Monday, April the 23rd was a sunny and somewhat warm day with a cool breeze blowing every once in a while. In the Sunset Park neighborhood I saw children of all different ethnicities and backgrounds playing outside on the side walks or in the few parks that I passed by. While approaching 14th Street a sense of familiarity washed over me as I passed the familiar construction site that would be rebuilding brownstone apartment buildings on the right hand side of the street. On the left hand side of the street there was a black fence guarding the playground, one that held many toddlers and a few supervisors. Waking further up the street or rather the small hill, I passed by the theater building. The building is owned by a small production company, but they sometimes donate their space to non-profit organizations who they know need it for events. The small theater building is connected to a larger building which is decorated with a large banner draping from above the two red doors saying “Sunset Park Community Center”. I was there in order to gain insight on the topic I was researching . I wanted to see how sexual education was effective to youth. Project Reach Youth was a good place to observe because their main focus is sexual education for you, and how to best provide youth with their services.

Walking up the six brick steps of the building and through the two big red doors, I am presented blue hallways, on the left hand side of me there are stairs, but I continue to walk straight and proceed to the elevator I have become accustomed to taking for the last four years. I walk into the wooden decorated elevator and press the button on the third floor. Getting off the elevator on the third floor the first thing I see plastered on the walls are black and white pictures of people who were once in one of the many programs that take place on the third floor. I turn around and look at the mural that is painted on the elevators doors once they such and take in the sight before, the yellow background seems almost airbrushed while the the four figures two men and two women of color are painted. Written across all of them is the Project Reach Youth logo on it. I then asked the receptionist who also was a participant of Project Reach Youth about four years ago if the meeting was taking place in the blue room, similar to how it was when I was a part of the program, and with a nod she told me to “go right in”.

As soon as I walked into the blue room and closed the door behind me I am greeted with a smile from six people and a eye roll from one person, Leonor who asked me jokingly “why are you here, when you asked if you can come I sent you the eye-roll emoji, that is not a yes”. I then rolled my eyes and replied to her with a simple “I’m here to observe” and sat in a vacant chair the edge of the table where I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. The meeting starts of with a check in question as per usual which today happened to be ; what where the highs and lows of your weekend. Everyone in the circle goes around and tell hilarious and somewhat too personal and inappropriate details of their weekend. After the check in question they have one of their senior assistants start writing their agenda on the wall. The agenda Includes; 1) revise the draft, 2) review upcoming events, 3) brainstorm education, 4) day 3 of curriculum.

As they start discussing the draft which is the list of participants they have and putting them into one of the four social groups they have that help showcase healthy relationship and sexual education facts in different ways. Project Reach Youth uses their dance program, their social activism group, their social media outreach and branding group which is also called MOB for media outreach and branding, and lastly their theater group to incorporate sexual education in a fun yet informative way. While everyone starts randomly calling out participants that they want in their groups, there are a bunch of snacks on the table, setting a comfortable tone to the staff meeting. Leonor who is also a supervisor decides that the random name calling and talking is too distracting and then asks for order, and for them to discuss which new participants should be added to the four group options in a fashionably order. They start with theater and discuss who they would like to add that group and then continue with dance, social activism and then MOB.

After about twenty minutes worth of a discussion the conversation of what participants are going to which group gets put to a halt and they start number two on the agenda. Leonor starts off by stating that two important events to Project Reach Youth are occurring very soon, one is BATES and the other is the annual AIDS walk. Leonor then ask Q-tiye another senior assistant who was placed on the planning committee of the BATES event to explain what was happening and what day the event is taking place. Q-time explains in a very dramatic tone and various hand gestures that the event in happening in early May and the proceeded to tell all the adults that they need to get all four of the groups at the event on time because the first fifty guest get a “amazing” gift bag that contains Miss Jessie curly hair care products first the girls, a game for the guys and target gift cards for both. Michelle gets excited when she hears about the Miss Jessie’s hair products and then proceeds to discuss about how last year they gave her Diva Curl products which Leonor’s denies and said they are too cheap for them, the disputed for a few minutes until Leonor’s decided to get back on track.

The next topic they discuss is about the future senior assistants. They discussed who would like the opportunity to be interviewed for the position, and the topic of one girl came up. Two of the three senior assistants thought that the girl they mentioned wasn’t a good candidate, but Leonor commented that neither was one of their current senior assistants Elijah, but the position helped his personal growth tremendously, and now he is more responsible and dedicated to almost everything he does. The next topic of discussion was their graduation event. They discussed how they only had to pay a small fee for maintenance, the theme of the graduation, what colors all the staff would wear, the food choices as well as the gifts they would be buying the graduating participants.

Throughout the meeting people were walking in and out. One of the staff members Nali had gotten a video call about a job offer in Costa Rica and had to step out. Moana also known as Monica who is a senior assistant came in late, but slide right into the meeting as if she didn’t. There was a lack of organization, a bunch of side conversation, a lot of jokes many of which was the normal inappropriate comments that we have all learned to find extremely normal and very funny. These meetings lacked order but still seemed to get everything on their list done. This meeting helped me gain insight on my topic because it helped me see that Project Reach Youth incorporate their services with other programs such as BATES, in order to help get their sexual education methods across. The BATES event usually hold around 300 participants who are mostly youth who are interested in learning about sexual education or are in sexual education programs. In addition observing the staff meeting helped me see first hand how Project Reach Youth incorporates sexual education in their art and into their groups, which helps encourage youth to stay interest in addition to providing them with sexual education.