Center for
Wellbeing & Happiness

Throughout our 26-year history, the Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) has cultivated the health and wellness of our youth and their families. Long before the pandemic, we recognized the significant flaws of the health system and the health disparities and harm created by systemic injustice. Our vision for the Center for the Wellbeing & Happiness is rooted in the belief that the health and wellbeing of the young people we serve is intimately connected to the wellbeing of their families and their community.

Health is influenced by more than just what you eat, how you move, and how often you go to the doctor. Over the years, LESGC developed robust wellness programming, that has included: culinary education, urban farming, dance, yoga, mediation, sexual health education, mental health support and mentorship, and yet we recognized we needed to do more.

In 2017, we began a journey to create a space that could meet our families’ and community’s full needs—from the mental, emotional, spiritual, and social to the economic, environmental, and educational.

After much perseverance through pandemic-related delays, we proudly opened the doors to the Center for Wellbeing & Happiness in October 2022 to address health disparities by harnessing the collective power that already exists within our community.

As a grassroots community based organization, our founding is rooted in radical imagination and harnessing the power of family and community. Lower East Side residents and grassroots organizations have historically taken care of themselves in the absence of systems that work. LESGC founders are neighborhood mothers, aunts and now grandmothers and we honor their legacy in our vision of change. The Center for Wellbeing & Happiness will be a space grounded in healing justice, where local practitioners and organizers can convene to address harm at its root cause and heal together. Collectively, we are creating a dynamic wellness hub that transforms self-care into community care.