???How do I reflect the people around me? (August Monthly Newsletter)
In this month’s newsletter, we’re sharing:
Dear GenUnity Community,
Last week at a dinner with friends, we asked the question, “What lessons did your parents teach you?” My biggest lesson? My mom taught me how to talk to anyone. Because my mom talked to everyone. I remember being 15, annoyed in a way that only a teenager can be, watching my mom spend hours making conversation with every person she saw - learning from her how to treat a stranger as if you’ve known them for years. “Always say hello. You might be the only person they’ve talked to today.”
In our current world, it can be all too easy to stifle our humanity as we focus on ourselves. I joined GenUnity because I was starting to feel disconnected and discouraged in both my professional and personal life. I was inspired by the mission of building the capacity of everyday individuals to relate to one another, celebrate their humanity, and move towards a more deeply connected future.?
Almost 15 years later, I’m still not sure what I’m capable of as one person. But I know that the love we practice in the present is critically connected to the love we will experience in the future. As I celebrate my one-year anniversary as GenUnity’s Development Manager, I am encouraged to practice this love every day by the dedicated and caring staff who embody GenUnity’s values of vulnerability, generosity, and grace. I’m very hopeful for what the next year will bring - for my own growth, and the growth of GenUnity.
In partnership,
Development Manager
Dorchester Bay Calls for Year Round Support of Black Businesses
After receiving a timely small business loan from a local Boston nonprofit, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation (DBEDC), Privé Parking , Ricardo Louis , was able to expand his business during a time of economic uncertainty. DBEDC has supported Boston residents with small business loans and other critical resources since 1979. Louis feels that Certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) like Dorchester Bay, are “willing to be a lot more lenient on the requirements and understand the market and understand the struggles and the challenges small local minority businesses do have, I think it makes a huge difference, a major impact.”
As Black Business Month comes to a close, DBEDC is working towards spreading awareness of the difficulties small businesses, especially minority owned, face in Boston all year long. According to DBEDC’s CEO, Kimberly R. L. , “One of the biggest barriers that Black-owned businesses and other minority-owned businesses have is a lack of generational wealth…Often these entrepreneurs are having to self-fund these businesses from their own savings, borrowing money from family members, taking out high interest rate debt. So they really lack the generational wealth that gives other business owners a leg up.” Louis is no exception to this experience stating, “We tend to go to our friends, our family, maybe some hard moneylenders, which always is not the most favorable interest…It’s an ongoing challenge, I think, for a majority of small businesses.”
CDFIs like DBEDC not only provide minority owned businesses financial support but also free business coaching and, as referenced previously, flexible interest rates. Lyle explains, “We also see it as a partnership with the businesses we’re working with…That means we’re there to provide free business coaching. It means we’re there to help businesses think about how to make their business sustainable over the long term…we want businesses to come to us if they are encountering difficulty in the business because we can think about different loan terms, we can think about pausing payments…We can try to find some other emergency resources so that they are able to continue running their business. And they don’t have that fear of, if I can’t pay this loan, what’s going to happen to me?”
Due to economic uncertainty, DBEDC is facing more barriers to accessing the money to provide Boston residents helpful loans. While Lyle mentions that, of course, a reduction in interest rates would help, what is just as important is, “More people being aware of the work that CDFIs do and wanting to invest in organizations like Dorchester Bay, that would go a long way towards us ensuring we have a well-capitalized fund that we can use to lend to small businesses.”
Project Bread Works to Make Hunger a Thing of the Past
According to a report released by the The Greater Boston Food Bank in May, 1.9M adults in Massachusetts reported experiencing food insecurity in 2023. Given the rising numbers in food insecurity in the state, Project Bread is leading the Make Hunger History Coalition to eradicate food insecurity across Massachusetts. Project Bread is a local nonprofit which partners with community organizations to remove barriers to accessing food such as lack of transportation, language inaccessibility, mobility challenges, and stigma. The unprecedented initiative has already garnered major support with 200 standalone organizations signing on as official supporters and several elected officials signing on as members of the steering committee, comprised of youth and parent advocates, food and agriculture organizations, and people who have experienced hunger. These elected officials include Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Congressman James P. McGovern, and State Representatives Hannah Kane and Andy Vargas.
Project Bread already demonstrating much success in its aim to eradicate food insecurity through their partnership with Mayor Michelle Wu to create the Boston Summer Eats program, which serves free meals to youth 18 and under, and the major support for the initiative at all levels offers some hope for the one in six MA residents relying on federal food assistance. A Project Bread Spokesperson stated that an official roadmap for the Make Hunger History movement will be announced in early 2025.
Learn to Cook at The Public Kitchen
Upham Corner’s Activist Design Studio, DS4SI, is testing out a Public Kitchen in a temporary storefront in Dorchester. The space, branded with the words Public Kitchen in Dorchester’s most commonly spoken languages (Cape Verdean Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Spanish and Vietnamese), is meant to be used similarly to a public library- welcoming community members of all ages and backgrounds to come together and utilize it’s fully functional, fully stocked kitchen/dining space. The Public Kitchen, stocked with food basics, spices and pots and pans, is a collaboration of various organizers, chefs (who lead free cooking demonstrations) and panelists.
The Public Kitchen’s Project Lead, Nohemi Rodriguez , describes the experience as, “collaboration in this neutral space that isn’t someone’s kitchen, or isn’t super heavily facilitated but is really open and we’re all invited to step in as experts in the kitchen [it’s] been really beautiful.” A few examples of how the space has been used is hot sauce-making classes, canning workshops or just someone sharing their homemade guacamole recipe. Sam Tanyos, a Dorchester Resident who cooked in the kitchen recently stated, “I think of libraries where everyone is quietly reading, [or] bars, where you have to spend a lot of money, usually on alcohol and people aren’t necessarily at a bar like welcoming you to join their table.”
While this pop up was originally intended to be short term, it seems to have garnered much popularity, currently experiencing its longest running stint (Opening last July and set to close October 12). Be sure to check out this fun local resource at the link below!
Local Black Owned Businesses to Check Out
FOOD & BEVERAGE
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
SHOPPING
EXPERIENCES
What’s Happening! Local Events & Resources
Transitioning into Fall: August Book Recommendations
This month, in honor of our opening letter’s message and the start of a new season we are sharing books about self reflection and growth. As always, we encourage folks to purchase any of our book recommendations from independent book sellers.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell…
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of-fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell…
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In?The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place…
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with one another. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.
The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness…
There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder:?Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this??We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent--even from ourselves.
For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind:?There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice--the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world's expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living…
Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret.
"All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season."
It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance--and the subsequent cover-up--will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt…
Have a book recommendation to share with the GenUnity community? Let us know here!
Local Job Listings
Know of other job openings? Share them with us so we can help spread the word! Let us know here!
Local Volunteer Opportunities
Spring ’25 Health Equity and Housing Justice Fellowships Applications Launch September 9!
We’re excited to share that our Spring ’24 Health Equity and Housing Justice Fellowships Applications on September 9th! Be sure to check out our Linkedin, Instagram or Website for access to the application or nomination forms. For more information about our programs and how we support our members, check out the links below.
Listen to Heidi HyunJin Lee (Health Equity ’23) on GBH’s Wake Up Well
“Heidi HyunJin Lee is an artist, teacher, Brazilian jiu jitsu fanatic, and mental health advocate. She joined GBH’s?Morning Edition?to talk about the connection between substance abuse and mental health and her own journey. It started with a personal experience.”
Governor Healey Signs Legislation to Expand Maternal Health Options in MA
**Pictured on the right is Maternal and Public Health Advocate, Lyv N. (Health Equity ’22), at Governor Healey’s bill signing in the MA State House.
Last week, Governor Maura Healey signed?An Act promoting access to midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth options. This legislation will expand coverage for midwifery, birth centers, doulas and screening and treatment for postpartum depression, among several other initiatives to save lives.???
Justice Williams (Health Equity ’24) Hosts Beyond Masculinity Workshops
Save the Date: End of Year Celebration
Save the date for GenUnity's second annual End of Year Celebration! Join us on December 5 from 6-9 PM for a delicious dinner, community gathering, and our Changemaker Awards. Registration opens in September, but mark your calendars now!
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6 个月I want to volunteer, I want asylum, I suffer from domestic violence