QUALITYstarsNY (QSNY) is a large project that has been on hold during COVID. It is New York’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for early childhood programs, providing support and resources to improve and sustain high quality across New York State: New York’s Quality Rating & Improvement System - QUALITYstarsNY.
Last weekend, I gathered with lay faith members of communities across Rochester with whom I have gathered monthly for a year. It was our final class. We were celebrating our accomplishments together as a community that cares about mental health, in this intentional learning community of Renewing of the Mind’s (RoM).
Children’s Institute's former student intern, Victoire Alleluia Shenge, now a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and Executive Director, Ann Marie White, virtually presented their community-based participatory research project at the 2022 International Systems Dynamic Conference (ISDC) held in Frankfurt, Germany: "Interdependencies of Faith and Mental Health among Black Millennials in a US City."
Rochester is home to the Strong National Museum of Play, the venue that hosted our end-of-year event, acknowledging and celebrating our heroes, our New York State Primary Project teams!
I am reminded of the fateful words of Frederick Douglass from a speech he delivered 170 years ago that still resonate very much in 2022 as African American and people of color in America continue the fight for the same equity and equality that this great abolitionist was waging in the mid-19th century.