About Us

History

Founded in 2001, Border Crossers' mission is to bring together young students from segregated neighborhoods to explore issues of discrimination, inequality, and social justice, and to develop student leadership towards social change.

Border Crossers accomplishes its mission by creating sister school relationships between schools in diverse New York City neighborhoods through its two programs: Border Crossers and Crossing Classrooms. Both programs bring together classrooms from demographically distinct schools and neighborhoods. Students in grades 2-6 are paired up as pen pals and communicate around a shared curriculum.

Border Crossers has served over 500 students and their teachers in neighborhoods throughout New York City.

Need

Fifty years after the end of legal school segregation, educators and social scientists remain frustrated by the persistence of de facto segregation in America. Nowhere is this more of a reality than in New York City, where despite the city's status as one of the most diverse places in the world, its neighborhoods and schools are still overwhelmingly segregated. Social scientists maintain that the best way to improve inter-group relations and reduce prejudice is through long-term, equal status contact and cooperation-but very few American children grow up in communities that meet these conditions. Border Crossers is working to combat the alienation that results from school segregation by creating a community that currently does not exist-a safe space in which students who would not ordinarily meet can come together and learn how they can provide collective leadership towards a more just world.

Teachers, participants, and parents alike underscore the need for this program:

"Many of my students' worlds consist of the three block radius between home and school."
-Teacher/Border Crossers facilitator from Washington Heights
"A lot of times when you live in a certain neighborhood, you stay there. So it's like a little fence...you go to school there, you go to the supermarket there..."
-Eleven-year-old Border Crossers participant
"I wanted my daughter to get a broader view of the world, because her school was so homogeneous."
-Parent of a Border Crossers participant
We were driving through East Harlem and my son said, ‘Oh this is where PS 83 is.” It was no longer an alienating or strange place to him—it was a place he had a friend.
-Parent of a Border Crossers participant

What Makes Border Crossers Unique