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Syeisha Byrd’s parents raised her to put the needs of the community before her own. 

Now, as the director of the Office of Engagement Programs at Syracuse University, Byrd hopes to cultivate a commitment to community service among SU students, bridging the gap between the university and the city of Syracuse, where she grew up. 

“My parents were givers and helpers, and I watched them,” Byrd said. “I watched how my dad became the father to all the kids in the community that didn’t have a father.”

Byrd coordinates volunteer opportunities for students and oversees several community service initiatives at SU, including campus food pantries. Among her other responsibilities, she’s also a professor for an honors crocheting class and a facilitator for Conversations About Race and Ethnicity, a six-week dialogue session for SU students. 

A lifelong community advocate, Byrd, who earned her master’s degree in social work at SU, has spent the better part of her life giving back to Syracuse. 

“Folks are always looking at Syracuse for the negative, but our city is full of potential,” Byrd said. “You just got to look.”

At the age of five, Byrd joined the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse, a volunteer organization located just a block away from her childhood home that offers afterschool programs for children. At 19, the organization hired Byrd as a site coordinator for one of its afterschool programs. 

She spent 16 years working various positions at the organization, including director at Syracuse’s Central Village Boys and Girls Club.

Byrd has made the Central Village more diverse by welcoming more children from Somali immigrant families into the Boys and Girls Club, said Jeffrey Eysaman, executive director at the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse.

“If you go down to the Central Village neighborhood, and if you visit probably any Somali family and you say Syeisha Byrd’s name, they know her,” Eysaman said. “We’re very grateful that we have the population we have now. It’s diverse. And it all started with Syeisha Byrd.” 

Byrd has found that her role at SU complements her work with the Boys and Girls Club. She’s able to connect university students with the organization through various programs, including Young Scholars, a mentorship program through which SU students tutor teenagers at the Boys and Girls Club. 

“I took the job (at SU) because I knew I would still be connected to those children that I love so much,” Byrd said. “But it would be me with the opportunity to introduce thousands of students, staff and faculty to those kids and to that community.”

Her main goal is to help SU students find opportunities to serve the community. She hopes to create a community service office at SU with a website where students can easily find community service opportunities. 

Corey Henry | Senior Staff Photographer

Michelle Walker, director of community programs in SU’s policy studies program, said Byrd’s knowledge about the Syracuse area and dedication to students makes her a perfect fit for her position at the university. 

“She really is involved in student life, to get (students) to go off campus and into the community, to really learn about the environment they’re in,” Walker said. “I think the fact that Syeisha is from Syracuse helps her with knowing how to guide students to work in Syracuse.”

The coronavirus pandemic has further motivated Byrd to find ways to give back to the community while staying safe. 

SU announced over the summer that it would allocate $600,000 to city volunteer programming in response to a demand from #NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students that has protested SU’s response to racist incidents. 

As a result, Byrd has planned ways to expand student volunteer opportunities to help underserved communities hard-hit by the pandemic, including a Thanksgiving Day drive to provide food for those who’ve lost their jobs due to the pandemic’s economic fallout. She has also started giving virtual cooking lessons for students, using items from SU’s food pantries on South Campus and at Hendricks Chapel. 

Byrd ensured that the food pantries remained full throughout the summer by gathering donations and making several trips to the grocery store, said Meg Lowe, sustainability coordinator at SU.  

“Ms. Byrd is extremely passionate about her students and the community, which shines through in everything we have done together,” Lowe said in an email. “She always brings forth a fun energy that can’t be missed.”

Byrd has also worked to instill a love of community service in her three children. Throughout the pandemic, her family has been baking, painting positive messages on rocks in their neighborhood and picking up trash once a week. 

The students Byrd has worked with have motivated her to take on her many roles in the university and community, she said. 

“I think students are bringing so much to our city to our school,” she said. “I continue to do what I do because I watched students grow. I watched them graduate and I watched them move on and obtain really great jobs. That’s what keeps me motivated.”

Published on October 6, 2020 at 11:57 pm

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21