Our mission
Shaolin Arts Center exists to reduce youth violence in Staten Island by giving young people access to disciplined instruction in the arts, mentorship from adults who hold them to a standard, and a community they can belong to — regardless of what their family can afford.
We do this today by teaching the Fu Jow Pai (Tiger Claw) system and Tai Chi in partnership with community organizations, keeping our classes open to everyone, and using tuition and donations to fund free scholarship places for the students who need them most.
An arts center, not only a school
Our name is deliberate. 少林艺术中心 uses 艺术 — the arts, in the creative sense — rather than the word for martial arts. Fu Jow Pai is the first discipline we have opened, not the boundary of what we intend to teach.
The reason is practical. What changes a young person's direction is not the fighting; it is the demand of a serious craft, taught by someone who expects them to meet it. That mechanism is identical in a recording studio or an edit suite, and for a young person who isn't athletic, or simply isn't interested in combat, the martial arts door is the wrong one. We would rather have more doors.
Why this works
A young person drifting toward violence typically needs three things that are in short supply: somewhere to be during the hours when trouble happens, adults who expect something of them and notice when they're absent, and a route to status that doesn't run through hurting people.
Traditional instruction provides each of those directly. The training is structured and demanding. Its hierarchy is earned through patience and effort in front of witnesses, which is a very different lesson from the one the street teaches. And the confidence that comes from genuine capability tends to lower the temperature rather than raise it — students who know what they are capable of are far less invested in proving it.
We are a new organization. We are not claiming measured outcomes we haven't earned. We are claiming that this training is worth putting in front of the young people least likely to be offered it, and that is the work we have set out to do.
How the money works
Adult and family students pay tuition for our classes. Because we are a nonprofit, that revenue is not distributed to any owner — it funds the organization's programs, and specifically it funds scholarship places for young people whose families cannot pay.
Scholarship students train in the same classes as everyone else, at the same times, held to the same standard. Nobody in the room is told who is paying and who isn't, because a program that marks children out as charity cases defeats its own purpose.
Donations extend the same mechanism and are the reason we can offer places we haven't yet sold. A gift can cover a young person's training for an entire season.
A new organization in an old tradition
Shaolin Arts Center Ltd was formed in Staten Island in 2026 and recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt public charity under section 501(c)(3), effective February 23, 2026. The organization is new. The art it teaches is not.
Fu Jow Pai — the Tiger Claw system — is a traditional southern Chinese martial art passed from teacher to student across generations. Our head instructor trained in this lineage in Staten Island over many years of study before founding this organization, and teaches the traditional curriculum as he received it.
We founded a nonprofit rather than a school for a specific reason. Traditional instruction has always been available to those who could find it and afford it, which quietly excludes the young people who would benefit from it most. A charitable organization can teach the same art on different terms: free first lessons, funded places, classes hosted inside community institutions young people already trust, and public demonstrations that reach kids who would never walk into a school on their own.
Who leads the work
Jerraine Williams — Executive Director and Head Instructor
Jerraine Williams serves as Executive Director and Head Instructor of Shaolin Arts Center. He has trained for many years in the Fu Jow Pai (Tiger Claw) system under senior teachers of the lineage in Staten Island, and teaches our weekly Tai Chi and kung fu classes as well as leading the organization's program development. He is also known as a recording artist under the name Agent Blurr, as part of the second generation of the Wu-Tang extended family — the background our planned music program will draw on directly.
Board of Directors
Shaolin Arts Center is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors responsible for the organization's finances, policies, and charitable purpose. The board operates independently of any for-profit martial arts school, and no instructor or officer receives compensation tied to referrals or enrollment at any private business.
Organization details
We publish our registration details so donors, partners, and families can verify who we are.
- Legal name
- Shaolin Arts Center Ltd
- Tax status
- Exempt under IRC section 501(c)(3), effective February 23, 2026
- Classification
- Public charity under IRC section 170(b)(1)(A)(vi)
- EIN
- 42-1993117
- Fiscal year end
- December 31
- Annual filing
- Form 990-series return filed annually with the IRS
- Mailing address
- 790 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island, NY 10301
- Contact
- info@shaolinartscenter.org · 718-736-4726
Contributions to Shaolin Arts Center Ltd are deductible under IRC section 170 to the extent permitted by law. Our IRS determination letter is available on request.