How we learned about what the phrase "safe space" means to the students:
Over the course of a six-week period, Mario Ynfante, WHEDco After-School Program Group Leader, and Nicole Lavan, Senior Director of Research and Program Development, conducted interviews with 10 WHEDco students. The interviews with participating students explore opportunities, relationships and interactions, agreements, and feelings while revealing the physical, mental, emotional forms of safety they experience at WHEDco, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The student interviews displayed in this project focus on the basic concept of how WHEDco creates a safe space for the students. Beginning in April 2021, WHEDco staff and leadership have been conducting interviews with 10 students about safe spaces and how safe spaces manifest themselves for the students in and out of the classroom.
This project was carried out by WHEDco’s Confident Futures Researcher and Staff Member, Mario Ynfante, and WHEDco’s Senior Director of Research and Program Development, Dr. Nicole Lavan.
Additionally, this project could not have been executed without the funding from Robert Wood Johnson and the help from New York University’s Professor Amarilys Estrella as well as Rayna Rapp and Helena Hansen.
