A trilingual guide for young immigrants that explains their school options in NYC.

Community Partners

<h2>What’s the issue? </h2>
Recently arrived young immigrants in NYC, ages 18-21, often need stability and supportive services, including shelter, legal support, crisis intervention, health care, connections to benefits, and referrals to education. Going to school can help with short-term needs, like food, subway cards, and child care, as well as longer-term goals, like getting into college, getting a better paying job, building community, and even staying in the country. Many young immigrants don’t realize they have the right to attend school — for free — regardless of their immigration status or if they’ve been out of school for a while.
Young immigrants need to understand their school options so they can make an informed decision about attending school. If they choose to attend, they need to understand how to enroll. Ideally, every young person could sit down with someone who would help them understand, in their native language, the nuanced differences between school types and the multistep enrollment process. Many young immigrants don’t have a guardian or adult in their life to provide this support. Hopefully, they can connect with social workers who can fill this role. But there’s a greater need for this support than social workers have capacity to provide. At the time of creating this project in 2025, when the federal government is persecuting immigrants and cutting funds for programs that support them, social workers’ ability to keep doing this work at all is under threat.<a href="https://www.door.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> The Door</a> is NYC’s leading youth development organization that serves 11,000 youth every year. In their work, they provide holistic support for immigrant youth, including legal representation and guidance getting their needs met. In the year before our collaboration, The Door welcomed almost 1,000 new immigrant youth into their membership, so they needed an engaging, easy-to-understand resource to ensure they could provide every young person with information about their educational opportunities in NYC.
<h2>What did we make?</h2>
The Door collaborated with CUP and design duo Shireen Mathews and Tara Tabassi to create School is For You!, a trilingual booklet (English, Spanish, and French) about school options for young immigrants. School is For You! explains three school options available for young immigrants ages 18–21 in NYC: High School, High School Equivalency (HSE), and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). The resource compares the three school types so young people can make an informed decision about which option may be right for them, and also explains how they can enroll in school and overcome barriers they may face in the process.
<h2>How did we make it?</h2>

We spoke with young immigrants to learn about their experience going to school in NYC. Over the course of the project, we met twice with French-speakers from Guinea, and twice with Spanish-speakers from the Caribbean, Central, and South America.
Young people helped us frame the content from the perspective of someone who recently arrived in NYC. For example, they encouraged us to emphasize that school is free, since this wouldn’t necessarily be the case in their home countries. They also spoke to the importance of every young person choosing the school type that’s right for them. We heard impassioned arguments for why HSE was the right choice for some, while High School was the right choice for others. This testimony helped us uplift the main differences of each school type to present a balanced comparison.
Our community members also weighed in on how the resource could support young immigrants with a common barrier in the enrollment process. Unfortunately, many young immigrants are unfairly and incorrectly told they can’t enroll in high school — often with the excuse that they won’t graduate on time — even though it’s their right to attend high school whether or not they graduate. To support young immigrants in asserting their rights, community members suggested we include pocket-size, tear-out cards that explain the young person’s rights, inspired by the <a href="https://www.ilrc.org/redcards" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">red cards / tarjetas rojas</a>, which they could give to whoever is blocking their enrollment. Great idea! Done.

We incorporated young immigrants' opinions about the design. For the layout, they preferred for text to be broken up into small, bite-size paragraphs so readers wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by too many words. They also affirmed the importance of showing a side-by-side comparison of each school type so readers could understand the differences between school types at a glance. For the many website links we embedded throughout the guide, community members suggested we include both URLs and QR codes, as well as a tutorial for how to use a QR code for those who may not be familiar.
Community members also had opinions about the illustrations. They encouraged us to show illustrations of young people that emphasized ethnic and religious diversity. They also asked us to show a range of emotional expressions, as it would be unrealistic to show everyone happy. Community members unanimously gravitated towards illustrations that showed young immigrants in graduation caps and gowns — “because it means they made it” — which led us to feature young people wearing graduation caps on the cover. They also asked us to remove illustrations that showed young people socializing on their phones, preferring instead in-person interactions. Most of the illustrations of young people are of the community members themselves, who volunteered to be photographed and represented in the resource.

School is For You! will be distributed at every location of The Door. Copies will also be distributed at partner organizations including the Legal Aid Society, the New York Immigration Coalition, Volunteers of Legal Service, Make the Road NY, Damayan, Unlocal, Afrikana, Advocates for Children of New York, the I-CARE Coalition, and the United Federation of Teachers Brooklyn location. It will also be distributed at the International Community High School and KAPPA International High School.

The booklet begins by highlighting what school could offer young immigrants. Then it explains that there are three school types, and gives readers two options: Opening to the left, they can reveal a fold-out page that compares all three school types at a glance. Opening to the right, the first half of the booklet explains each school type in more depth. The second half explains the process for enrolling in high school, including how readers can assert their rights if they’re denied enrollment. The back cover is perforated to make it easy to tear out pocket-size cards they can give to whoever is blocking their enrollment.

Check Out the Project

The Door Digital 2026

CUP
<a href="https://welcometocup.org/people/agustín-cepeda" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Agustín Cepeda</a>
<a href="https://welcometocup.org/people/sarah-auches" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sarah Auches</a>

Community Partner
<a href="https://welcometocup.org/people/the-door" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Door</a>

Designers
<a href="https://welcometocup.org/people/shireen-mathews" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shireen Mathews</a>
<a href="https://welcometocup.org/people/tara-tabassi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tara Tabassi</a>

Project Collaborators

Immigrants & NY (+ Upstate NY)

Here to Stay!

Your School, Your Choice!

Break it Down!

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Hyperakt is a purpose-driven design and innovation studio that elevates human dignity and ignites curiosity. Since 2001, co-founders Julia Zeltser and Deroy Peraza, along with the Hyperakt team, have been partnering with change-makers moving society forward. We believe in design’s power to build a future filled with courage, optimism, and honesty.

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The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a nonprofit organization that uses the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement in partnership with historically marginalized communities.

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