Fordham awards $50,000 grant to study impact of Bronx youth mapping program

Fordham University awarded the Angellyh Yambo Foundation a $50,000 grant this summer to fund research measuring the impact of a public safety program. The foundation, named after a 16-year-old girl who was fatally shot in 2022 in Mott Haven, partners with data and design company RomoGIS to teach high school students how to improve their communities with geographic mapping technology.

The program has already been using mapping, data, artificial intelligence and spatial storytelling to help students reclaim the narrative of their borough. Teens identify community challenges, visualize them and propose solutions — using both research and their own lived experiences. But the new project, called “Bronx Community Mapping: A Blueprint for Change” could take it to a new level.

Through the university’s Bronx Research Institute for Community Solutions initiative, the $50,000 will support the project for two years, from July 2026 through June 2028. If research proves the program to be valuable, it could lead to greater recognition and more investment from lawmakers, explained Alexandra Maruri, operations manager at the foundation and Angellyh Yambo’s aunt.

The team recently completed focus groups with former students, and will begin workshops next February through April, Maruri said.

Frank Romo, CEO of RomoGIS, said the Fordham grant is key to putting all the pieces together for what he and Maruri want Bronx Community Mapping to accomplish.

“We have the programming piece, we have the data visualization,” Romo said. “Now with Fordham, they’re bringing in the research aspect of actually understanding how the program functions and the impact that it can have.”

Previous projects by the students include urban design renderings to address vacant lots or dangerous intersections, an interactive map marking shooting sites in the borough across a decade, and another map showing the history of redlining. Students present their findings at the end of the program.

The program is an important part of the foundation’s work in honoring its namesake.

Angellyh Yambo was leaving her high school when a fight between three men broke out at a nearby bodega, according to Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark. The gunman, Jeremiah Ryan, fired at least six shots from a ghost gun, killing Angellyh Yambo and injuring two other teenagers, the district attorney said. Ryan was 17 at the time, and later pled guilty and was sentenced to 15 years to life, according to the district attorney.

Angellyh was wonderful, said her dad Manuel Yambo, who lives in Kingsbridge and works as a doorman in Riverdale. She liked makeup and the Yankees, and was starting to get into playing softball. Angellyh was goofy but sometimes shy, he said, and kind to others. Manuel Yambo hopes others remember her this way.

“I want people to recognize her like that,”  Manuel Yambo said. “How she was — how funny she was, how loving she was, the heart that she had for others.”

Angellyh Yambo’s aunt, Mary Hernandez, launched the foundation in 2023 with the motto “Every child is Angellyh.” The nonprofit holds anti-bullying and college-prep classes, as well as workforce development workshops and the Bronx Community Mapping program.

Maruri is also the founder of Bronx Historical Tours. She starts the mapping program by taking students on walking tours through the South Bronx for inspiration and to develop project concepts by giving them a deeper historical understanding.

She grew up in Kingsbridge Heights in the 1980s, where she said gun violence was frequent. Years later, in developing the Bronx Community Mapping program, Maruri drew from her own experiences and noted some other youth programs in the Bronx seemed disconnected from teens and what motivates them to move forward.

“We felt that something that would reconnect them to their community will help,” Maruri said. “And also give them the leadership skills that they need.”

Maruri, Hernandez and RomoGIS will work with South Bronx community center La Central YMCA, as well as research partner Katheryn Roberson-Miranda, assistant professor of counseling psychology at Fordham. She will help measure the impact on students who complete the program.

Roberson-Miranda said in an email to The Press that the program is valuable for several reasons.

“It provides youth with a space to express their safety concerns in their own communities, the skills to document and communicate these professionally, and a platform to become advocates for change,”  Roberson-Miranda said. “We know that addressing community violence requires systemic change, and that positioning youth to promote the changes they want to see makes for a brighter future.”