Social Impact is a Family Tradition
Foundation Leaders work to uplift their borough
The Lewis brothers are Co-Founders of The Bronx Community Foundation.
Derrick and Desmon Lewis ’01 understand the importance of making an impact in people’s lives.
“We come from a family of first responders,” says Derrick, “Our grandmother retired as a nurse on her 50th anniversary at Bronx Lebanon Hospital, and our aunt worked at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx for 45 years. Our mother worked for the department of sanitation in the Bronx, and our father worked as a construction civil rights activist fighting to increase diversity of employment within the construction industry across the city.”
It is through that commitment to community service that the brothers—who grew up mere steps from the birthplace of hip-hop—have found a way to give back to their beloved borough: the Bronx Community Foundation, the first and only organization of its kind in the borough.
“Our goal is focused on being an objective, unbiased, collaborative and strategic thinking institution to solve the systemic institutional challenges that have plagued the Bronx for many, many decades,” says Derrick. “Our mission and vision is to uplift and enable the existing organizations while providing new resources in order to solve some of those systemic challenges.”
As importantly, Desmon adds, “we want the community to have the power to decide its own destiny and provide the resources to do that. The Bronx has historically been driven by a public sector that has in many cases disenfranchised the residents’ decision-making. We want to bring that decision-making back to the community and build community power through existing organizations that are already doing good work in the community.”
The Bronx Community Relief Effort, a COVID-19 initiative of The Bronx Community Foundation, began immediately after the coronavirus hit New York City and has already distributed over two and a half million meals in the Bronx. “The Bronx shouldn't have any food-insecure people because we're in the backyard of capitalism and we also have one of the largest food distribution centers in the world, the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center,” Derrick notes. “Most people don’t know that the Bronx is the unhealthiest community in New York State, the most food insecure community in New York City, and remains one of the poorest communities in the Country.”
The Foundation also distributed over 2,500 Chromebooks and MiFi devices. “Close to 40% of the Bronx, nearly 600,000 people, don’t have high-speed internet at home. You had hundreds of thousands of youth that were sent home without access to the internet during the pandemic and essentially schooling on cell phones,” says Desmon. “We have more people in the Bronx without access to the internet at home than the entire population of some major cities in the country.” The Foundation’s Bronx Digital Equity Coalition is focused on helping to eradicate the digital divide and create a digital oasis in the Bronx.
In addition to these projects, the Foundation also distributed millions of dollars in grants to nonprofits and small businesses and distributed more than a million PPE items throughout the Bronx.
Entering Browning in the seventh grade through the Boys’ Club of New York program, Desmon says, “We didn't have a clue that ‘this whole world’ existed. And I'm defining this whole world as the opportunities that people have at Browning which you can leverage for good and positivity.”
Derrick adds, “This is where we learned that we could build a network, and when we got into nonprofit work, we had a little bit of this fearless attitude because of our experience at Browning.”
Looking past the crisis phase of the pandemic, the brothers say that their major focus will be on building the Foundation’s infrastructure and “continuing the good work we are doing,” says Desmon. The organization hopes to hire an inaugural chief executive officer this summer, and that, in the future, Browning’s social impact work may mesh with the Foundation’s through volunteerism and other opportunities for students.
“Coming from the South Bronx and seeing the limited resources that our borough had, and then going to Browning, we began to really understand the power of a network that will grant you access,” says Desmon. “We have that same philosophy with our Foundation because the goal is to take Bronx nonprofits, bring them to the table, and get them access to the dollars, human capital and resources that they wouldn't have otherwise because they didn't know it was available.”
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