A year into the pandemic, how has the Bronx responded? How have local nonprofits and mutual aid organizations served their communities? What are the urgent needs currently? How can small scale local resiliency projects be best supported? How can goals for long term and lasting structural change be met? To what extent are the new public and community programs being launched in response to the pandemic having an impact?

It is urgent to gather current data in response to these questions. Lehman College students, many of them Bronxites, are well equipped to help answer these questions. The Lehman Lab for Social Analysis is a space in which students are supported and trained to ask questions and develop research methodologies to find answers on pressing social issues in the Bronx. Students will fan out across the borough conducting surveys and engaging in participant observation, qualitative research methods designed to yield rich and contextualized data on current conditions in the Bronx. 

Benefits:

• Lehman students are already connected to the communities served. They are equipped with the social and linguistic capital to hit the ground running with data collection
• The Lehman Lab for Social Analysis can train students in qualitative data collection and then supervise the research as well as data analysis and presentation.
• Students have an opportunity to hone professional and academic skills in a pandemic, a time when many traditional internships and summer research opportunities are unavailable.

Authors of this report:

Faiza Chowdhury

Melanie Crisol

Kyla Ferguson

Ashly Huerta

Neheisha Nevers

Divine Santana

Axel Elías, Ph.D.

Alyshia Gálvez, Ph.D.

Funding and in-kind resources for preparation of this report were provided by the Lehman Lab for Social Analysis, the CUNY Recovery Corps and the Summer Youth Employment Program of New York City, the Bronx Community Foundation, and the Lehman College Foundation.

Cover image: Kelly Street Garden, Photo by Ashly Huerta, August 2021.