Meet Your Neighbor: Helen Ho

Community organizing was a value instilled in me at a young age. When I was a teenager, I was a participant in almost all of Queens Community House's afterschool programs, including the first Access for Young Women cohort, a girls' leadership program. In hindsight, I realize these early experiences had a significant impact on my life.   I went to college for business but quickly realized the field wasn’t for me. The things I was learning didn’t have the human element. I didn’t want to make money for a business when I could use my energy and time to help other people. Since that revelation, I’ve gone on to work with NYPIRG, NYC Parks Dept., and now LaGuardia Community College.

 

In 2012, I founded The Biking Public Project. Women and people of color are often left out of bike infrastructure planning, and as a community organizer I felt compelled to do something about it. For the past three years, we’ve been working with food delivery workers, a large sub-section of NYC bike population that’s often ignored. Delivery workers can be hard to reach since they’re working most of the time. They definitely can’t go to a bike advocacy meeting at 6pm on a weeknight - that’s their peak work time. Many workers are undocumented and don’t speak English. Their concerns are not the same as white-collar cyclists. They’re concerned about police harassment and the legalization of e-bikes, which benefit the older delivery workers. For NYC to truly be a sanctuary city, we have to think of ways not to criminalize immigrant workers on the street everyday.

Apoyo Queens Community House

Group photo from Queens Community House

Queens Community House brinda a las personas y las familias las herramientas para enriquecer sus vidas y construir comunidades saludables e inclusivas.