What’s your name? Gabriel Stiritz.

What do you do? I’m the development director for New City Kids in Jersey City.

What is New City Kids? New City Kids is a youth leadership development program in the McGinley Square area of Jersey City. We run two after school centers here in Jersey City, one where we are right now at Fairmont and Monticello and another one over on Vroom Street near Journal Square. We serve first through eighth-grade kids, we help them with homework and we teach them musical instruments like keyboards, bass guitar, drums, and vocals. What makes the program really special is that we hire high school students to do everything here. While we’re serving about 161 eighth graders, we hired seventy-one high school students from all across Jersey City to tutor them in their homework and teach all of the performing arts classes.

Are these students paid to do their job or is it all volunteer work? Yes, it’s paid hourly wages; it starts at minimum wage and they can work up from there.

How long has this organization been around? We’re actually in our tenth year.

How did it start? It started twenty-one years ago when Trevor and Linda Rubingh moved to Jersey City in 1994 as church planters. They came originally with a vision to start a church for adults but what they found was that kids really responded to their vision for a church. They were a kid’s church for a number of years which did really well and they were running it on Saturdays. They found two things; one was that the need for the community was really for quality afterschool programming, and two that the kids’ lives weren’t being changed by just one day a week interaction, they needed something more. So we started seeing them more often. In 2005, we started an afterschool program and ended the kid’s church. In 2005 we had four children and ten teenagers; that was everyone we had for the whole year, and today we serve one hundred sixty kids and seventy teenagers here in Jersey City.

How do these kids get here? What’s the process? The younger kids are enrolled by their parents; most of them come from PS #17 which is about four blocks away from here. They pay a nominal fee to attend. A lot of families are on scholarships – we don’t turn anybody away based on income. The high school students try out for their job in June. It’s a three-day process called “the internship tryout”; they come and they bring their resume and their report card and they dress professionally. We do professionalism training, role-playing, and we’re watching them to see how they’re doing. They get points for working on their resume, for improving, then we do call back for interviews and make hiring decisions.

So they come here straight after school? Yes, during the school year they come over when school ends We’ve got kids probably from about eight different high schools here right now.

Does every kid have a different curriculum for when they do their homework? The younger kids will come, they bring their homework. And when that’s done, they get two blocks of time two forty-five minute blocks. One block they’ll spend working on homework. If they finish that, they have an extra credit curriculum they can do. We do geography, grammar, math, history; we’re also doing anatomy this year. Last year we did the presidents and social studies. They can earn their way through different levels; we call them bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels. That’s one block, and then in the other block they’re in an elective art class, where they get to learn a musical instrument. They enroll in the class for the whole year, and if they do well they get to take their musical instrument home with them and they get to keep it.

How long have you been involved? I’ve been here since summer of 2011.

How did that happen? I originally lived next door to Trevor and I got to know him a little bit back in 2010. Then I graduated college and started working here. I had just planned on working here for the summer as a summer camp counselor and fell in love with the program. I stayed on to work in the communications and development side, my background being in photography. I stayed on there and I’ve been learning all the fundraising and community building aspects behind working for a non-profit.

How do you guys go about raising funds for the organization? We have a variety of funding streams; the number one is individual donors – people in the community who support the program. Many are local to Jersey City and about ninety percent of our individual donors are from New Jersey. Then we have some foundation support and a small amount of local government funding as well. We invite people in the community to come out to different fundraisers and we meet with them one on one. We’re having a showcase coming up on November 18th called “The Bash” where the kids will show off the academics they’re learning, the music they’re learning; they’ll talk about what it means to them to be a part of New City Kids.

Can you tell me a success story or something that happened with a particular kid that really changed your life or their life by being involved in this organization? One of our superstars, her name is Dianelis, she started the very first year that we ever did the after school center in 2005. She just graduated this past year, but she was with us for ten years and she learned bass guitar. She was here as a kid, I believe from fifth until eighth grade then she got hired on as a teenager where she started tutoring her younger peers and quickly rose through the ranks.

She’s a natural leader, if you ever meet her you can see it: people will follow her with whatever she does. She rose through the ranks; she was promoted to team leader which is a supervisor amongst the teenagers. This past year she was accepted to The College of New Jersey with a full ride scholarship. She and five of her senior classmates from this past year went to TCNJ, but she was just a superstar, she really did everything New City Kids had to offer and I think it made a difference for her.

What area do you live in? I live in Bergen-Lafayette.

Are you from Jersey City? No, I’m not.

When did you move to Jersey City? In 2011 to work with New City Kids.

What area do you live in? I live in Bergen-Lafayette.

What’s your favorite Jersey City hang out spot? My favorite place to get a burger is White Star down on Warren Street.

Do you have another place? Absolutely, my favorite out of the way spot is Coconut at Montgomery and Jordan. It’s a Dominican place, where for five dollars you can get more food than you can eat in a sitting and that’s just a couple blocks away from here.

How many volunteers are here? On any given day, we have teens and adults volunteering, so probably around five or six.

What’s your name? Tiana Jones.

And what do you do? Here at New City I’m a tutor so I tutor all the kids with all their homework whether it’s social studies, science, language arts, or math. I help them complete their homework and if they forget something I just go over so they can remember what their teacher told them to do.

So you must have a lot of patience? Yeah, it increases as the year goes; this is my second year here so know I’m like a pro with patience.

How old are you? I’m sixteen.

You’re only sixteen, I was sitting on the couch doing nothing now you’re making me feel guilty. Good for you that’s awesome. What do you want to be when you grow up? Because I am dealing with kids, I intentionally wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know what specialty but I kind of leaned toward being a pediatrician, a doctor, or a social worker.

What do you like about New City Kids? I like that it’s not just a job you go to, you have to be fully committed when you work here. I thought I would just clock in and leave, but afterward I found myself staying longer and if a kid had to leave without finishing their homework I would catch myself saying, “Come sit down, I’ll help you,” even though I’m clocked out. I can pop up here when I’m not supposed to work and still work without the pay, I like that it’s a homey environment.

You’re making such a huge difference in the kid’s life. Do you have a favorite kid? I don’t have a favorite, but you do grow close to some. Some of them are the “lovey-dovey type” they want to hug you and cling to you and then some of them you have to show that tough love to and tell them “sit down and do your homework” but you still have that relationship.

Are you from Jersey City? Yeah.

Were you born and raised? Yes.

How do you feel Jersey City has changed in the past couple of years? I feel as an outsider looking in I can see the negative influence and the negative things happening but when I come here I see the positive side of Jersey City. People mostly connote negativity with Jersey City, but it’s really not negative; I see the good in Jersey City.

Do you have a favorite Jersey City Hang out spot? New City.

That’s your favorite hangout spot? Yes, it’s not just this part, it’s other places.

Are you friends with all the other tutors? Yes.

Do you guys all hang out? Yeah, we exchange numbers [and] if you can’t make it to work your friend will sub for you.

What’s your name? My name is Ahmed and I’m sixteen.

What do you like about working at New City Kids?

I can give them the same experience that I had when I was younger because I would want them to fulfill their childhood. Most kids out here are surrounded by negativity and I just want them to have a positive lesson to live with.

I love it! You’re Awesome! Oh, my god, I want to cry. Do you have a favorite kid?

There’s a lot of kids. I really treat them like they’re my first priority as I step in, even when I go home and I’m not working I think about what I can do to make their lives better. The money they pay, I want them to actually get worth of that money, get satisfied with that money. I actually think about them at home, like I miss these kids and I can’t wait to work the next day.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A basketball player, if not that be an engineer.

Great, you can do both. I love it.

Gabriel, Anything else we didn’t cover that you would like people to know? Yeah, community is really the word that describes Jersey City the best. We have this really wonderful community here, but part of what makes us work is being connected to the community of Jersey City. We are always looking for people who are interested in getting involved through volunteering, coming out and seeing the program and being a part of it.

We’ve had some really amazing results over the past eight years, every single teenager in our program has graduated high school and has gone away to college, but that’s because we’ve had this really wonderful community support. I encourage people to come out and see it for themselves.

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I love it! Thank you Gabriel!

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