covid-19 relief efforts

new yorkers need your help!

Use the video player above to learn about some of the ways we are helping
the people of Lower Manhattan persist through this pandemic.

In the face of this global health crisis, Educational Alliance has found thoughtful and creative ways to provide critical services and a sense of connection to our fellow New Yorkers even in an era of social distancing. Long before city and state officials enacted the drastic measures we see today, we were planning for the inevitable. We knew that many of the people we serve daily were particularly vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and wasted no time taking preventative steps to keep our community centers safe. As soon as it was clear that the outbreak had reached our city, our team sprang into action.

Thanks to the generosity and partnership of our supporters, we have had a direct and meaningful impact on the lives of New Yorkers in Lower Manhattan. Our relief efforts to date include:

• We have distributed over 16,000 take-home meals to people facing food insecurity.
• In the first two weeks of the outbreak alone, we prepared and distributed over 5,000 take-home meals to older adults and students in our early childhood programs, and our senior centers are now official distribution sites for DFTA’s meal program.
• We have developed a new partnership with Door Dash and local restaurants to get food into the hands of newly food insecure families and we are operating three food pantries open to the community.
• We’ve conducted over 25,000 outreach calls to make sure older adults are safe while isolated at home, and are helping them access vaccination appointments.
• We’ve connected over 3,000 older adults to virtual social services since March and we recently opened a Family Resource Center, so families in Lower Manhattan can access crisis intervention services and referrals to the concrete multigenerational services, including mental health support, food, health care, employment, housing, legal support benefits, and more.
• We have provided over $600k in direct cash relief to families in Lower Manhattan, with targeted relief going to single parents, people who have lost loved ones to COVID-19, and workers in cash-based industries who are now unemployed.
• In March, our early childhood classrooms moved to virtual programming for nearly 750 students—with hundreds of morning meetings, singalongs, and art classes happening via Zoom—and we connected families to free physical and online educational resources.
• In September, our early childhood programs reopened for in-person programming providing a safe space for children to learn and we launched a Youth Center to give children whose schools are remote a structured environment for distance learning.
• We sent 1,000 backpacks filled with school supplies to students in our after school programs before the start of this school year and our social workers continue to conduct daily outreach via telephone to help those students navigate the trauma of this pandemic.
• We moved our SAT Prep programs online so that the 85 teens in our program don’t have to defer their dreams of college.
• We created a “Virtual 14th Street Y” to keep members connected to each other and to the programs they love, and our art school and two fitness centers began offering dozens of online classes.
• We have since reopened our art school and fitness centers for in-person classes and workouts, at reduced capacity.
• The 24-hour, in-patient services at our addiction recovery center have gone uninterrupted and our innovative peer navigators have made hundreds of community outreach calls virtually.
• Our employment services program is connecting those facing unemployment to dozens of resources and work opportunities and we are launching a program to train local residents as contact tracers, putting them back to work and helping keep Lower Manhattan safe.
• We have also conducted community surveys to determine areas of greatest need and have posted a resource page to our website.

Now we need your help. Please make a donation to our COVID-19 Response Fund to ensure we can continue to provide New Yorkers with the critical services and programs that they need.