Around the Settlement: December 2025
Welcome to Around the Settlement, our monthly blog post sharing a deeper look into all of the vital programs and services provided by Grand St. Settlement throughout the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.
To make sure you don't miss anything, sign up for our newsletter and be the first to hear about program updates, advocacy actions, and invitations to the best nonprofit fundraising events in New York City!
Giving Thanks Around the Settlement
This Thanksgiving, we’d like to extend our gratitude to all those instrumental in helping provide Grand Street Settlement families with all the fixings for a special Thanksgiving meal:
🦃ThetaRay donated turkeys for the families at our three Lower East Side Child and Family Centers
🍂Lyons Community School staff organized a heartwarming Fall Harvest Community Night, where they gave away 65 bags of groceries, featuring turkeys donated by the Hispanic Federation
🍗Stuyvesant Heights Child & Family Center went home with turkeys from our friends at Essex Market
🍠Trinity Church NYC for the 500 bags of groceries and pantry staples that were distributed to our Early Childhood and Youth families
🧡 Grand Street Senior Housing and our Older Adults Center for throwing extra special Thanksgiving celebrations for our Older Adult participants
A Healthy and Homey Fall Harvest
Sunset Park West Child & Family Center hosted a Fall Harvest Festival for our Sunset Park sites and their families. Students and their families participated in a gratitude activity and picked up food donation bags filled with pantry staples and fresh fruits and veggies. NYU Together Growing Strong and The Family Resource Center gave a nutrition presentation as part of the festival to further support healthy eating at home, just in time for the holiday season.
Nonprofit New York's Annual Conference
CEO Robert Cordero joined nearly 1,000 New York nonprofit leaders at this year's Nonprofit New York Annual Conference, as an attendee and as a one-on-one coach! Here, Robert poses with our partners at BTQ Financial, including our former Client Manager/CFO, Naima Chisolm. Thank you to Jaqueline Ebanks and the Nonprofit New York team and board for organizing an inspiring day filled with conversations, panels, coaching, and networking structured around the nonprofit sector's most pressing challenges.
National STEAM Day
Youth programs celebrated National STEAM/STEM Day this year with the theme "Planet Possible.” Participants explored sustainability and community-led climate justice through fun, educational STEAM-focused activities that challenged participants' problem-solving skills and encouraged innovation and creativity.
Thank you to our educators and STEAM Day volunteers, including our partners at IMRE, for guiding our participants through their activities!
Giving Back
Over 23% of our neighbors in the Lower East Side face food insecurity, so when SNAP payments were paused during the government shutdown, many of our community members worried about how they would be able to feed their families.
We'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community and corporate partners this month, who donated food, time, and labor to support our food distribution efforts. Thank you to City Harvest, Lilly, Lyft, New York Cares, Tech NYC, and Wonder for helping us put smiles on the faces of over 800 people a week at our food pantry.
Spectacular Squash Science
Delancey Child & Family Center celebrated the Fall Harvest season with a spectacularly explosive science demonstration–with a pumpkin! Pre-K students were enthralled by the Pumpkin Volcano eruption and agreed that the experiment was un-gourd-gettable.
Jump! Goes to the Museum
Our Little and Big Jump! Participants hit the museums this month!
Little Jump got in touch with nature as they explored the different biomes at the Museum of Natural History. Participants enjoyed getting to see the "animals" up close, but agreed that the classic Ocean Life exhibit was by far their favorite!
Big Jump embarked on an interactive photo challenge scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They explored the museum in groups, captured photos from their memorable experiences, and tested whether they had what it takes to emulate one of the Met's famous statues!
Ageism Stops With You
Grand Street Seniors attended the NYC Aging’s Press Conference on Anti-Ageism to support NYC Aging Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez in unveiling the City’s new groundbreaking, intergenerational media campaign, Ageism Stops With You.
Delancey Spirit Week
Delancey Child and Family Center students (and their amazing teachers) expressed their creative sides during Spirit Week's "Character Day!"
Wicked Watch Party
Lower East Side Prep alum Zoia Baidhani collaborated with the wickedly talented program staff from Global Leaders and Beacon to create the ultimate movie theater experience for participants at their school auditorium. Grand Street participants had the opportunity to watch Wicked: Part 1 on the big screen with their friends and classmates, just in time for Part 2!
Fall Harvest Market
Forget your favorite farmer’s market–the Sunset Park Child & Family Center Fall Harvest Market is the best place in town for fresh produce! With their pretend money in tow, students “shopped” at different market stalls to learn about the different produce for sale, and honed their developing communication, fine motor, and math skills through play.
Mixing it Up at Lower East Side Prep
This month, Lower East Side Prep participants got their DJing skills up to scratch under the tutelage of DJ Whutever. Participants were awarded a certification for learning to DJ with turntables and mixing their favorite tunes!
Growing Together
Baruch Tenant Association welcomed a wonderful team of volunteers from Snapchat to prepare a vibrant garden for our Senior tenants! Guided by landscape designer Christina Brown Gardens, our volunteers rolled up their sleeves to prep the garden with enriched soil and fresh mulch to create the perfect environment for their flowers to bloom.
Warm Up Warwick
We partnered with Operation Warm and FedEx to provide coats for 3K to 5th-grade students at our Warwick Community School! Thank you to both partners for making this coat drive possible, and to the FedEx volunteers for helping our students search for the perfect winter coat!
Nutrition Workshop Kick Off
Our partners at the Sylvia Center collaborated with Sunset Park Child & Family Center to host a Nutrition Kick-Off event. The event marked the beginning of a 12-week cooking workshop facilitated by the Sylvia Center to teach our children how to create delicious, nutritious meals.
Global Innovation Summit
Our Youth programs hosted the first-ever Global Innovation Summit for our participants! This multi-cultural event featured 23 innovative projects that highlighted several of the 17 sustainable development goals designed by the UN, represented by countries from around the world.
Congratulations to all young innovators and a special shoutout to the winning projects:
Big Heart Award: PS157's Project No Poverty for Venezuela and Roosevelt's Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo
Most Unique Award: Unity Plaza’s Model Project of Super Mario World and Marcy’s Transparent Budget Project for Brazil
Best for the Earth Award: Roosevelt’s Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo and Tompkins’ Trash2Trendsdome Project for India
Computer Essentials are Fundamental
Our Older Adult participants at Essex Crossing Community Center are taking their computer literacy to the next level! Thanks to our partnership with Older Adult Technology Services (OATS) from AARP, our Seniors are being empowered to learn the basic computer skills necessary to take advantage of today’s technology and use it to enrich their lives.
Fighting Fire with Knowledge
Sunset Park Child & Family Center students had the chance to meet real-life superheroes: their local firefighters! The neighborhood firefighters visited the site to teach students important health and safety lessons. Students even had the chance to explore the fire truck and ask all their questions about being a firefighter.
Cute as a Marcy Cupcake
Our sugary sweet Marcy Cornerstone Community Center participants celebrated their Freestyle Friday activity with cupcake decorating. Perfect way to end the week!
From Baruch to Brazil
As part of this year’s Global Innovation Summit, Baruch Houses Community Center’s elementary group designed their Sustainable Development Project: Healing Brazil. Participants, using research and innovation, created a display laying out their sustainability vision, which incorporated solar panels and outdoor garden boxes for food security.
Welcome to Around the Settlement, our monthly blog post sharing a deeper look into all of the vital programs and services provided by Grand St. Settlement throughout the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.
To make sure you don't miss anything, sign up for our newsletter and be the first to hear about program updates, advocacy actions, and invitations to the best nonprofit fundraising events in New York City!
Giving Thanks Around the Settlement
This Thanksgiving, we’d like to extend our gratitude to all those instrumental in helping provide Grand Street Settlement families with all the fixings for a special Thanksgiving meal:
🦃ThetaRay donated turkeys for the families at our three Lower East Side Child and Family Centers
🍂Lyons Community School staff organized a heartwarming Fall Harvest Community Night, where they gave away 65 bags of groceries, featuring turkeys donated by the Hispanic Federation
🍗Stuyvesant Heights Child & Family Center went home with turkeys from our friends at Essex Market
🍠Trinity Church NYC for the 500 bags of groceries and pantry staples that were distributed to our Early Childhood and Youth families
🧡 Grand Street Senior Housing and our Older Adults Center for throwing extra special Thanksgiving celebrations for our Older Adult participants
A Healthy and Homey Fall Harvest
Sunset Park West Child & Family Center hosted a Fall Harvest Festival for our Sunset Park sites and their families. Students and their families participated in a gratitude activity and picked up food donation bags filled with pantry staples and fresh fruits and veggies. NYU Together Growing Strong and The Family Resource Center gave a nutrition presentation as part of the festival to further support healthy eating at home, just in time for the holiday season.
Nonprofit New York's Annual Conference
CEO Robert Cordero joined nearly 1,000 New York nonprofit leaders at this year's Nonprofit New York Annual Conference, as an attendee and as a one-on-one coach! Here, Robert poses with our partners at BTQ Financial, including our former Client Manager/CFO, Naima Chisolm. Thank you to Jaqueline Ebanks and the Nonprofit New York team and board for organizing an inspiring day filled with conversations, panels, coaching, and networking structured around the nonprofit sector's most pressing challenges.
National STEAM Day
Youth programs celebrated National STEAM/STEM Day this year with the theme "Planet Possible.” Participants explored sustainability and community-led climate justice through fun, educational STEAM-focused activities that challenged participants' problem-solving skills and encouraged innovation and creativity.
Thank you to our educators and STEAM Day volunteers, including our partners at IMRE, for guiding our participants through their activities!
Giving Back
Over 23% of our neighbors in the Lower East Side face food insecurity, so when SNAP payments were paused during the government shutdown, many of our community members worried about how they would be able to feed their families.
We'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community and corporate partners this month, who donated food, time, and labor to support our food distribution efforts. Thank you to City Harvest, Lilly, Lyft, New York Cares, Tech NYC, and Wonder for helping us put smiles on the faces of over 800 people a week at our food pantry.
Spectacular Squash Science
Delancey Child & Family Center celebrated the Fall Harvest season with a spectacularly explosive science demonstration–with a pumpkin! Pre-K students were enthralled by the Pumpkin Volcano eruption and agreed that the experiment was un-gourd-gettable.
Jump! Goes to the Museum
Our Little and Big Jump! Participants hit the museums this month!
Little Jump got in touch with nature as they explored the different biomes at the Museum of Natural History. Participants enjoyed getting to see the "animals" up close, but agreed that the classic Ocean Life exhibit was by far their favorite!
Big Jump embarked on an interactive photo challenge scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They explored the museum in groups, captured photos from their memorable experiences, and tested whether they had what it takes to emulate one of the Met's famous statues!
Ageism Stops With You
Grand Street Seniors attended the NYC Aging’s Press Conference on Anti-Ageism to support NYC Aging Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez in unveiling the City’s new groundbreaking, intergenerational media campaign, Ageism Stops With You.
Delancey Spirit Week
Delancey Child and Family Center students (and their amazing teachers) expressed their creative sides during Spirit Week's "Character Day!"
Wicked Watch Party
Lower East Side Prep alum Zoia Baidhani collaborated with the wickedly talented program staff from Global Leaders and Beacon to create the ultimate movie theater experience for participants at their school auditorium. Grand Street participants had the opportunity to watch Wicked: Part 1 on the big screen with their friends and classmates, just in time for Part 2!
Fall Harvest Market
Forget your favorite farmer’s market–the Sunset Park Child & Family Center Fall Harvest Market is the best place in town for fresh produce! With their pretend money in tow, students “shopped” at different market stalls to learn about the different produce for sale, and honed their developing communication, fine motor, and math skills through play.
Mixing it Up at Lower East Side Prep
This month, Lower East Side Prep participants got their DJing skills up to scratch under the tutelage of DJ Whutever. Participants were awarded a certification for learning to DJ with turntables and mixing their favorite tunes!
Growing Together
Baruch Tenant Association welcomed a wonderful team of volunteers from Snapchat to prepare a vibrant garden for our Senior tenants! Guided by landscape designer Christina Brown Gardens, our volunteers rolled up their sleeves to prep the garden with enriched soil and fresh mulch to create the perfect environment for their flowers to bloom.
Warm Up Warwick
We partnered with Operation Warm and FedEx to provide coats for 3K to 5th-grade students at our Warwick Community School! Thank you to both partners for making this coat drive possible, and to the FedEx volunteers for helping our students search for the perfect winter coat!
Nutrition Workshop Kick Off
Our partners at the Sylvia Center collaborated with Sunset Park Child & Family Center to host a Nutrition Kick-Off event. The event marked the beginning of a 12-week cooking workshop facilitated by the Sylvia Center to teach our children how to create delicious, nutritious meals.
Global Innovation Summit
Our Youth programs hosted the first-ever Global Innovation Summit for our participants! This multi-cultural event featured 23 innovative projects that highlighted several of the 17 sustainable development goals designed by the UN, represented by countries from around the world.
Congratulations to all young innovators and a special shoutout to the winning projects:
Big Heart Award: PS157's Project No Poverty for Venezuela and Roosevelt's Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo
Most Unique Award: Unity Plaza’s Model Project of Super Mario World and Marcy’s Transparent Budget Project for Brazil
Best for the Earth Award: Roosevelt’s Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo and Tompkins’ Trash2Trendsdome Project for India
Computer Essentials are Fundamental
Our Older Adult participants at Essex Crossing Community Center are taking their computer literacy to the next level! Thanks to our partnership with Older Adult Technology Services (OATS) from AARP, our Seniors are being empowered to learn the basic computer skills necessary to take advantage of today’s technology and use it to enrich their lives.
Fighting Fire with Knowledge
Sunset Park Child & Family Center students had the chance to meet real-life superheroes: their local firefighters! The neighborhood firefighters visited the site to teach students important health and safety lessons. Students even had the chance to explore the fire truck and ask all their questions about being a firefighter.
Cute as a Marcy Cupcake
Our sugary sweet Marcy Cornerstone Community Center participants celebrated their Freestyle Friday activity with cupcake decorating. Perfect way to end the week!
From Baruch to Brazil
As part of this year’s Global Innovation Summit, Baruch Houses Community Center’s elementary group designed their Sustainable Development Project: Healing Brazil. Participants, using research and innovation, created a display laying out their sustainability vision, which incorporated solar panels and outdoor garden boxes for food security.
Welcome to Around the Settlement, our monthly blog post sharing a deeper look into all of the vital programs and services provided by Grand St. Settlement throughout the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.
To make sure you don't miss anything, sign up for our newsletter and be the first to hear about program updates, advocacy actions, and invitations to the best nonprofit fundraising events in New York City!
Giving Thanks Around the Settlement
This Thanksgiving, we’d like to extend our gratitude to all those instrumental in helping provide Grand Street Settlement families with all the fixings for a special Thanksgiving meal:
🦃ThetaRay donated turkeys for the families at our three Lower East Side Child and Family Centers
🍂Lyons Community School staff organized a heartwarming Fall Harvest Community Night, where they gave away 65 bags of groceries, featuring turkeys donated by the Hispanic Federation
🍗Stuyvesant Heights Child & Family Center went home with turkeys from our friends at Essex Market
🍠Trinity Church NYC for the 500 bags of groceries and pantry staples that were distributed to our Early Childhood and Youth families
🧡 Grand Street Senior Housing and our Older Adults Center for throwing extra special Thanksgiving celebrations for our Older Adult participants
A Healthy and Homey Fall Harvest
Sunset Park West Child & Family Center hosted a Fall Harvest Festival for our Sunset Park sites and their families. Students and their families participated in a gratitude activity and picked up food donation bags filled with pantry staples and fresh fruits and veggies. NYU Together Growing Strong and The Family Resource Center gave a nutrition presentation as part of the festival to further support healthy eating at home, just in time for the holiday season.
Nonprofit New York's Annual Conference
CEO Robert Cordero joined nearly 1,000 New York nonprofit leaders at this year's Nonprofit New York Annual Conference, as an attendee and as a one-on-one coach! Here, Robert poses with our partners at BTQ Financial, including our former Client Manager/CFO, Naima Chisolm. Thank you to Jaqueline Ebanks and the Nonprofit New York team and board for organizing an inspiring day filled with conversations, panels, coaching, and networking structured around the nonprofit sector's most pressing challenges.
National STEAM Day
Youth programs celebrated National STEAM/STEM Day this year with the theme "Planet Possible.” Participants explored sustainability and community-led climate justice through fun, educational STEAM-focused activities that challenged participants' problem-solving skills and encouraged innovation and creativity.
Thank you to our educators and STEAM Day volunteers, including our partners at IMRE, for guiding our participants through their activities!
Giving Back
Over 23% of our neighbors in the Lower East Side face food insecurity, so when SNAP payments were paused during the government shutdown, many of our community members worried about how they would be able to feed their families.
We'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community and corporate partners this month, who donated food, time, and labor to support our food distribution efforts. Thank you to City Harvest, Lilly, Lyft, New York Cares, Tech NYC, and Wonder for helping us put smiles on the faces of over 800 people a week at our food pantry.
Spectacular Squash Science
Delancey Child & Family Center celebrated the Fall Harvest season with a spectacularly explosive science demonstration–with a pumpkin! Pre-K students were enthralled by the Pumpkin Volcano eruption and agreed that the experiment was un-gourd-gettable.
Jump! Goes to the Museum
Our Little and Big Jump! Participants hit the museums this month!
Little Jump got in touch with nature as they explored the different biomes at the Museum of Natural History. Participants enjoyed getting to see the "animals" up close, but agreed that the classic Ocean Life exhibit was by far their favorite!
Big Jump embarked on an interactive photo challenge scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They explored the museum in groups, captured photos from their memorable experiences, and tested whether they had what it takes to emulate one of the Met's famous statues!
Ageism Stops With You
Grand Street Seniors attended the NYC Aging’s Press Conference on Anti-Ageism to support NYC Aging Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez in unveiling the City’s new groundbreaking, intergenerational media campaign, Ageism Stops With You.
Delancey Spirit Week
Delancey Child and Family Center students (and their amazing teachers) expressed their creative sides during Spirit Week's "Character Day!"
Wicked Watch Party
Lower East Side Prep alum Zoia Baidhani collaborated with the wickedly talented program staff from Global Leaders and Beacon to create the ultimate movie theater experience for participants at their school auditorium. Grand Street participants had the opportunity to watch Wicked: Part 1 on the big screen with their friends and classmates, just in time for Part 2!
Fall Harvest Market
Forget your favorite farmer’s market–the Sunset Park Child & Family Center Fall Harvest Market is the best place in town for fresh produce! With their pretend money in tow, students “shopped” at different market stalls to learn about the different produce for sale, and honed their developing communication, fine motor, and math skills through play.
Mixing it Up at Lower East Side Prep
This month, Lower East Side Prep participants got their DJing skills up to scratch under the tutelage of DJ Whutever. Participants were awarded a certification for learning to DJ with turntables and mixing their favorite tunes!
Growing Together
Baruch Tenant Association welcomed a wonderful team of volunteers from Snapchat to prepare a vibrant garden for our Senior tenants! Guided by landscape designer Christina Brown Gardens, our volunteers rolled up their sleeves to prep the garden with enriched soil and fresh mulch to create the perfect environment for their flowers to bloom.
Warm Up Warwick
We partnered with Operation Warm and FedEx to provide coats for 3K to 5th-grade students at our Warwick Community School! Thank you to both partners for making this coat drive possible, and to the FedEx volunteers for helping our students search for the perfect winter coat!
Nutrition Workshop Kick Off
Our partners at the Sylvia Center collaborated with Sunset Park Child & Family Center to host a Nutrition Kick-Off event. The event marked the beginning of a 12-week cooking workshop facilitated by the Sylvia Center to teach our children how to create delicious, nutritious meals.
Global Innovation Summit
Our Youth programs hosted the first-ever Global Innovation Summit for our participants! This multi-cultural event featured 23 innovative projects that highlighted several of the 17 sustainable development goals designed by the UN, represented by countries from around the world.
Congratulations to all young innovators and a special shoutout to the winning projects:
Big Heart Award: PS157's Project No Poverty for Venezuela and Roosevelt's Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo
Most Unique Award: Unity Plaza’s Model Project of Super Mario World and Marcy’s Transparent Budget Project for Brazil
Best for the Earth Award: Roosevelt’s Infinite Water Bongo Project for the Congo and Tompkins’ Trash2Trendsdome Project for India
Computer Essentials are Fundamental
Our Older Adult participants at Essex Crossing Community Center are taking their computer literacy to the next level! Thanks to our partnership with Older Adult Technology Services (OATS) from AARP, our Seniors are being empowered to learn the basic computer skills necessary to take advantage of today’s technology and use it to enrich their lives.
Fighting Fire with Knowledge
Sunset Park Child & Family Center students had the chance to meet real-life superheroes: their local firefighters! The neighborhood firefighters visited the site to teach students important health and safety lessons. Students even had the chance to explore the fire truck and ask all their questions about being a firefighter.
Cute as a Marcy Cupcake
Our sugary sweet Marcy Cornerstone Community Center participants celebrated their Freestyle Friday activity with cupcake decorating. Perfect way to end the week!
From Baruch to Brazil
As part of this year’s Global Innovation Summit, Baruch Houses Community Center’s elementary group designed their Sustainable Development Project: Healing Brazil. Participants, using research and innovation, created a display laying out their sustainability vision, which incorporated solar panels and outdoor garden boxes for food security.
Join Our Newsletter
Stay up to date with events, programs, or advocacy opportunities to support the Grand Street mission.
Join Our Newsletter
Stay up to date with events, programs, or advocacy opportunities to support the Grand Street mission.
Join Our Newsletter
Stay up to date with events, programs, or advocacy opportunities to support the Grand Street mission.
Join Our Newsletter
Stay up to date with events, programs, or advocacy opportunities to support the Grand Street mission.
2024 Grand Street Settlement. All right reserved.
80 Pitt Street, New York, NY 10002
212-674-1740
Grand St. Settlement is a registered 501(c)(3)
2024 Grand Street Settlement. All right reserved.
80 Pitt Street, New York, NY 10002
212-674-1740
Grand St. Settlement is a registered 501(c)(3)
2024 Grand Street Settlement. All right reserved.
80 Pitt Street, New York, NY 10002
212-674-1740
Grand St. Settlement is a registered 501(c)(3)
2024 Grand Street Settlement. All right reserved.
80 Pitt Street, New York, NY 10002
212-674-1740
Grand St. Settlement is a registered 501(c)(3)