Joe Regina was walking through Westchester Square, touting the new merchants association and a much-needed city program to clean up the streets, when a passing teen dropped a soda can on the sidewalk.

Regina stopped midstride and hollered after the kid: “You do that at home?” The teen shot back, “Yeah, I do!”

Regina picked up the can, looking for the trash. “See what I mean?” he asked.

As secretary-treasurer of the new Westchester Square Merchants’ Association, Regina, who works at Quick Care Frame Repair, well knows the challenges facing the once-thriving northeast Bronx shopping district. But he and other local businesspeople are banking on the neighborhood’s resurgence, placing their hopes in their organization - and a new city program called Clean Streets.

Read More

Off the last stop on the No. 2 train, nestled between the noisy trainyards and quiet residential blocks, Bissel Gardens invites the young and the old to come get their hands dirty.

Vegetables planted in the spring are picked off the vine by neighbors in the fall, saplings nurtured there are sent to parks around the city, and children learn and play in a butterfly garden.

The 14-year-old Wakefield oasis aims to make the Bronx greener while bringing the community closer together.

It could be the most important 20 minutes of your life.

Doctors at Jacobi Medical Center want to get the word out about a program they’ve created that allows people to be tested for HIV - quickly and confidentially - while getting important lessons on AIDS prevention.

The idea behind Project BRIEF is to boost the number of people tested for the AIDS virus by offering the test in emergency rooms via individual, portable “HIV kiosks.”

Read More

Sonia Owens cooked the perfect s’more using a solar powered pizza box as a stove.

The 5-year-old was one of hundreds learning how to reduce their environmental footprints at the GetGreen: South Bronx Earth Fest. The event, held at St. Mary’s Park in Mott Haven, aimed to promote green lifestyles among neighborhood residents.

“We hope to stir up an internal desire to conserve,” said Miquela Craytor, deputy director of the Sustainable South Bronx, one of more than 30 community organizations, businesses and city agencies represented at the April 19 Earth Day event. More »

Josefina felt overwhelmed as she and her taxi-driver husband struggled on his $20,000-a-year earnings to support their 4-year-old son and 3-month-old daughter.

“I was very sad,” said Josefina, 37. “I don’t have a lot of money. I’m not working now.”

Recently separated and already raising two children on a minimum-wage salary, Teresa, another Bronx mother, gave birth to a daughter in March.

Then came along a savior for both women: Baby Buggy, a charity started in 2001 by comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica.

Read More

Some Bronx teens spent Valentine’s Day learning a lesson in true love.

The Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence held a series of sessions last week, where 600 teens were taught how to treat loved ones properly and avoid abusive relationships.

On Valentine’s Day, a group of about 20 youths entered the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center skeptical, and left with a new perspective.

“I thought this was going to be boring, but I really learned,” said Anibal Oller, 14.

Read More

The Wishing Well community garden in the South Bronx soon will install a new toilet friendly to the environment but with a twist - the waste will be composted, and will end up a few feet away in plant and vegetable beds tended by students from nearby Public School 333.

Not everyone is thrilled about the cutting-edge composting toilet planned for Rev. James A. Polite Ave.: One garden volunteer doesn’t want schoolchildren using “human manure” - and some scientists say the fertilizer could be deadly.

Read More

Despite ongoing community concerns, work will begin in February on a 6-story, 48-room Comfort Inn on Webster Avenue in Norwood, as the McSam Hotel Group moves ahead after struggling for more than a year to convince neighbors that the project will be good for the area.

Read More

When 13-year-old Steven (King) Ayala strides confidently down the hall at South Bronx Preparatory, students follow.

When he enters Rosaleen Knoepfel’s sixth-grade classroom, people notice.

When he freestyles in her after-school program, his rhymes ring.

“Think twice,” he raps. “Wrong or right, think twice, day and night, think twice, death or life.”

King is one of more than 40 students in the after-school Urban Art Beat program at the middle school at 145th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven.

Read More

Maria Torres recalled the day 10 years ago, when she and a few others she called “on-water thrill-seekers” paddled in kayaks from Hunts Point to a little, tree-filled island in the East River.

Then Torres, the president of The Point Community Development Corporation, dipped a quill pen in ink and added her signature to a document that made the island she rediscovered that day a city park.

More »