TAPinto New Brunswick's People to Watch in 2024: Mona Patel

The girl in the pink pajamas printed with colorful cupcakes was eating holiday cookies from a tin and sipping on a juice pouch. Three other girls seated around the table were also gleefully munching away, stopping only to tell a story from their day or laugh at some joke.

“I like coming here because the people are really nice and Mona is really nice, too,” one girl said. “The people are fun and I really like learning about things, like life skills.”

Rounds of snacks, lessons on life skills, opportunities to make new friends, a place where you can just be yourself – these and other reasons are why the Urban Revival Project has become a popular space for kids in New Brunswick.

This nonprofit, after-school program serves about 50 kids – more or less at any given time – out of a cozy space at 270 George St. under founder Mona Patel.

Patel, one of TAPinto New Brunswick’s People to Watch in 2024, is a teacher-turned-guidance counselor-turned-nonprofit coordinator who believed she could make a difference in the city and has attracted others to join her through the sheer strength of her faith and her effervescent smile.

In fact, the Urban Revival Project’s mission statement is to break cycles of hopelessness in urban communities by giving families the tools to succeed; those tools would be life skills, a friendship with a volunteer, and a relationship with God.

The program counts about 20 regular volunteers among its ranks who provide enrichment classes several times a week on topics ranging from self-grooming to self-defense. One-off volunteers also come to this space to give art lessons and more.

And then there are trips, too. Patel and the volunteers have taken the students to the Zimmerli Art Museum, the Rutgers Geology Museum, and other local places.

But even beyond the trips, meals, mentorship, and vital services such as tutoring, Patel sees this as a place where children, grouped together by age and gender, can come for 90 minutes in an afternoon and feel happy and cared for.

“It’s a place where they can share their burdens, needs, and sorrows because sometimes in the family unit, who do you go to? Who do you tell that stuff to?,” Patel said.

“When we first started, we had a girl that was sexually abused. One of my volunteers really stepped up and spent extra time with her and went to the family’s house, just to help counsel her, like a big sister. She went to the court with the family. The mom only knew how to speak Spanish. So, our volunteer took it upon herself to do all these things. This mom called me and said, ‘Thank you so much. She’s really been helpful. She’s given me so much peace.’ ”

Patel is a first-generation New Jerseyan who saw her dad help family members immigrate to the United States, then take them into his home until they could get on their feet.

What she saw during her time as a student at Rutgers – the gritty side of a city – stayed with her. She became a school teacher but then became a guidance counselor because she wanted to do more. She went into youth ministry because she wanted to do even more.

Eventually, she struck out on her own and formed the Urban Revival Project, taking over the space where Barry Smith ran his Youth Empowerment Services program.

These four middle school-aged, cookie-craving girls sitting around a table one day just before Christmas, as well as the other 10,000 or so students in the city, didn’t know Patel when she began to distribute flyers advertising a free, fun day in the park during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The turnout was beyond her wildest expectations, leading to a divine moment.

“On the way back, I just sensed God saying, ‘What are you going to do with all these kids?’ ” Patel said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I’m taking them to camp.’ And then I made an announcement at the end. I was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to have a reunion at Baker Park.’ I sort of just made that up on the fly, and the kids showed up.”

And they kept showing up, more and more, when Patel opened the doors of the Urban Revival Project. Volunteers came. So did donations, mostly through her friends and relatives but from complete strangers, too. She connected with several houses of worship and organizations in and around the city to help these kids and their families with everything from school supplies to home furnishings.

In the year ahead, she hopes to hire a Spanish-speaking office administrator who can double as a program director to lead day classes with the moms. And, she would like to add a male volunteer who could build bridges with many of the dads who are struggling in their traditional roles as family providers.

“They can have a meal here and the men can talk because it’s not easy being a father,” Patel said. “And we can even educate them. We can have English classes, parenting classes, immigration classes.”

On this afternoon, a few days before Christmas, Patel emerges from the back room with gifts for the four girls – she also has gifts for the other members of the group who are running late. They instantly try on their new winter hats and look at the labels of their new body washes.

There’s warmth in the room even on a blustery day, and that means everything to Patel, who draws her inspiration from Isaiah 58:12 : Your people will rebuild what has long been in ruins, building again on the old foundations. You will be known as the people who rebuild the walls, who restored the ruined houses.

Story By: Chuck O'Donnell
Photo Credit: TAPinto New Brunswick