Every year for more than a decade, Staten Island activist Bobby Digi has convened what he calls a Youth Empowerment Summit. It's an effort to teach African-American teens about how to help their communities and offer them tips about applying to college and finding a job.

"If you go into any minority or black and brown community, you’ll find that it’s a lot of the small organizations that have been doing truly doing the deep grassroots work, really empowering and sustaining communities," he says.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday pledged to shift funding from the NYPD to support youth and social services programs. Activists and many City Council members have been demanding the same thing amid the new focus nationwide on how police treat communities of color.

Digi's group is exactly the kind that could benefit.

"The solution is not gonna come from the police department alone," Digi tells NY1.

Four years ago, Digi opened the Canvas Institute to expand on the work his community based organization has been doing. Here, programming is offered through partnerships with local schools and health and cultural providers.

Kids get involved in cleanups of locations like Tompkinsville Park, and programs to build bridges with local police. An NYPD kids chess tournament is now played in every precinct in the borough. It may soon come to Brooklyn as well. 

"It works because it’s an icebreaker. It allows again the police officers to see to sit and see the community that they’re dealing with and deal with them in a different way that isn't dealing with crime," Digi says.

In more than 10 years of work in the community, Digi estimates that his groups have been able to help the lives of more than 6,000 young black men, helping them find jobs, education, volunteer and internship opportunities.

Calvin Cresper is a mentor with the Canvas Institute.

"Empower the students, that’s what I really think. It’s important that it starts from the bottom up," Cresper says.

Details of the mayor's plan will be worked in budget negotiations with the City Council. He says he doesn't think the reallocation will affect public safety.

Digi hopes his group can be involved.