Youths African Americans y mixed racedressed in their glitter suits, slide on the ice of the slopes of Central Park in New York to the rhythm of a musical medley from the films “Barbie” and “Wonder Woman”, with the grace of almost professional skaters.
The Asociation Figure Skating in Harlem (FSH), an educational and training center, celebrated its festival annual winter event, before an enthusiastic audience in the green lung of Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers.
Since the 1990s, this organization without energy for-profit, unique in the United States and in the world according to its founder and president, Sharon Cohen“helps young women transform their lives, grow with confidence, mastery and educational success” in Harlem.
In this multicultural and popular neighborhood in northern Manhattan, “Figure skating in Harlem It’s my whole life. I don’t remember a moment in my life when I haven’t skated,” Nadia Neil, 17, a night school student who has been skating at FSH since she was six, explains smiling to AFP.
“Like a butterfly”
“I started learning little by little, evolving and growing. Like a butterfly that emerges from its larva. I fell in love with this sport“says his companion of the same age, Ashley Prentice.
“When I skate, I feel powerful and free,” says this African-American teenager from Harlemwho has found a “family” and one “community“in this atypical combination of teachers and athletes that is FSH.
The idea arose in 1991 between families african american Harlem and Cohen, a white woman in her sixties and old skater professional, who founded the association in 1997.
“It was really the community (of Harlem) the one that started this program and decided that, in addition to skating artistic – which is not a sport practiced by many girls of color-, the education would really be in the center of the programbecause it is what can open doors in their future,” he says.
“So that became the cornerstone (of the FSH): the education in the center, the skating as an entry point, and it has been like that for many years,” enthuses Cohen.
According to the FSH, most of the 300 students who skate every year are between 6 and 30 years old and live in Harlem and the Bronx, “two of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in New York”, an incredible multicultural mosaic of 8.5 million souls with profound socioeconomic inequalities.
Families black disadvantaged
“Almost all girls and young women (98%) identify as African American/blackHispanic or mixed raceand about 91% come from households with extremely low to moderate incomes,” the association states.
Nadia believes that “the young women of Harlem sometimes they don’t get the support they need or they are put on the wrong path.
Therefore, the young woman is delighted with the classes evenings taught by teachers professionals – in addition to public school during the day -, whether in science or social sciences, education civic and ethical or, of course, sport.
FSH also teaches how to manage finances and, in general, “how to be a good person,” he says.
For Sharon Cohenhe skating artistic is a sport “unique” that “really applies to life.”
“You start by failing, you get on the ice and you fall,” smiles the former sportsman.
“So it’s about learning what you do once you’ve fallen, how you get back up and how you start again. And that there’s nothing wrong with failing.”
According to FSH figures, 88% of its students they get the best grades in school until the end of secondary education and eventual enrollment in higher education.
And the satisfaction rates of girls, young women and their parents regarding the quality of listening, sharing, the fact of feeling “valued” in the classes or on the ice, being “pushed to achieve their goals” and having a “confident and proud daughter” range between 90% and 97%.
Little known, the achievements of the FSH have seduced a large platform that has carried out a series documentary film which will be released in 2025.
2024-03-05 16:22:00
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