Community weavers

I visited my sisters and their families, just five of us, for Christmas. It was a quiet and pleasant afternoon.

Over the last few days I’ve gotten quite tired of hearing Christmas carols on the radio. I enjoy classical music with a Christmas theme, such as Hodie by Ralph Vaughn Williams. But yesterday, in honor of the 201st anniversary of the first performance, my radio station aired a different performance of Silent Night each hour. By the time I turned the radio off I had heard that carol 7 times. I then sang it once more at last night’s Christmas Eve service.

So instead of listening to more Christmas music on the way to my sister’s house I switched to the NPR show The 1A. This episode was a rebroadcast, hosted by Joshua Johnson who is on his way to MSNBC.

The show featured four people described as Weavers, people who are trying to weave together American life, to build community. Each of the four heads a nonprofit organization. The discussion was held at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Dylan Tête is a West Point graduate and served a combat tour in Iraq. Once home he experienced many of the problems returning vets have with traumatic brain injuries. He searched for a solution and found part of it in a group home for veterans.

He developed that into a full solution – the Bastion Community of Resilience. They created 58 homes on a 5.5 acre site in Louisiana. With the veterans he invited civilians to join the community along with professional staff. The campus is designed so that normal daily activities, such as getting the mail, bring a person in contact with neighbors and a chance to be asked: How are you doing today? This is intentional neighboring. This one has worked so well that Tête is looking for sites for more Bastion Communities.

Alejandro Gibes de Gac is the son of immigrants. As he learned the regular school curriculum he also learned how much influence his parents had on his education. After college he began teaching first grade in northern Philadelphia. This is a poor section of town and the school system treated low-income parents as a liability rather than as partners in a child’s education.

He founded the Springboard Collaborative. His reasoning was that he had the child for about a quarter of the child’s waking day. The people with the most influence over the other ¾ was the parents. He recognized that many parents were reluctant to help their children learn to read because they were illiterate. So the Collaborative trains parents on how to support and teach a reading child and trains teachers to be more engaged with families. They are now at 55 sites across the country.

Gibes de Gac was asked how does he deal with the negative perceptions of people announcing they’re here to help. He says he turns it around. The teachers go to the parents and say I need your help.

Sarah Hemminger founded Thread, an organization that works with underperforming high school students in Baltimore. The group harnesses the power of relationships to create a social fabric to support students. The volunteers, who are called Thread Family Members do whatever it takes. It could be as simple as packing a lunch and picking up the student to make sure they get to class. It also involves linking the student to other resources. It could also be a lot more. Of the students who have been a part of Thread for six years, 85% have graduated high school and 83% have completed a 2 or 4 year college program.

Asiaha Butler lived in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. She saw a little girl playing in the dirt in a vacant lot across the street from her home. She contrasted that with the resources children had in richer neighborhoods. Butler got to the point where she either needed to leave or do something. She started volunteering in as many neighborhood groups she could. That got her connected to other like-minded people. And that grew into the Resident Association of Greater Englewood or RAGE. They now have enough influence that City Hall listens to them. One thing that came out of that was a way for residents to adopt nearby vacant lots and do something productive.

These stories of building community were a great addition to a Christmas morning drive.