Last Saturday, the
Roosevelt Island Seniors Association
(RISA) hosted a Summerfest Community Celebration bringing local vendors and
organizations to Good Shepherd Plaza. According to RISA Vice President Andrea
Jackson:

…. We’re attempting here today to bring the community together.  I
really believe in joining together of people and upholding them, uplifting
them, building them up, and not pulling them down.

We have such a wonderful wealth of knowledge and and talent on the Island. We
need to expand on that and less on the things that are more negative . They’re
important and they do have their place but I think we have a wonderful
community here and there’s so much to learn and benefit from. 

We like to re-purpose, re-imagine re- design and that means all of the facets
of Roosevelt Island. We need to think differently, we need to operate
differently, we need to uphold each other, we need to lock hands together and
build this wonderful community and put it in the place where it’s supposed to
be from the very beginning ….

… Most of our vendors are environmentally friendly. They’re either
re-purposing re-designing and re-using items but they’re very good items.

We have Cornell Cafe who’s giving out free goodies so you should come and get
it. We also have iDig2Learn and they’re also composting,  putting fruits,
vegetables, everything from the earth back into the earth, that’s where it
belongs . We also have macrame that is naughty and nice and that is taking
those things and creating other things out of it re-imagining again
re-thinking what we’re doing and re-designing things on the island. …

 … What we have upcoming next would be a job fair so we’ll have about
15 different agencies and vendors so that we can help people develop
home-based businesses so that if there is a time where they have to be at home
or work from home or unemployed …  this is an opportunity for you to
garner all of that information…. 

We will also have the Limitless Rack that will be free clothing, shoes and
accessories for those that want to do either a Zoom Skype or in-person
interview that will be available for you here. Interviewing techniques, resume
review this is stuff that we really need and I don’t see that happening. See
we’re uplifting , we’re increasing and strengthening our own community from
the inside out.