Raegan Sealy                                                                                       Ali Comerford

Congrats to the ESVB newest members, Raegan Sealy and Ali Comerford for creating the Sound Board, https://www.soundboard.nyc/board.html , an innovative non-profit based in NYC that uses poetry, music and performance to educate young people as artists, self-advocates, and emerging professionals.

Through creative programming, training, performance opportunities and mentoring Raegan and Ali provide young people with the skills they need to overcome roadblocks to education, engage in constructive political discourse and foster inclusion in their communities.  They connect our demographic through relevant art forms that they identify with; Sound Board is committed to the social capacity of rap, hip hop, jazz and songwriting to fight stigmas that are too often attached to terms like ‘poetry’ or ‘music,’ or the very idea of creative dialogue and social change.

Their target demographic has a powerful vocality and perspective that they seek to amplify. Their services are geared for young people who come from low-income families, ethnic minorities, have had contact with social services or are otherwise disadvantaged, disenfranchised or disengaged. They create platforms from which their voices can be heard. They partner with communities that are historically and culturally rich but face a daily reality of income, ethnic and other forms of discrimination, where they often find the young people with the most to say to give to their society.  Raegan and Ali coach their participants in reclaiming their narratives, taking the aspects of their stories often perceived as deficits, and turning them into assets for self-actualization, educational progress, and vocational capacity-building. If you would like to learn more about their work, email Raegan at raegansealy@gmail.com.