StreetLink NYC began with a question:
How can one person help more than one person at a time?
For founder Christian Mair, that question emerged during his first visit to Manhattan while attending a Model United Nations conference in Times Square. Despite growing up in the Bronx, Christian had never been confronted so directly with the scale and visibility of homelessness and poverty in New York City.
During his time in Manhattan, he tried to help where he could—giving money to one person, food or a drink to another. But each time he helped someone, he could walk another block and encounter several more people in need. It quickly became clear that individual acts of kindness, while meaningful, could only reach so far.
That realization stayed with him.
One person has limited time, resources, and reach. But what if one person could bring other people together to help?
Christian returned home with that question and began developing what would become StreetLink NYC: an organization built around turning individual willingness to help into collective community action.
StreetLink works to bring people together to provide essential goods while helping connect individuals experiencing hardship with organizations and resources that can offer additional support. Through volunteers, donors, community organizations, businesses, schools, and other partners, the goal is to create more opportunities for people to help one another.
What began with one person wondering how he could do more became a larger idea:
Empower others to help others.
By bringing people together around service, resources, and community, one person's ability to make a difference no longer has to end with what they can do alone.
