Social Justice Ambassadors Program aims to connect and empower students

An innovative partnership between the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center (SYJCC) and the Huntington Anti-Bias Task Force (HABTF) is aiming to connect and empower local high school students, including students from Northport High School, interested in learning about social justice.

The 2021-2022 Social Justice Ambassadors Program, which launched last week, offers an opportunity to bring together high school students in the Town of Huntington and equip them with the tools and knowledge they need to be leaders and agents of positive change in their schools and communities, explained program director Jane Pashman. Co-facilitating the program with Jane is Kaneez Naseem, a professor at Monroe College.

Ambassadors will meet for a series of six workshops from February through May 2022. During each session, students will explore topics of bias, learn to identify resources and strategies to combat bias, and work collaboratively to develop projects to share their knowledge with their school and community, said Jane. Open discussion and dialogue are encouraged during the program, and the students are able to learn, not only from guest speakers – including Holocaust survivor Werner Reich, ERASE Racism’s Nicole Grennan, and community activist Joselo Lucero, whose brother was murdered in a 2008 hate crime – but also from their peers in other neighboring schools and communities.

As a culminating activity, students will work with their school groups to apply what they’ve learned in the program to create an action plan and innovative project that addresses bias in their school and community.

Schools participating in the Social Justice Ambassadors Program include Northport High School, Harborfields High School, Huntington High School, John Glenn High School, and Walt Whitman High School. The program is made possible by support and funding from UJA-Federation of New York, the largest local Jewish philanthropy in the world.