Spotlight on Community Partner: Ingersoll Cornerstone Community Center & Coach Mel
By Johanna Contreras
This month, we extend a shout-out and thank you to one of our original community partners, the Ingersoll Cornerstone Community Center. The Ingersoll Cornerstone Community Center is located in Fort Greene and provides free programming for community members in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. The incredible staff at Ingersoll, including Coach Mel Carnegie, Assistant Director, Tye Floyd, and Director Jenn Mahoney, worked closely with Brooklyn Book Bodega cofounders Tamara, Rebecca, and Seema in their early days of getting the organization off the ground. With their support, the Brooklyn Book Bodega was able to host its first events and make inroads into the community.
Rebecca and Mel met through their children, who have been classmates since kindergarten. Although Rebecca had been dreaming of the Book Bodega in some form “for twenty years,” it was a stroke of serendipity when she mentioned it to Mel one day during school pickup. At that point, Brooklyn Book Bodega was just an idea on paper; Tamara, Rebecca and Seema had been meeting every Wednesday morning for several months developing the vision, but Mel had just received a huge shipment of books from the Brooklyn Public Library that he was looking to move.
“I mentioned to them that we had extra books we could give away because we were running out of space...We had 10,000 books from the Brooklyn Public Library. We did a book fair and didn’t give away all the books, so we had a lot of books left in storage,” shared Mel Carnegie of the early days of the Book Bodega. Mel invited Tamara, Rebecca, and Seema to host an event at Ingersoll Cornerstone Community Center, and the collaboration turned into Brooklyn Book Bodega’s very first book giveaway. The event attracted 35 people, with 275 free books finding their way into new homes. The success inspired repeat events, and as Mel describes it, momentum grew quickly. “It started with one Saturday, two Saturdays, three Saturdays, and that’s where you all are at today.”
One of the most important tenets of the Brooklyn Book Bodega is Community — making meaningful interactions within and among groups that don't always come together. The Ingersoll Cornerstone Community Center is open to the public but as a NYCHA Center, it serves the residents of NYCHA Ingersoll Houses first and foremost. From the start, Tamara, Rebecca, and Seema were intentional in trying to attract a diverse group of participants.
Cofounder Rebecca credits the original partnership with Ingersoll for Brooklyn Book Bodega's wide appeal. “People came to the events for a variety of reasons. For some people, it was their home, their community center. And then for others, they just wanted to be a part of it. Some people came for the activities. The idea of free books appeals to many people. And we come with the idea of ‘you belong and everyone belongs’. There are 700 reasons you could belong here. If you like books, you belong here. And once they are there, the goal is to have positive interactions around literacy and book culture, break down barriers, and build community.”
Throughout the pandemic, Mel and other staff at Ingersoll have continued to serve their community, organizing food pantries and delivering food to elders who weren’t able to leave their homes. And as soon as restrictions were lifted and the community center reopened, Coach Mel was back in the building leading programs for youth. Thank you to Coach Mel, Tye, Jenn, and the Ingersoll Community Center for all that you do! Brooklyn Book Bodega would not be where we are without you, and we look forward to working together more in the future.