Since 2016, Repairing Together has been working to create a more interconnected Milwaukee
Segregation in schools was declared unconstitutional in the United States 72 years ago, but in some ways, Milwaukee remains effectively segregated.
No local would be terribly shocked to see that their school-aged child only has friends who look, or pray, like them.
Concerned, Elsie Crawford, a Milwaukee Jewish Day School employee, founded a program called Repairing Together 10 years ago, to foster more kinds of friendships.
The initiative, which has grown from hosting a cohort of 80 students in its first year to over 1,000 in 2026, aims to foster connections among children from different cultures, forming a more interconnected and tolerant Milwaukee.
Repairing Together is a collaborative effort, comprising of students from MJDS, Indian Community School, Bruce-Guadalupe Community School, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School. Crawford is the Repairing Together project director.
Milwaukee is one of the United States’ most segregated metropolitan areas, with a ‘dissimilarity index’ of 78%, according to the Brookings Institution. This means that for the different races and ethnicities to be evenly distributed across Milwaukee, 78% of residents would have to relocate.
However great, it wasn’t always easy to get students interested. “In the beginning, I had to shove [students] out of the door,” Crawford admitted.
But by the end of only one day, MJDS students were excited to tell Crawford that they were all currently completing the same unit in math, and that the Hebrew morning prayer is similar to that of the Oneida Nation, she said.
“What makes the four schools that participate so special is that they all focus on really developing the students’ [cultural] identities,” said Rabbi Joshua Herman, head of school at MJDS. “We get to do that within our own schools separately, but then we get together, and … get outside of that little bubble, and all of a sudden, students start to look at their own identities in a different light.”
Herman recalled once listening to an interview with a psychologist who studied the process of changing someone’s mind. “It’s not impossible,” he recalled the psychologist said, “but nearly so unless you have a 20-year or longer relationship with the person whose mind you are trying to change.” By beginning this work when children are still young, tangible change will begin to arise by the time they are young adults, Herman said.
In recent years, Repairing Together has expanded not only in the number of students but also in the frequency of programming, the diversity of curriculum, and the relationships with other Milwaukee-based organizations. Some of the activities that they have recently led include cultural museum tours, student-led presentations about holidays and traditions, and workshops led by local activists and artists.
“With how the world is turning, there are more roadblocks than ever preventing kids with different backgrounds from getting to know each other.”
– Elsie Crawford
“It doesn’t matter what background you’re from when you talk about your family, your traditions, your holidays,” said Crawford. “It takes away the fear of the other. You become more humanized.”
Although they all live in separate sections of Milwaukee and attend different schools, the kids have a lot more in common than they realize, Navarro said.
“Being 12 years old is really hard,” Herman said. “Doesn’t matter if you’re Black, white, Latino, Native American – it doesn’t matter. It’s hard.”
“I don’t have the arrogance to say that Repairing Together can solve all of our problems,” Crawford said. “But it seems to me that it can’t be a bad thing to start with young children and build upon the trust that you get year after year.”
“I would like to see this in more cities, actually, because if it works in Milwaukee, it can work anywhere.”
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