Youth Ministries For Peace & Justice Serving the Bronx
Guided by a prophetic faith, YMPJ’s purpose is to transform both the people and the physical infrastructure of blighted South Bronx neighborhoods and change the systems that negatively impact them. Founded in 1994, the mission of Youth Ministries for Peace & Justice (YMPJ) is to rebuild the neighborhoods of Bronx River and Soundview/Bruckner in the South Bronx by preparing our community to become prophetic voices for peace and justice. We accomplish this through political education, spiritual formation, and youth and community development and organizing.
Youth Ministries For Peace & Justice has been serving the community for 30 years and counting.
1994- Current
Starlight Park
1994-2023
YMPJ organized with local leaders and community groups to reclaim and remediate the former Starlight Park Amusement Park site, creating a new vital link along the Bronx River Greenway.
Concrete Plant Park
1994-2010
YMPJ organized with local leaders and community groups to reclaim, remediate, and transform a former concrete plant into a national award-winning park. Later in the 2000s-2010s, young people from YMPJ created SWALE, a floating food forest docked along the Bronx River waterfront to highlight the issues they faced around the lack of access to fresh and healthy food. This project was the seed for the Bronx River Foodway, New York City’s first public foraging site.
Sheridan Blvd
1994-2010
Responding to the realities of polluting truck traffic on local streets and desires to increase safe waterfront access, YMPJ advocated for a partnership between NYS and NYC to transform the Sheridan Expressway into the Sheridan Boulevard, bringing numerous quality life improvements to the stretch of roadway including street crossings and bike paths.
Morrison Plaza
1994-2010
The C.O.R.E fec
1994-2010
Opening its doors in 2023, YMPJ is the backbone organization that operates The C.O.R.E Family Enrichment Center (FEC). The C.O.R.E, a community-led family center which offers free intergenerational and community building programing
Soundview Economic Hub
1994-2010
Stemming from the work transforming the Sheridan and, in part, the Bruckner Expressway to steer truck traffic more directly to Hunts Point, NYS set aside 22,000 square feet of space under the Bruckner Expressway at Bronx River Ave for community benefit. In 2015 NYS conducted a feasibility study for a market space at that site. Since then YMPJ has led community visioning and predevelopment activities for a climate, social, and economic resiliency hub at the site, which we call the Soundview Economic Hub. While the full build out of the Soundview Economic Hub, complete with enclosed spaces, is still a few years away, we are very excited to invite community members to enjoy and use the space for the first time every Summer 2024.
Help your community today. you can be a part of the movement.
There are many ways you can be a part of the YMPJ family.
Founded with love & Hard work
Alexie Torres-Fleming founded Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice as a result of witnessing the destruction of the South Bronx as a child in the in the sixties and seventies. After moving “up and out” of the neighborhood and realizing professional success outside of the community, Alexie felt called to return home in the fall of 1992. While volunteering at her parish’s community action group, she helped lead an anti-drug prayer march in front of well-known crack houses in the neighborhood. Two days later, drug dealers retaliated by breaking into the church, committing vandalism, smashing statues and setting several fires. Determined not to let the drug dealers win, a second rally mobilized 1,200 people and resulted in national press attention and the ultimate closing and rehabbing of those crack houses. Soon thereafter Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) was founded as the first and only youth center in a neighborhood of more than 15,000 youth, 50% of who live below the poverty level.
Our mission
Our vision is the positive transformation of these impoverished neighborhoods, which we work to attain through our mission to re-imagine and rebuild the Bronx River and Soundview/Bruckner neighborhoods by preparing young people to become prophetic voices for peace and justice. We accomplish this mission of inspiring youth through a unique model of political education, spiritual formation, and youth and community development and organizing. As YMPJ values and prioritizes youth and adult voices and leadership in the process of community revitalization, our initiatives involve residents in the planning process in order to ensure that YMPJ’s vision for the community coincides with that of its residents.