Tomás Ramos realized there was a need for a new anti-poverty group in 2017, but he couldn’t start his non-profit, the Oyate Group, until 2020 because he didn’t have the resources.
Ramos wanted the Oyate Group to support the mission of alleviating poverty, particularly in the Bronx. The organization derived its name from the Dakota language and its word for “the people.”
Jason Autar, Oyate Group’s chief operating officer, spoke with the Amsterdam News about how the organization has thrived with the support of funds from foundations, donors, and even members of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
AmNews: What programs are you sponsoring?
Jason Autar: One of our hallmark programs is Beyond Rising, a paid internship program for undocumented high school and college-aged students in New York. This program started in 2022 as a pilot program with 20 young people, we just did it during the summer of 2022 and 2023. We launched it again in the summer with 40 young people, and then switched it to a school-year cohort. We shrunk it a little bit just because the needs of that population are a little bit different, but just a little bit: those young people think summer youth employment, but these young people are placed in institutions such as Fordham University, Lehman College, Hostos College, BronxNet, Teachers College at Columbia University, and NYU. We place these young people based on their interests and based on what departments we think would best fit them on their journey. For every 30 hours that these young people work, they get a $500 stipend. During the summers, every Friday, they come to our offices, and we focus on workshops such as mental health, financial literacy, and access to resources. We take them on trips, excursions, just different places throughout the city in general. Our year-round cohort, we have it for about six months and we’re able to work with them throughout that time to really tailor the program to their needs.
Another one of our programs is the Brandon Hendricks Scholarship. We provide two young people from the Bronx with $20,000 for up to four years while they’re in college. When Tomás was the program director at Bronx River Community Center, Brandon Hendricks was actually a participant of his, a standout one and a great kid. Brandon had a full ride, a full scholarship to go to St. John’s University, and his life was cut short due to gun violence. Incidentally, we’ve done that scholarship and we’ve been able to really expand on his legacy by providing opportunities for young people who are aspiring to go to college.
Another one of our programs is called Rise Leadership, which targets sophomores and juniors in high school. It’s a leadership program that has four different tracks and the young people self-select into those tracks. The four tracks are arts, civic engagement, business and entrepreneurship, and STEM. They come in once a week. We incentivize the program by providing a $100 stipend if they maintain excellent attendance as well as good standing in the program and they work on different projects throughout the course of the year. It’s project-based learning and each quarter they have a small project which they present on, and then it culminates into a larger project toward the end of the year. After that the juniors are able to apply to go on an international trip during the summer for 14 days. Last summer, our young people went to Palma in Costa Rica. We partner with an organization called Global Glimpse where they set up the logistics of everything and they have the young people work on different projects while they’re there. There’s a cultural immersion aspect but we also prepare them ahead of time for what it’s like to visit these countries and just the work they’ll be doing. We have testimonials, a couple of young people actually indicated that it was life-changing for some of them. We started that program last year with 30 young people. This year we’ve expanded to 60 young people.
AmNews: Where are you getting the funds for this? How did you first get funds?
J.A.: Two players in particular, Rafael Devers of the Boston Red Sox, and Luis Severino, formerly of the New York Mets and the New York Yankees. They’ve funded us generously over the course of the past two, three years.
Specifically, it was Rafael Devers. Through our networks, we were able to help him get three ambulances shipped to the province where he’s from in the Dominican Republic, Samaná Province.
AmNews: And to be part of your program, is there a profile of the youth that come into your programming?
J.A.: Everything that we do is application-based. We put out a call for applications and then different committees read for all our different programming areas. We don’t read any of the applications, just to keep it at 100%, you know, as democratic as possible. Our program coordinators, our program directors, and then specifically for Brandon Hendricks, his mom, his coach, and his uncle actually read through all the applications in order to ensure that it’s their process throughout.
AmNews: You have this Global Rising Scholarship –– when is that due?
J.A.: The Global Rising Scholarship, well we actually just cemented that when we were able to work with State Senator Luis Sepúlveda’s office, the Dominican government, and City College to start this scholarship. We’re selecting two young people who are in public schools in the Dominican Republic to sponsor their four years’ worth of studies to come and actually live here in the city. Throughout those 48 months, they’ll have 100% residency that is paid by us, we’ll help them with internships and just provide them access to resources for those four years.
AmNews: Why are you doing this program for students from the DR?
J.A.: I mean, why not, right? There’s a large constituency of Dominican expats here in New York; I think they are the largest immigrant population here. Providing access to resources and having the availability for them to study here will be life changing for many of these families. For us, the access was easier because the senators’ office already has a pre-existing relationship with the Dominican Republic through their government. So the infrastructure was there. It was an easy lift for us to provide that access to make this happen. We are always interested in ways of expanding our services. …. We are more than interested and happy in exploring conversations with other countries if possible as well, as long as we don’t have to do that heavy lifting because obviously we’re not government, but for us to partner with our friends in government, it just makes it easier for us to create this infrastructure for other folks.
AmNews: Then your mission to alleviate poverty, it’s not just Bronx-based?
J.A.: It’s citywide and for us, it’s how do we continue to increase wherewithal, how do we continue to increase our footprint, and then how do we continue to increase access to resources for everyone?
For more information, visit OyateGroup.org.