We make it a priority to offer low-barrier access to services and to focus on building long-term, trusting relationships with young people and families.
Alternative Instruction
We recruit and support alternative instructors to provide alternative academic instruction to students who have been excluded from the general education environment either through disciplinary proceedings and/or the special education process. In addition to ensuring these students are matched with instructors, we also work with their families through our Youth and Family Advocacy Program to advocate for the return to an appropriate educational placement.
Youth Driven Identity Groups
Recently, we have begun supporting Dryden Middle/ High School to create a “BIPOC & Friends” student club, designed to support the growing population of students of color in a historically and predominantly white, rural community. We have done similar work with Newfield Schools in the past, and look forward to supporting any willing districts looking to create safe spaces for students of color in their communities.
Our Seats For The Table
Through a grant from Community Arts Partnership,Village youth, working with program educator Sarah Wolff, used found chairs to imagine the proverbial table. Students used their creativity, passion, and research skills to reclaim 15 chairs through decoupage, paint, and other techniques, transforming the chairs into testimonials and depictions of the Black agents of freedom who came before them.
Breaking Ground Steppers
Breaking Ground Steppers (BGS) is a troupe of young people of color open ages 8 and up led by the Village’s Jessica Brock. BGS uses the art form of step to break the stereotyping of the global majority in a predominantly white town, while realizing their individuality and the community of the troupe through different step styles and dance.
Village Circus
This collaboration with Circus Culture & Cirque Goddess Production led by Shekinah Williams enables children to express themselves fundamentally, physically, and emotionally through a series of workshops and performances. Partnering with Circus Culture gives children the opportunity to understand that grand gestures and emotions have no bounds!
Brown Babes Braiding
Brown Babes Braiding (BBB) offers braiding and natural hair care services while teaching these skills to those who want to learn! Our braiders and their amazing assistants provide styles and services for young people and their beautiful hair while celebrating the community we make. Thank you to the City Federation of Women’s Organization (CFWO) for the continued support of this program.
Join The Village Today!
If you are interested in any of the academic and youth mentorship programs we have available, please email our executive director Meryl Phipps: Meryl@villageatithaca.org
Village at Ithaca 