It started with milk deliveries — “gallons and gallons and gallons of milk.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, The American Dairy Association had a milk surplus, and needed community support to distribute it before it spoiled. ADA organizers reached out to Central New York’s InterFaith Works for help.

“So, we began to deliver milk to faith communities — synagogues, mosques, churches, black and brown churches, and because many of our agency programs were paused, we had time deliver all this milk,” said Bishop Colette Matthews-Carter, Director of IFW’s El-Hindi Center for Dialogue & Action. “ It was a huge blessing to people in our community.”

After seeing the overwhelming community response, InterFaith Works started to distribute food boxes, and a network of food pantries began to organically form. Now nearly three years later, IFW connects and helps support 32 grassroot food pantries and partners as a part of its Food Justice Program. It aims to deliver healthy food to diverse neighborhoods experiencing the highest rates of poverty and food insecurity in Syracuse.

The Food Justice Coordinator convenes monthly meetings, sets a legislative advocacy agenda, and aids pantries in securing additional support. They also oversee two community gardens, one which launched in June 2024. The organization estimates that just last year they were able to distribute more than 30,000 bags of food to families across Syracuse.

Matthews-Carter credits the success of the program to the partner pantries that have built community trust over decades of work. Sometimes asking for help can be difficult, she said, and that lining up for free food can sometimes feel “dehumanizing” if not done with care.

“Our pantries are in entrusted community spaces; they are in places where people do feel safe, and people feel like there is no judgment,” said Matthews-Carter.

This care is central to InterFaith Work’s overall mission to “Affirm Dignity.” This commitment to dignity extends to their work in food justice. Matthews-Carter said it’s important to have food that is culturally and religiously-appropriate.

Nearly 50,000 people in Onondaga County live with food insecurity due both to economic factors and lack of community food access. Almost half of Syracuse children live in poverty, and with inflation and SNAP reductions, the need for food access is growing. The term “food desert” is often used to describe neighborhoods that don’t have access to affordable, healthy food options due to the absence of grocery stores within an easy traveling distance. Some advocates say that we should use the term “food apartheid” instead, because it more accurately points to the structural injustices and disparities in food access faced by low-income communities and communities of color.

Food and hunger are not isolated issues, but part of larger systemic issues that affect everyone in our region.

“You can’t just talk about hunger without talking about housing, you can’t talk about health without talking about food,” said Qiana Williams, program officer at the Community Foundation. “So they’re all interrelated, because those are the things that are a mainstay for any human. Collaborations are critical to the success of this. The fact that InterFaith Works has galvanized these forces across sectors addressing health, hunger, and housing, in some very unique ways; it is very powerful, because it’s sending the message to folks in need that there are people who care about you, and you can go here and you can be supported.”

Williams said this program is ultimately an infrastructure success building initiative. The coordinator helps connect the community and aids smaller food pantries in securing food, applying for accreditation, and convening to share best practices.

Food justice and advocacy continues to gain momentum in Central York with community organizations like the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA) and IFW. Matthews-Carter said that there’s still work to be done. She anticipates continued support around food distribution and community-food production.

“I think the food justice conversation needs to be elevated in our community, Matthews-Carter said. “We’d like community stakeholders, faith communities, elected officials, school districts to break down their silos and just come together as a community to ensure that we have adequate and healthy food for future generations.”

Community health, like personal health, requires a holistic approach. To thrive as a community, we need strong employment opportunities, access to good homes, and schools that prepare our young people for the future to name a few.

In order to determine the economic health of an area, experts look at metrics like education, home ownership, household income, and the unemployment rate. Without this data, it’s hard to understand where we are as a community and what stories that data tells about it.

In the fall of 2023, a study from LendingTree ranked Syracuse 2nd in economic disparity for Black residents. LendingTree analyzed five years of data from the U.S. Census, which focused on five metrics: education, home ownership, household income, the percentage of Black households making six figures, and the unemployment rate. Syracuse ranked 93rd or below in all five categories. So, how did we get to this point and what are we doing as a community to help address this inequity?

History of Redlining and its Effects on Current Housing 

One indicator of a strong and thriving local economy is the rate of home ownership. There’s a long list of both personal and communal benefits of owning a home. It allows individuals to build wealth, access tax credits, and generate a sense of community. While neighborhoods with higher rates of homeownership tend to have higher property values, which means there’s additional funding for public services like schools and infrastructure. A home provides stability and can be passed down from one generation to the next.

Unfortunately, not everyone in our community has had equal access to purchasing a home. For Black residents, a history of racist housing policies and community disinvestment has led to inequality in homeownership. Some of the most impoverished areas of Syracuse today reflect redlined districts resulting from the National Housing Act of 1934, which led to a large increase in residential racial segregation and urban decay in US cities. While redlining is no longer considered a lawful practice under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the effects of these deeply rooted inequalities continue to live on.

Right now, only 28.6% of Onondaga County’s Black residents own their homes compared to 72% of White residents, according to the Lending Tree Study . Black homeowners also pay more for mortgage loans, which only works to set families back from achieving financial freedom.

Local nonprofits such as Home HeadQuarters and the Greater Syracuse Land Bank have worked for decades to address the multifaceted housing issue. This includes increasing the local housing stock, remediating lead in homes, and providing accessible loans for Black citizens. For example, Home HeadQuarters (HHQ) has spearheaded efforts to cut racial gaps in mortgage lending during the last three years. HHQ has made more than 200 home-purchase loans, which totaled $22.4 million with more than half of that lending going to Black or mixed-race borrowers.

Combined with the recent announcement of the Syracuse Housing Strategy and its investment in the local housing stock, there’s hope for a stronger housing future in Central New York.

Education: Where We Are, Where We Can Grow 

When looking at the metrics for economic disparity, you can see how interconnected the metrics are. Strong educational systems create pathways to good paying jobs, which creates enough wealth for homeownership, which in turn feeds the public schools system. These metrics are interconnected and need multi-pronged solutions in order to address economic disparities.

Education opens doors to economic opportunity. Census tracts throughout Central New York with lower median incomes had more people in the workforce without a high school diploma compared to tracts with higher median incomes. Historically, there have been significant economic and racial disparities in public school completion rates. In New York State, the graduation rate in 2021 for Black and Hispanic students was 80 percent, compared to 90 percent for White students.

Education has always been deeply connected to the wealth of a region.  Incomes are tied to public school completion and level of income. One positive sign is that, in Syracuse, disparities in graduation rates between some racial groups have decreased in recent years. In 2021, Black students in the Syracuse City School District had a higher graduation rate than white students (80% compared to 76%).

Due to the efforts of Central New Yorkers over the last two decades, the region is poised for rapid economic growth in the next ten years. One way to ensure equity in opportunities is through an investment in education and in workforce development which ensures that Central New Yorkers can fill in-demand and good-paying jobs in the tech and manufacturing sector. Community advocates are working to ensure that the most vulnerable communities benefit from this historic investment.

Workforce Development

Providing job opportunities with livable wages is critical for community and personal well-being. Lack of opportunity and underemployment creates hard decisions for families on where to spend finite resources.  Unemployment rates across the country skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and cities across the US are still recovering.

In 2021, Syracuse had almost 90,000 unemployment beneficiaries, which was over seven times as many as the city saw before the pandemic. Historically these dips affect marginalized communities at a higher rate. For Black Americans, the unemployment rate is often 2-3 percent higher than their White counterparts.

Through initiatives like Syracuse Surge, the region is investing in new employment opportunities for its residents.  Through partnerships, Syracuse Surge invests in reskilling and upskilling Central New York residents for careers in coding, cybersecurity, and high-tech manufacturing. Since the program launched in 2019, it has reskilled and upskilled more than 1,000 city residents for careers in tech. This workforce development is crucial as Micron’s historic $100 billion investment promises to create up to 90,000 jobs in the next 20 years.

As the region attracts historic investment, it’s vital that these opportunities reach Central New Yorkers who currently live here.  In order to improve our community’s economic health and address critical disparities, we have to continue to invest in holistic changes for a better tomorrow.

In 2008, a housing crisis rocked the national economy, leading government offices to be overrun with phone calls requesting financial and housing assistance. In response, the New York City government quickly developed a new financial assistance program that helped thousands of residents to get back on their feet. Soon that successful program was reproduced in five other major cities, inspiring local government officials, nonprofits and funders to rally together to bring the Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) to Central New York in 2019.

The Syracuse FEC addresses a variety of residents’ financial concerns, from paying bills and saving for the future, to settling delinquent accounts and righting the wrongs of identity theft. Additionally, its clients are sometimes trying to establish good credit after a new financial situation such as a divorce, transitioning from a role as a student to a professional, or immigrating to the United States. Along the way, FEC has reported that not only does its clients gain financial stability, they also carve out a financial path in which they can thrive into the future.

Clients are welcome to contact the Syracuse FEC with any financial concerns and they may meet with a counselor as many times as is necessary to get their finances and credit squared away. Any resident, 18 years of age or older, of Syracuse and the surrounding area, is eligible for services regardless of their income or financial status. FEC’s well-trained and knowledgeable counselors help clients with tough-to-navigate situations by explaining how to resolve concerns and even doing the hard work, like providing the letters to validate and/or dispute derogatory accounts or to banks who are charging exorbitant overdraft fees.

Under the shadow of COVID-19, Syracuse’s concentration of poverty has hit an all-time high. According to the Community Foundation’s Life Needs Assessment data, which tracks needs such as transportation, food security and childcare, two of the most troubling problems Syracuse-area residents are currently struggling with are paying bills and saving money for the future. The survey shows that 30% of residents cannot pay monthly bills due to job loss. Another 40% say that they can’t save enough money for their future or for emergencies.

“We helped to bring the FEC here because a piece of the poverty equation is that a lot of people are unbanked, meaning that they don’t have banks and they’re not growing wealth,” said Frank Ridzi, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Community Foundation. “They don’t have access to home loans and personal loans. The FEC was designed to address that issue, building off of the Jargowsky report, which stated that Syracuse was number one in the nation for concentrated poverty for Blacks and Latinos in 2015.”

After a gathering in 2019 with city and nonprofit representatives, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Dr. Jonnell Robinson and Terry Eckert wrote a grant to bring the FEC to Syracuse. Across the country, FECs are designed to be a city government service partnered with a nonprofit. In Syracuse, the City of Syracuse partnered with Home HeadQuarters and The United Way of Central New York.

Funding from the City of Syracuse, the Community Foundation, the H.O.P.E. Anti-Poverty Initiative and others allows FEC to offer its services free of charge to all Syracuse residents. In Syracuse, 714 clients have been served since its inception two years ago. It has had over 2,287 sessions in which its clients have asked questions and resolved issues about their finances.

The FEC measures success through four different outcomes: credit, banking, debt and savings. A 35-point rise on a credit report signifies a good credit result. A reduction of non-mortgage debt by at least 10% is considered successful. Accessing safe and affordable bank accounts is successful when accounts are opened, typically after correcting issues that may have been an obstacle to banking found on a Chex Systems report. Lastly, the savings goal is realized when one week’s worth of household income is saved in the bank.

Data shows that Syracuse’s FEC is one of the nation’s top producers, reporting more clients achieving outcomes than other FEC’s around the country. Other FECs average 25% in outcomes, while the Syracuse FEC is averaging 47-50% in successful results. Over Syracuse FEC’s short tenure, it has brought $851,836 of increased savings for clients and reduced $1,751,855 in personal debt.

“We have a woman who, during COVID, lost her job and was living in homelessness,” said Mary Margaret O’Hara, former city manager of the Syracuse FEC. “She started working with one of our counselors and not only found a new job, but was able to find safe and stable housing. She even had a couple of thousand dollars saved in the bank, all in a period of 10 months.”

Another resident who hadn’t worked for fifteen years was financially shocked when his wife was laid off due to the pandemic. He decided to start his own company and his FEC counselor connected him with the small business administration for guidance. He started his business and soon felt financially stable.

Moving into financial stability is important to all of the Syracuse FEC’s clients. It’s also critical to our entire community for Syracuse to build intergenerational wealth and security, especially for our Black and Latino populations. With more economic opportunities, the unhealthy wealth gap in Central New York will be lessened and Syracuse’s residents can thrive into the future.

Organizations in Syracuse are sharing information and working together to offer residents new opportunities during the challenging time of COVID-19. The Community Foundation, Centerstate CEO and the Syracuse Economic Opportunity Center (EOC), one of SUNY’s Educational Opportunity Centers, are teaming up to match those looking for work with jobs that need to be filled.

Data from the Community Foundation’s Life Needs Assessment Survey is currently being collected by a variety of local nonprofits and community organizations. From PEACE, Inc. to the Everson Museum of Art, visitors and clients are asked to fill out a simple survey that measures their needs for employment, transportation, childcare and more. Results showed that the percent of people who do not have a full-time, stable job jumped from about 25% in years past to over 60% last year. Looking at data the Community Foundation collects in partnership with the State Department of Labor, we also see that unemployment in Syracuse rose from 1,200 to 16,000 from March through December of 2020.

Dr. Frank Ridzi, vice president of Community Investment at the Community Foundation, is using the data collected from this ongoing community assessment and the community’s new ‘Data Dating’ app to inform organizations of just how many people are jobless and which census tracts are suffering the most. The data may show, for instance, that someone is jobless and ready to be trained but doesn’t have access to childcare.

The Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker tells us that there are 20,000 individuals in the Syracuse metropolitan area who need employment. There are 25,000 positions open in the same area. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the 25% reduction of low wage jobs in 2020, held disproportionately by Black employees. Due to historical and current patterns of discrimination, racial wealth gaps, generations of disinvestment in schools and neighborhoods, lack of career advancement opportunities and other dynamic factors, barriers to economic self-sufficiency have been created. With new training opportunities, there are possibilities for residents to step into sustainable roles for higher-paying, career-making positions.

Additionally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the two months of August and September 2020, 11,700 workers in the Syracuse metro area left the workforce entirely and are no longer looking for employment. According to the National Women’s Law Center, four times more women than men have left the labor force across the nation. In September, 865,000 women stopped working, including 324,000 Latinas and 58,000 Black women. The Center for American Progress notes that COVID-19 has caused a collapse in the childcare industry and, partnered with less school supervision hours and remote learning, it could drive millions of women out of the workforce, setting gender equity back an entire generation.

For those ready to move back into the workforce, there’s a clear disconnect between those who are seeking employment and job openings that need to be filled. This is where Centerstate CEO’s WorkTrain program is stepping in to assist businesses in recruiting, training and retaining skilled employees for the specific positions that need to be filled. It also helps Syracuse-area residents find access to training necessary to obtain careers.

Centerstate CEO/WorkTrain partners with employers, EOC, the Community Center Collaborative, and numerous other organizations to help people in the job market receive the training and support they need to embark upon a new career. SUNY EOC offers free, community-based academic and workforce development programs to eligible adults and free Chromebook rentals.

In the Syracuse area, new jobs are opening up in the technology, healthcare and manufacturing fields. WorkTrain’s Customer Service Ready program prepares individuals for call center jobs, and Health Train prepares them for entry-level health care opportunities.  These programs are taught at SUNY EOC, and involve a career preparedness curriculum that includes employability, communication, customer service and industry specific training.

Centerstate CEO/Work Train also supports two initiatives headed by the Mayor’s Office – Syracuse Surge and Syracuse Build – which are designed to spur economic growth while diversifying tech and construction.

Chris Montgomery, program counselor from EOC noted, “WorkTrain utilized the Life Needs Assessment data to integrate new services that offer wrap-around support, like childcare and transportation. We want participants to get to work and be successful.”

“There’s a focus and intentionality about making those jobs available to individuals who might not otherwise have access. We know there are people in Syracuse who can do this work, they just haven’t received the right training or found the right path. We try to create those paths,” said Aimee Durfee, Centerstate CEO’s Director of Workforce Innovation.

The bottom line is that both future employees and employers can look at this time as a chance for growth and progress. With organizations sharing information and working together, Syracuse residents have the distinct opportunity to thrive during the most difficult of times.

A new study conducted by local service providers and academic researchers examined the unique parenting challenges that Syracuse-based Somali, Bhutanese and Congolese refugees face while assimilating to a new culture. A summary of their findings and recommendations can be read below. To read the full whitepaper, click here. 

Recently, focus group discussions were held with Syracuse-based Somali, Bhutanese, and Congolese community members to learn from their unique experiences. Researchers sought to better understand the challenges of newly resettled refugee parents in hopes of developing intervention programs that will support their transition as New Americans. Of particular interest were the ways in which these refugee families experience parenting as they encounter and try to adapt to a new culture.

Each of the groups spoken with expressed similar parenting challenges. Language barriers, lack of community resources, and few vocational opportunities were identified as having a detrimental effect on their ability to provide for their families. Language barriers play a role in New Americans entering the job market in low paying positions such as housekeeping and janitorial services, and they struggle to make ends meet. They look to refugee community centers for support in the form of education and training to improve their social standing, but many of these centers have lost financial support.

Parents also expressed frustration with their lack of knowledge when trying to navigate the healthcare and public-school system, leaving some of them with feelings of powerlessness and mistrust. Others described how their children, who pick up language and cultural cues more quickly, sometimes intentionally manipulate information when they are asked to interpret information or concerns from the school system. As a result of inaccurate information and a lack of cultural knowledge, some refugee parents expressed great fear that their children would be taken away from them by child protective services (CPS).

Ammar with his daughter Ritaj at Sunnycrest Park.

While the challenges to refugees are many, the focus groups also identified ways to enhance local resources that might improve parenting among New Americans. All three groups expressed a need for culturally compatible parenting classes aimed at maintaining communication with children, negotiating expectations, communicating with medical and school systems, adapting parenting skills, and exploring alternative ways to discipline children.

Additionally, the groups stressed the need to focus on English language and literacy education for adults to achieve better paying jobs and economic self-sufficiency. Acknowledging cuts in funding to refugee service agencies, it was suggested that volunteer tutors and role models be recruited from settled families who would be willing to help teach English and share experiences.

All of the groups expressed a strong desire to maintain and share their language and unique cultural values with their children and saw opportunities to achieve these goals through developing and partnering with positive support networks in their refugee communities, incorporating afterschool culture and religious classes for their children, and providing regular opportunities for community members to engage with their children by coming together to celebrate their culture. They also saw a need to provide community education to institutions such as public schools and healthcare settings to enhance cultural competence and respect among service providers.

To read the full whitepaper, click here. 

In 2017, the poverty rate on the Southwest side of Syracuse, which includes Census Tracts 42 and 53, averaged a startling 62.42 percent. The Brady Faith Center (Brady Faith), which is located within this region, has committed to serving neighborhood residents by identifying ways to collaborate and create plans to lead them out of poverty.

Walking the streets of the Southwest side of Syracuse every day is an ordinary practice for Kevin Frank, executive director of Brady Faith. He stands for the values of building kinship among himself, Brady Faith and the community. The organization emphasizes that to build trust with the community, you must be within it.

“It’s not doing for, it is being with,” said Frank. “We look at relationship building as our core outreach and meeting people where they are at.”

Kevin Frank, Executive Director, of The Brady Faith Center

From listening to residents, Brady Faith identified a need to create equitable change for women, men, and their families. To help, organization representatives set out to learn from Homeboy Industries, a Los-Angeles based organization that provides training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated individuals, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of their community, often through entrepreneurship.

Every year the organization hosts the Annual Global Homeboy Network Conference to educate other charitable groups about what has worked most effectively.

“It is just an amazing conference that communicates best practices from around the world for working with marginalized groups through entrepreneurship, healing, and support,” said Frank. “That really makes an impact in the lives of families, communities, and neighborhoods.”

The Central New York Community Foundation awarded a grant for nine Brady Faith team members to attend the conference. Frank says the funding not only supported the trip, but showed its dedication to improving the Southwest neighborhood for the better.

“We are really thankful for the Community Foundation for believing in us and supporting us on this journey,” he said. “The conference provided us with the building blocks to build a similar program locally and further our impact in the Syracuse community.”

Brady Faith intends to take what it learned and introduce entrepreneurial opportunities to community members with a criminal history or of limited resources. Frank explained that many of those individuals that face this prejudice are being denied employment, housing, and even education.

Emmanuel Flowers, Youth and Teen Co-Coordinator for The Brady Faith Center

In 2014, 20,675 males and 25,385 females were living in poverty in Syracuse, while the numbers dropped to 19,642 males and 20,032 females in 2017. This data shows that there has been a decrease in people living in poverty over the past three years – from 35 percent to 32.6 percent. Frank hopes that Brady Faith’s work will help progressively lower those numbers even further.

“People who are in this category are often people of tremendous faith, courage, and tenacity,” said Frank. “Some of them are the most spiritual and empathetic people I’ve ever met and have so much talent and many gifts to offer.”

By investing in these individuals, Frank believes that together they can create a pathway out of poverty where people can thrive, grow, and transform. The Homeboy models have proven to be successful and Frank strongly believes that they will do the same for the Syracuse community.

Brady Faith works to support the needs of Syracuse’s Southwest neighborhood by providing human development, educational and religious programs to residents. The center relies on a small staff and various community volunteers to fuel its mission of outreach. To learn more about Brady Faith Center, please visit bradyfaithcenter.org. To learn more about Homeboy Industries, visit homeboyindustries.org.