Growing up in the Bronx, Alexie Torres-Fleming
 watched her borough burn. As a little girl perched on
the ledge of her ninth floor window in the Bronx River
Public Housing Projects she witnessed the fires that
led to the devastation of the South Bronx in the late-
1960s and 1970s. Alexie herself left the South Bronx in
her 20s to live and start a career in Manhattan. During that time, she learned the power of grassroots organizing through her involvement with the Williamsburg activist group, El Puente. She returned to the South Bronx in 1992, joining a community action group at the Holy Cross parish. She founded Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) in 1994 with the mission to rebuild the Bronx River neighborhoods of the South Bronx. Alexie is the co-founder of the Bronx River Alliance and the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. Today, Alexie speaks and writes while also serving as Executive Director of Access Strategies Fund.