For eight weeks, a Uni has taken up residence in NYC’s Chinatown, serving up reading, drawing, and learning opportunities to people of all ages in Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Thanks to new support from the Ong Family Foundation, we’ll keep things rolling an extra month through July. Our work in Chinatown is part of a partnership with NYC Parks to serve neighborhoods in the city’s Community Parks Initiative, and initial funding was provided by Leaves of Grass Fund and Green Below 14. Join us at the Hester St Crossing of the park every Thursday evening (schedule). Want to see more of this? Your donation can help us expand our hours, locations, and staffing right away. Thanks!
Leslie and I dropped by on Thursday to help close up and take a few photos of the team.
Chinatown is one of our busiest locations, so we deploy large: (L to R) Anthony from Avenues, Daniyar from Almaty, Site Manager Joeyee, Ester from MIT.
Daniyar has one up on me: he has worked at the Uni in multiple time zones. Read about his work with the Uni in Kazakhstan.
Ester comes to us from MIT, and she does cool paper folding in Chinatown.
Keep an eye on this kid in the next few photos. The Tangram.
Joeyee is in full command of the Chinatown Uni as our site manager. Couldn’t do it without her. She just graduated from Brooklyn Tech and is headed to NYU in the fall.
At this point, we’re trying to close up, but the Tangram needs solving…
Joeyee gets feedback the Uni way—face to face. Joeyee has recommended that we stay open later, which we will start next week.
Solved, with Mom. Learning together—this is the Uni.
This cart is our original prototype, designed and built for the Uni Project by our friends at Höweler + Yoon Architecture, in Boston’s Chinatown no less. See you next week in the park.