Harambee Scholarship Fund

Blandon Casenave is a native New Yorker, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. Blandon graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, and went on to graduate with a BA in Economics & Political Science from Hunter College and eventually an MS in Data Science from CUNY’s School of Professional Studies.
Socially, Blandon has always been active in his community, dating back to his activism as a college student in CUNY in the fight for free tuition, and as a student organizer for the Million Man March (’95). In January of 2011 Blandon was interviewed by the Village Voice for an article entitled “Death of a Test” because he was a part of the student group (SLAM ) that opposed the institution of a proficiency exam for all CUNY undergraduates in the late 1990s . The Village Voice article was published on the heels of a decision by the CUNY Board of Trustees to finally abolish the CUNY Proficiency Exam after a decade worth of evidence showed that the original position of CUNY students and faculty that opposed the exam were correct; in that costs far outweighed any gains to the university.
In 2016, Blandon started the Harambee SHSAT fundraiser on GoFundMe, and raised $10K with the help of his Brooklyn Tech High School alumni to sponsor prep courses aimed at addressing the rapid decline of Black and Latino students at NYC’s prestigious specialized high schools. In 2018, Mr. Casenave, along with other Brooklyn Tech Alumni, Karloff Commissiong, Dan Flores, Sonya Hunte and Tysheina Robertson formalized their efforts by attaining not-for-profit status for what is now the Harambee Educational Support Foundation in order to broaden their efforts across New York City.