Winter 2021 Newsletter

Dear Enroot Community, I hope you have been enjoying celebrating Black History Month and that you’re excited to catch up on some of the inspiring things happening at Enroot. It’s been a uniquely challenging period for our Enroot students and community. Each day brings new hills to climb and fresh reminders of how far we have to go, both to move beyond the COVID-19 crisis and to build an equitable society. As the vaccines give us a chance to see beyond COVID, I’ve been reflecting on the words of award-winning poet Sonya Renee Taylor:

"We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

Even as our community grapples with such persistent struggles, we also have so much to celebrate and be grateful for. Some of the exciting things in this edition of our newsletter include: reflections on celebrating Black History Month, STEM Career exploration activities with Momenta Pharmaceuticals and Fidelity Investments, laughter-filed group mentoring nights, less-fun but important FAFSA workshops, our “My Why Enroot” video series, a warm welcome back to our incredible interns Mariam and Jefferson, and even a call for brave volunteers willing to share their talents in our volunteer talent show. Thanks for continuing to support our students, from near and far, as we march together toward brighter days. I hope you share our sense of optimism about what the future holds and our pride in being part of this very special Enroot family. With gratitude,

Ben Clark Executive Director

Honoring Black History Beyond This Month

As we come to the end of Black History Month, we are left reflecting not only on all that Black people have endured throughout this country’s history, but also on all that our Black communities have contributed to the making of this country. As an organization that is committed to prioritizing racial equity and advocacy, we believe it is important to center the inequities and resilience of Black people not only during Black History Month, but throughout the year and throughout our lives.  The Enroot team honored Black History Month by using our times together as a team to share articles, podcasts, videos, and films centered around Black resilience, Black joy, Black art, Black leadership, and Black history in the making. We explored everything from the New York Times’ 1619 Project on the impact of slavery on our nation to Stacy Abrams' documentary, All In: The Fight for Democracy, on the voter suppression the Black communtiy has had to face. One of our favorites was a compilation of Trevor Noah interviews, “10 Black People Making History”. We also had the privilege of having guest speakers, Kylie Webster-Cazeau and Meggie Noel – the leaders of a student led movement to unearth the inequities Black students face at the historic Boston Latin School – speak to our team about the importance of student voice in racial equity advocacy.

Exciting Partnerships!

A Virtual STEM Panel with Momenta Pharmaceuticals

This month, we had the incredible privilege of partnering with Momenta Pharmaceuticals to present our students with an amazing virtual panel of STEM professionals. Our students heard from six professionals, all of whom are immigrants themselves, on the winding paths that have brought them to where they are now. It was particularly powerful for our students to hear from not only immigrants, but women of color in STEM, so that they could see themselves in these wonderful role models!

Following the panel, students were given the opportunity to participate in breakout sessions with these professionals and our students proceeded to ask incredibly thoughtful and insightful questions of their presenters.  We are so grateful for partnerships that have blossomed like ours with Momenta and we are so excited to see them grow further!

A Virtual Field Trip to Fidelity

In addition to our virtual field trip to Momenta, our students also had the opportunity to take a virtual field trip to Fidelity this month! Two years ago we had an in person field trip to Fidelity, where our students were given the chance to meet Fidelity employees one-on-one and learn more about what led them to their career paths. Of the nearly 50 Fidelity employees who participated that day, one of them was Sameer Ahmed – an immigrant himself. After that Fidelity field trip, Sameer was so inspired by Enroot’s work that today he is one of our wonderful Board members!

Sameer’s engagement with Enroot sewed the seeds for this month’s virtual field trip, a Financial Industry Career Workshop, where students had the opportunity to hear from Fidelity employees of many different backgrounds on how they got into finance and what different career paths exist for students like ours. After hearing from these incredible professionals, our students took part in breakout room sessions to ask their own questions and get to know the field of finance more deeply.

We are so honored to have partners like Fidelity and community members like Sameer who go above and beyond to open up a world of possibilities to our students!

Students at this year’s virtual field trip to Fidelity, getting to know Fidelity staff who are immigrants themselves, like our students.

Virtual Mentoring Going Strong

We are so happy to say that Enroot’s virtual mentoring nights have been going strong! College Success is continuing their Monthly Mentoring Nights with fun activities and virtual games like show and tell, charades, and crafting vision boards. We were also so excited to welcome back former Enroot staff member and good friend, Tamia Burkett, who shared her journey with us and demonstrated the power of storytelling. On another special night, students and mentors were challenged to twin their outfits, and one pair went the extra mile to bring their matching kittens onto the Zoom!

One student commented on how the mentoring night uplifted his spirits: “Really though! This was fun. I feel like I am revived! I was moody before this zoom call 🤦🏾‍♂️, but now I am coolin’” – Lubens

Special Feature: FAFSA Workshop While filling out the FAFSA may seem daunting, it’s definitely better with friends! With help from the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC), we were so happy to be able to host a FAFSA drop-in event for our College Success students. At the event, students and their mentors got together in breakout rooms to work on their forms. Enroot staff was also available during the workshop, ready to answer questions and help the pairs. A special thanks to Raymond Chicoye and Tina Alu from the CEOC who gave an amazing overview presentation of the FAFSA and bounced around between breakout rooms to help clarify confusions.

“My Why Enroot” Video Series

We are so excited to share with you all our My Why Enroot campaign! My Why Enroot is a video series in which students, alumni, staff, volunteers, and board members share what makes them proud to be a part of Enroot. We hope that in hearing from our community about those who are working tirelessly to support immigrant students through the COVID crises, the anti-immigrant sentiment of our country today, and the ups and downs of being a teenager new to this country – you’ll know why immigrant youth appreciate Enroot now more than ever!  Click here to hear from our incredible students, alumni, staff, volunteers, and board members.

Welcoming Back Mariam and Jefferson!

We are welcoming back two incredible interns to our Enroot team – Mariam AlAdsani and Jefferson Xu. Read more about Mariam and Jefferson and why we are so excited to have them on our team!

Things To Look Forward To

Enroot Talent Show Coming This Spring! Our Volunteer Committee is currently in the middle of planning our next spring event, Enroot’s Got Talent. We are currently in the process of signing up participants! If you are a current volunteer and have a talent you want to showcase, reach out to organizers, Ava and Nathalie to sign up. We hope that this night is full of fun! There will be prizes for the top 3 best talents!

Upcoming Unconscious Bias Trainings There are more Unconscious Bias trainings coming up for our current volunteers. We are in the process of designing two trainings on our Unconscious Bias series, which will deepen volunteer’s understanding of a trauma informed approach to supporting students. As we continuously think about the effects of institutional, interpersonal, ideological, and internalized racism in BIPOC/immigrant communities, we seek to provide a backbone and tools on how to approach safe and productive conversations with Enroot students.

Give Back To Our Immigrant Community!

As we come up on almost a full year of the COVID-19 crisis in the U.S., we must acknowledge that our immigrant youth have been enduring housing vulnerability, food insecurity, health inequities, and barriers to education – throughout this year and far before. We ask you to please consider donating to Enroot to help us better support our students with one on one mentoring and social-emotional support through these incredibly hard times. Thank you for your continued support of our students and of immigrant communities everywhere!

DONATE TODAY!