The AmeriCorps program that our incredible fellows are apart of, the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship, featured Enroot’s AmeriCorps members, Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie in this month’s newsletter! We are so blessed to have Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie on our team, supporting immigrant students, and we are so thrilled to recognize the amazing work they do!

Massachusetts Promise Fellowship | Fall Newsletter 2020

MPF Fall Newsletter

Hello From Your New Newsletter Coordinator!

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Hello everyone and welcome to the 2020 Fall Edition of MPF's Newsletter! Ivy, who serves at Freedom House, is honored to be serving as a Senior Fellow in the role of Fellow Alumni Liaison and Newsletter Coordinator. The purpose of the newsletter will be to highlight the great work current Fellows, Alumni, and overall MPF network are engaging in, provide updates on things happening within the program, and share opportunities for you to be a part of! We look forward to sharing the impact of the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship with you in each newsletter issue.

First Year Fellow Team Supporting Youth at Enroot

Class 22 first-year Fellows Ayla Wallace, Cassidy Alford, and Regina Carey are serving together at Enroot in Cambridge, providing immigrant youth with post-secondary support, mentoring, and leadership development workshops that facilitate English language acquisition and bolster overall success.

Each Fellow’s role varies but the mission of the organization is at the core of their service. Ayla’s revolves around student recruitment and curriculum development for the Explore student cohort as she serves as a mentor for immigrant youth at Somerville High School. Cassidy leads the after-school student Leadership cohort for the Somerville Leadership program. Regina’s role involves planning curriculum for both the Explore and Emerge cohort of students at the Cambridge site.

They each attribute Enroot’s values as their reason for choosing to serve at this host site. Ayla mentions while in high school, she did a lot of volunteer work in the immigration sector and enjoyed working in the ESL classrooms, however that was predominantly working with adults. She loves how Enroot combines her two passions of education and immigration. Similarly, Regina notes during her interview process, the team’s commitment to the mission was clear, this combined with her strong beliefs in the core values of Enroot, were the reasons she chose to serve at Enroot.

“I serve with three other really amazing Fellows, including one Senior Fellow who has been a really great source of support. I really love my site. The energy, the dedication, and the mission”

-Ayla Wallace

Enroot’s approach of putting students at the center of every decision and move they make is one of Cassidy’s reasons for applying. During her first month, she’s seen the dedication the team puts towards constant improvement. The organization’s mission and work also fit perfectly into her Venn diagram of education, youth development, policy, and their impact on human lives - causes she’s very passionate about.

Despite the many challenges of serving virtually, these three Fellows remain committed to their service and students. They strive to ensure their students feel supported throughout the school year both academically and personally. Their first two months have been an adjustment period, with a goal to contribute meaningfully to Enroot’s work in post-secondary planning.

“I hope to provide students with a sense of stability and comfort”

-Regina Carey

MPF is intentional about building and sustaining community and this is evident in the collaborative work Ayla, Cassidy, and Regina are doing during their service year at Enroot. Best wishes to the three of them and we look forward to seeing what they will accomplish during their service year!

“When I came across MPF and saw that Enroot was a host site, I knew I had to apply!”

-Cassidy Alford

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MPF Alumni Racial Justice Action Group

When MPF Fellows graduate from the program, they carry with them the lessons and experiences from their service year into their next chapter. In this edition, we’d like to highlight three inspiring alumnae who have collaboratively created a space for Fellow alumni to be socially conscious and intentional in their actions towards racial justice. The MPF Alumni Racial Justice Action Group launched by Abbie Weaber, Aminata Kaba, and Jenny Woodford is committed to collective action and mobilization by addressing the simultaneous and interconnected racist systems in our communities through education on various racial justice initiatives and amplifying them within the space.

Aminata Kaba (Class 15 & 16) currently acts as an Impact Manager with City Year Boston. Her experiences as a Fellow serving at Girls Inc. of Lynn and Brooke Charter School encouraged her to speak truth to power by allowing her the space to facilitate and lead a variety of conversations with youth and Fellows.

When Abbie made the call to action to other alumni to be a part of the Alumni Racial Justice Action Group, Aminata answered intending to support the convening of like-minded, well-intentioned MPF alumni interested in taking collective action in achieving racial justice.

The existence of such groups is not only important to alumni but to current Fellows and the youth they’re serving. As Aminta explains, “live the lives you want to encourage your youth to lead: do the readings, watch the interviews, have the tough conversations, challenge and question everything. Make space for people under the heel of oppression, really commit to active listening, and then, lend them your time. Do something every single day to contradict implicit and explicit racist and discriminatory practices, policies, ways of thinking, and the rest will come.”

Aminata hopes that the group and its members continue to grapple with the hard truths of this country’s founding, legacy, and present-day in order to make shifts in everyday life that dismantle the oppressive systems that be. “The hope is they’ll inspire and embolden co-conspirators in their networks to grow collective consciousness and awareness around racial injustice in our communities.”

“We believe there is power in numbers and that was the basis for the action group” -Aminata Kaba

Jenny Woodford (Class of 15 & 16) is a proud alum who served at the Stoughton Youth Commission and Prospect Hill Academy. Jenny currently lives in Lynn, MA, and has been getting involved in local orgs in her community. She’s currently the Marketing and Communications Manager for The Global Experience Office at Northeastern University - a proud dog mom to a rescue pup named Dewey.

Jenny works alongside Aminata to help the group in setting ground rules, hold each other accountable, and set up a culture of shared facilitation. She mentions that the goal of the group has always been to use their numbers as power to enforce effective change while upholding the mission of the group which is to end systems of oppression, dismantle white supremacy and work in solidarity with the black liberation movement. Jenny remarks that “it’s through building an intentional restorative community that we will work to model what we wish to see in a liberated world and center the most impacted voices.”

"I’d encourage current Fellows to think about the following: what can we learn from young people leading these movements and conversations? How can we listen more to the youth we work with about their lived experiences?"

-Jenny Woodford

Jenny hopes that within the MPF community, this group can bring people together with shared values to strengthen the bonds of the whole unit and use that in the fight for racial justice. By enacting this strategy, MPF alumni can continue the learning they started during their time in AmeriCorps, with the intent of being more connected locally to effect change across all aspects of racial justice within their neighborhoods and communities.

Abbie Weaber (Class of 16 & 17) is currently employed at the Educational Opportunity Center at North Shore Community College where she works with adults to access and afford college. Serving as a Fellow at Girls Inc. of Lynn she ran a college access program for high school girls. This experience directly led to her current career in college access within the higher education setting.

From the social justice trainings, to the meaningful conversations with her youth, Abbie accredits her two years of service as having a great impact on the formation of this group. “The idea for an alumni action group came about over the summer after I noticed a lot of MPF alums were engaging in anti-racist action individually”.

Witnessing the other alumni participating in these conversations motivated Abbie to identify ways to make meaningful change within local communities and beyond, while collectively joining together as the MPF community. Knowing that many MPF alumni had been through a similar set of training and community experience greatly influenced the decision to start the action group.

“It was possible to build something that would allow us to take collective action around racial justice”

-Abbie Weaber

The Alumni Racial Justice Action Group demonstrates how MPF Fellows are intentional about working towards change within their communities and the broader society. We’d love to keep the momentum going and if you’d like to be involved, join the Facebook group and send your email to MPFJusticeAlums@gmail.com to receive updates from the bi-weekly meetings. Thank you to Aminata, Abbie, and Jenny for their dedication and fight for social justice.