Elizabeth's Story

Elizabeth Raymond

"Programs like PGP teach volunteers passionate about education and shape the next generation of activists and social justice workers. We talk about wanting young adults to be active in social justice work, but we don't show them how," Elizabeth said. "We often donate the money, which is great, but you really do need boots on the ground, all hands on deck. You need the bodies that can actually support and help."

Since volunteering with the Petey Greene Program, Elizabeth Raymond has been busy taking the lessons she learned through the program to her new virtual classroom in Atlanta, Georgia.

Elizabeth first heard about PGP her last year of graduate school at Long Island University-Brooklyn.

At the time, she was already teaching high school students in New York City. For her first semester with PGP, she volunteered with the Close to Home program, which is a juvenile justice reform initiative that aims to help keep youth close to their families and community. Later, she worked with George R. Vierno Center, a jail on Rikers Island for young adult males.

As a Black woman with parents from Haiti and India, she was keenly aware of the fact that most volunteers didn’t look like or have the same experiences as those experiencing the social justice system. Nonetheless, she said PGP helped the volunteers have those conversations and navigate volunteers’ implicit biases, including her own.

Earlier this year, she left New York City’s public schools for Atlanta. Because of the pandemic, she’s never met her students in person and had to establish classroom norms through a virtual platform. Her experience tutoring virtually with PGP helped prepare her to navigate creating relationships digitally and to ensure she’s not making assumptions about her students’ abilities to navigate the internet.

“That's something on a personal level I've been more cognizant about because that's a privilege,” Elizabeth said.