NEW YORK — As he leads a visitor on a tour of the busy Harlem intersection where the organization he co-founded has made a home for the past 25 years, Khary Lazarre-White explains with pride how Brotherhood/Sister Sol transformed a cluster of mostly vacant and rundown bodegas into classrooms and a temporary headquarters.
A few steps later, he pauses at a community garden — an oasis of green amid rows of brownstones and gray tenements — run with help from the young people who participate in the group’s programs. Finally, he heads two lots over to an empty hole in the ground, which will soon be the site of the nonprofit’s new headquarters.
Lazarre-White and the organization’s other founder, Jason Warwin, see the planned 20,000-square-foot space not only as an opportunity for the group to expand its services but also as a validation of the methods they use to mold young people of color from underserved New York neighborhoods into well-educated citizen-activists.