As a dozen kids fashion beads melt beads at the Red Hook Art Project, Tiffiney Davis is in awe.

“Wow. I like that a lot,” Davis said.

Davis started the program, known as R.H.A.P., in 2009. Davis was a single mom at 14-years-old. She went through the shelter system. And she didn’t quite buy it when a teaching artist said her young, introverted son had a gift.

What You Need To Know

  • Tiffiney Davis co-founded Red Hook Art Project in 2009. The nonprofit organization provides free art classes to kids in Brooklyn
  • Davis' son was her first student. Art helped the introverted kid come out of his shell
  • When Davis isn't running Red Hook Art Project, Davis helps tend to a community fridge

"Art? He's not doing art,” Davis told the teaching artist. “He needs to read. He needs, how to do math.'"

But the more he worked with that teaching artist and the more he got his hands dirty ­­­­­­­­­­– the more he blossomed.

"I didn't really talk to anybody in school until I started drawing and coming to R.H.A.P.," Tashawn Davis said, reflecting on how finding art changed him.

"His grit on life and his, like, well-being, I felt was protected by the art," Tiffiney Davis said.

As Tashawn got older, his friends started joining him for art classes. R.H.A.P. now serves more than a hundred students and provides role models who look like them.

"This starts conversations,” Tiffiney Davis said. “This makes new friends. This builds relationships. I mean it opens up so many opportunities for them."

One of those opportunities is assistance, looking for high schools outside of the neighborhood. R.H.A.P. helps students prepare portfolios and auditions for arts schools.

"In the local schools, for some reason there's a lot of resources, that's being pulled for those schools, so, which means your children have lack of resources to expand they brains," Davis said.

And she says it keeps them out of trouble.

"By the time they get home, they don't want to go out and run the streets or do anything like that," she said.

Davis, on the other hand, spends her down time helping her fellow Brooklynites. And often tends to a community fridge in the neighborhood.

"I wasn't going to have people hungry on my watch ­­­­­­­­­­– not when I was able to survive,” Davis said.

That same mentality goes for the R.H.A.P. kids, who Davis sees as her own.

"You see how the fire's burning?” Davis said, looking at the kids melting beads. “That's how I feel inside ­­­­­­­­­­– of joy. This fire ­­­­­­­­­­– blasting inside my heart."

For helping these Brooklyn kids see the world in full color, Tiffiney Davis is our New Yorker of the Week.