make big change, for ourselves, for our families and for our communities. The revitalization of The Carver Community Center and it’s legacy to improve the quality of life for people in this neighborhood is an absolute necessity. This project has always been for us by us and that is the most significant type of transformation and inspiration that any community can have. The reality is that our communities are fighting extermination from violence, from disease, from joblessness, from homelessness, from displacement, from mental health disorders, all rooted in lack of care, accountability and strategic intentionality!
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not perfect. I am still growing everyday. But, I know that I am a love child. I know that I was put here on this earth to teach people how to love, including myself. I surely know that “I come as one but, I stand as ten thousand.” I know that I come from generations of traumatized women and yet in my healing, I heal the trauma of my line. I also know that my personal journey and the journey of other young women are connected to this project and the vision and culture of “wellness, health and healing” that we have already began to facilitate.
My hope is that you get to read this message of pure transparency, if nothing else happens, my hope is that you know that this generation is out here---fighting for social justice, fighting for change, fighting for quality of life, fighting for equity, fighting for health, fighting to heal ourselves, fighting for our lives and we are asking for help, but we are not giving up. Our ancestor’s prayers and dreams are not lost on us. “They are our convictions.”
Abundant Love & Blessings,
Rosa E Rivera
