Center for Wellbeing & Happiness

The Center for Wellbeing and Happiness, an initiative of the Lower East Side Girls Club, provides free wellness programs to Lower East Side community members of all generations and genders.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Girls Club recognized the significant flaws of the health system and the major health disparities experienced by the Lower East Side community. For the last 25 years, the Girls Club worked to counter these challenges by connecting Black and Brown girls and gender nonconforming youth to healthy and successful futures. The Girls Club addressed institutional inequities and health disparities in our community with robust wellness programming, including: a girl-run CSA (community-supported agriculture) and culinary training program, our annual walk-a-thon and community health fair, classes such as run club, nutrition, food science, gardening, dance, yoga, mediation, sexual health education, and peer mentoring.

In 2018, the Girls Club set out to do more. With support from the New York City Council, the Girls Club conducted a community health needs assessment that highlighted gaps in mental, emotional, social, economic, environmental, and educational wellness. In 2019, the Girls Club acquired 5,000 square feet of recently vacated commercial space, adjacent to the Girls Club’s existing Center for Community on Avenue D, to become the future Center for Wellbeing and Happiness.

With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, the need for the Center for Wellbeing and Happiness became more urgent than ever. As the pandemic deepened the challenges the Lower East Side had been dealing with for decades, we began offering virtual programming to bolster the wellbeing of the community. In 2022, we plan to launch our in-person programming at our new space on Avenue D.