What if we shifted our focus from the ways people are different, and looked at the ways that we’re similar? It’s easy to get along with people who share our values. We naturally create “ingroups” with people who share similar goals, political views or taste in music. Our ingroup becomes “Us,” and anyone outside our group becomes “Them.” Is it possible to break down the barriers between Us and Them? The Common Ingroup Identity Model says it is. Specifically, that if we can find a point of similarity with someone, we’ll show less negative bias towards them. We put two real people on camera to test this theory.
This was produced in partnership with the Greater Good Science Center and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust. Learn more about how you can bridge differences in your life here.
If you’re ever in need of a smile, you might want to head to Anaheim, California. While the 50-square mile city is home to Disneyland and the Los Angeles Angels baseball team, it’s also known by the motto: The City of Kindness. The idea all started with crayons and some paper. Natasha Jaievsky, who tragically died in a car accident in 2002 at age 6, loved drawing colorful pictures of rainbows. Along each rainbow’s curve, she also wrote messages of kindness. Her father, Edward Jaievsky, found her drawings while searching for ways to preserve her memory. So he hung up her kindness-filled art around the city. It wasn’t long before the local community noticed the message’s power. City Councilman Tom Tait saw Natasha’s pictures and was inspired to run for mayor, using kindness as a platform that could potentially transform the city. He won. https://www.instagram.com/p/BbcmQZEBR0P/ In 2011, one of his first in-office campaigns was the Hi Neighbor initiative, a community-based program that encourages residents to get to know the people living on their street. “People are just happier when they live in a neighborhood and they care for their neighbors, and they know their neighbors care for them,” Tait said. While Tait knows that there are important municipal and civic reasons to be kind — in fact, New York University sociologists found that tight-knit neighborhoods often fare better in response to emergency and disaster preparedness — he’s also grateful for other kindness campaigns that were sparked by Hi Neighbor. Among the most successful: The Year of Kindness campaign, launched in 2013 after Tait met with the superintendent of the city’s elementary school district. “We decided to ask the kids to create a million acts of kindness. A million! They did it, and it was fantastic,” Tait said in an interview with City of Kindness. Small gestures, like giving a sad friend a hug or holding a door open counted, as well as larger acts, like planting hundreds of trees or visiting senior living centers. After tallying these, each school had contributed 40,000 to 50,000 gestures each. “I think it changed the DNA of the schools,” Tait said. Two years later, a million acts were completed. To celebrate their success, the Dalai Lama traveled from India to visit for his 80th birthday. The city and school district noted that suspensions were cut in half, incidents of bullying were down and crime rates also lowered. “It’s not just a feel-good thing,” Tait told The Orange County Register. “There are serious civic reasons behind this.” As California faced its worst wildfires this past year, Anaheim sees kindness as the first step to resiliency. Kindness is used to build a stronger community, and in turn, a community that’s better equipped to handle challenges, like earthquakes, fires and crime. And although Tait is no longer Anaheim’s mayor, his legacy continues. His vision sparked the City of Kindness, a coalition of organizations working together to spread kindness while giving individuals and communities the resources they need to spread kindness and affect change. The sentiments in Anaheim have spread across the country. At the 2016 United States Conference of Mayors, leaders used Anaheim as a model and urged the country to complete a billion acts of kindness. Tait’s example has also proved useful to others looking to strengthen their communities. “Working alongside Mayor Tait has shown me that people in powerful positions, CEOs of companies and mayors of cities of any size, people with high-level responsibilities and stresses, can be very down to earth, grounded, thoughtful, and kind individuals,” Loretta Day, Council Services Coordinator with the City of Anaheim told City of Kindness. While public servants like Tait believe in the ripple effect of kindness, broadening one’s personal perspective can also have a far-reaching impact. “Kindness is contagious,” Tait told Spectrum News 1.“If you change culture where everyone is a little kinder, literally everything gets better.” More: These Parents Fought for a Better Education for Their Kids — and Won
It’s known as the “City in a Forest,” thanks to 100-year-old oaks, maples and magnolias that create a tree canopy covering nearly half the city. But what may come as a surprise is that many of Atlanta’s residents don’t have easy access to a public park. One-third of Atlanta’s population lives more than a 10-minute walk from a green space, and the city ranks 42nd for park access based on an evaluation of America’s 100 largest cities by the Trust For Public Land. Meanwhile, the city’s largest landowner keeps its doors closed after hours, on weekends and during the summer. Why? Because it’s Atlanta’s public school system. Atlanta’s embarking on a journey to open up its schoolyard gates. It’s the latest city in the United States to participate in this growingmovement to renovate schoolyards and create public parks. In support of the initiative, the city of Atlanta, Atlanta Public Schools and organizations like Park Pride, Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute are working together to open up schoolyards and increase green space for the city. “We like to think that parks are the heart of communities, but those neighborhood schools are similarly that center of the community,” Michael Halicki, the executive director of Park Pride, an Atlanta nonprofit that works with communities to improve parks, told NationSwell. “It really has been an example of how bringing different partners together we can do things that, in isolation, would never be possible.” The partnership is launching a pilot program where three schools will renovate their schoolyards and open them up to the public. Over the next three years, a total of 10 schools will open up a community green space. The schools were chosen based on a variety of factors. But the main consideration was to assess which schools were within a 10-minute walk of residents who were farther than a 10-minute walk from a park. Based on that, about 20 schools were identified that fit this criterion, and 10 immediately responded with interest. From those, three were picked for the pilot, the names of which will be announced later this month. “Our main responsibility is making sure all of the schools are high quality, but we see ourselves as a key player in the city ecosystem,” Rachel Sprecher, executive director of partnerships and development at Atlanta Public Schools, told NationSwell. If every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park. Research has shown that access to parks improves both physical and mental health. Researchers at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health found that spending two hours each week outdoors is tied to better health outcomes. Another study led by William Sullivan found that exposure to green space is associated with reducing aggressive behavior. “Parks are places to build community and these schoolyards could also be places where people come together,” Halicki said. Park Pride and the Trust for Public Land calculated that if every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park. With the first three pilot schools, 2,000 more Atlantans would have access to green space. Each school will receive between $100,000 and $150,000 in schoolyard upgrades. The Trust for Public Land and Park Pride will bring in landscape architects to help design the space. Upgrades may entail everything from a new playground to accessibility paths to a hammock grove or pavilions. Conversations are being held with the schools and community to pinpoint the needs and desires for each space. They will also work together to figure out details like maintenance and security, Sprecher said. This fall, those three schools and neighborhoods will engage in conversation. Final plans will be decided, and construction will take place throughout summer 2020. The following fall, the new schoolyards will open — and stay open. “We can serve both purposes of helping kids learn while they’re in school but then helping strengthen communities when kids are no longer in school. And that’s really the synergy of this space,” George Dusenbury, the Georgia state director at the Trust for Public Land, told NationSwell. Renovating schoolyards will save money, Halicki said. The program allows the city to avoid purchasing new land for parks. Instead, Atlanta can put those funds toward renovations or other projects independent of the schoolyard initiative. “In this day and age, where there’s not enough money to do all the things we want to do in our cities,” Halicki said, “this is a way that we’re getting more out of the resources we’ve got.” All agreed that the goal of the pilot is to understand how to make this adaptable for other schools inside and outside of metro Atlanta. “As with other initiatives that have started off as a pilot, we definitely look to scale and even provide support with our resources,” Sprecher said. Atlanta Public Schools was built to serve between 100,000 and 150,000 students. But the district currently has about 50,000 students enrolled. That means out of its 150 properties, 39 facilities are closed and 19 are vacant land sites. So while the school embarks on an 18-month master planning facilities project, Sprecher said the school system might consider transitioning and opening some of those lots for green space. “We understand the assets we have,” she said. “And we want to be really thoughtful about what we do with the vacant property.” So as the city grows and changes, schoolyards serving as public parks may become a common sight. With it, more Atlantans will have access to that beautiful canopy the city is so well known for. “We have complex, intractable problems in cities all across the U.S.,” said Halicki. “The way that we come up with innovative solutions is not by working in our silo but by really working across our silos.” More:A Small Nonprofit Has a Genius Idea for How to Turn Parking Lots Into Paradise
At any dinner party, you’re bound to experience a wide range of sights, smells and small talk. That’s especially true at a Refugees Welcome dinner, a campaign that brings together refugees and non-refugees to break bread and, maybe more importantly, to foster a deeper sense of community and connection. Attend one of these dinners, and you’ll be rewarded with an array of aromatic scents wafting from plates of such ethnic dishes as kabsa, baklava or chicken shawarma. You’ll hear stories of abandoning home countries and embarking on new challenges. Frequently, you’ll also witness new friendships blossom. And that’s exactly the point, said Refugees Welcome co-founder Gissou Nia of the isolation immigrants face when they arrive at an unfamiliar place. “We decided to do something that really spoke to those issues through the lens of culture and using food as a uniter,” Nia told NationSwell. The Welcome Refugees dinner series started in 2017 as a temporary project spearheaded by Purpose, a social impact branding agency in New York, with support from UNICEF. Two years later, the campaign is still going strong: Each month, there are dinners held in places as diverse as Boston and Berlin, as well as other locations throughout the world. Organizations and businesses can offer to host dinner, and Refugees Welcome has a list of refugee-owned restaurants and catering companies for hosts to reference. The host pays for the caterer and then connects with refugees through nonprofits and local resettlement agencies. Nia said they function as tangible ways for people to help “that go beyond a social share.” The campaign has hosted over 150 dinners. There are 68.5 million forcibly displaced people around the world, 25.4 million of whom are refugees. In 2017, 24,559 refugees resettled in the United States. Nia described how finding friends is difficult in a new country. As they settle into their new cities and towns, refugees and migrants tend to interact with a small circle of people — those from their home country, the social workers assigned to their case and ESL classmates. Those connections are useful, but meeting other kinds of people — for example, those with similar professional backgrounds — can mean the difference between merely surviving and thriving. “Maybe these are people who were fashion designers back in Iraq or ran restaurants in Syria,” Nia said. “They are interested in connecting with people from their industries.” People gather around dinner tables telling stories and sharing experiences. Refugees Welcome technically bills itself as a social gathering, but the events can progress into much more. Refugees have found employment opportunities, business partners, investors and, critically, a community. For example, a Yemen refugee won a scholarship through a New York dinner connection and two other guests started a pop-up restaurant. Niurka Melendez and her family fled their native Venezuela in 2015, but two years later, she said, she still felt like a newcomer. So she signed up to attend a Refugees Welcome dinner in New York City at Civic Hall in 2017. She’s since shared more than 20 meals with fellow refugees, who represent nearly all corners of the globe, from South America to Syria. Melendez has fond memories of that first dinner. She recalls exiting the elevator and being amazed by the beautiful white office building. “The people and the atmosphere were so welcoming,” she told NationSwell. The events have been invaluable community builders for her and her family. Her grade-school-age son, Samuel, has met friends through the dinners. Melendez’s husband, Hector Arguinaones, has learned new dishes to cook at home. Arguinaones described how Venezuelans have a meat-heavy diet and these dinners have helped his family incorporate new vegetarian recipes in their daily life. And Melendez has made connections that have strengthened the nonprofit she and Arguinaones founded, called Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, which connects Venezuelan refugees to resources in New York. Through her work, her family has brought other asylum seekers to dinners. “It is the perfect place, the perfect moment, to see new people [connect with] local people who are willing to have conversations and share with the newcomers,” Arguinaones said. Like their son, both Melendez and Arguinaones are still in contact with the people they’ve met through years of attending Refugee Welcome dinners. “This city is very big, and it’s so special when you meet familiar faces,” Arguinaones said. For co-founder Nia, her favorite moments don’t come from the dinners themselves, but rather when she learns a previous dinner guest has been legally granted asylum. “For the people who attend these dinners — yes, it’s a fun social moment, but they’re waiting on a really critical life decision,” she said. Refugees Welcome has created a toolkit for anyone looking to host a dinner, complete with a checklist, ice-breaker prompts, catering advice and FAQs. In the end, a successful dinner isn’t just a one-off event, but rather a catalyst for forging an ongoing, supportive network.
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Interested in hosting a dinner? Sign up for a toolkit here.The Office of Refugee Resettlement offers a great set of resources that can connect you with refugees in your area.
It was the summer after her high school graduation, and Amy Acton was working at a lakeside marina in her hometown of Ottawa County, Michigan. As she was moving a sailboat on a trailer, the mast hit a powerline. She suffered severe burns across her back. One person died. It was an injury that was both physically scarring and emotionally devastating. And it led her to pursue a career as a nurse specializing in burn recovery. Later, she’d become the burn-nurse manager at the very same center she had been admitted to all those years before. Acton knows how isolating it can be as a burn survivor — both in the immediate aftermath of an accident and for years afterward. Many survivors never meet anyone else who has experienced something similar. Acton was a patient at the burn center for more than two months. “You beg to get out of there, and then you get out and it’s like all of a sudden people are staring at you,” she told NationSwell. Beyond her physical recovery, she also had to make the transition back into society. “Whether it’s a very visible burn or one that you can hide with your clothes, it tends to have an impact on social interactions.” As a nurse, she took that experience and shared it with her patients and their families. Now, she brings that same perspective to thousands of burn patients around the world at the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, where she’s served as the executive director since 1998. The Phoenix Society works at every level of the burn community. The organization offers resources for survivors, both immediately and long term, through peer support, programming for children and teens, scholarships for college students, online learning and community forums. They also hold an annual conference, which brings together nearly 1,000 people from around the world, and they advocate for burn prevention through legislative initiatives and safety code adoptions. Besides working with survivors and their families, the Phoenix Society also provides training and support for professionals in the medical and fire-service fields through in-person and online community networks. Each year, 486,000 people receive medical treatment for burns in the United States, with 40,000 of them severe enough to require hospitalization. There are hundreds of reasons why someone might end up in a burn unit — a grease fire, an electrical fire, an accidental combustion. Each person’s story is unique, and their paths to recovery are, too. But for many of these victims, the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors will be on the journey with them. “Burn survivors and their families are at the core of everything we do,” said Acton. Each year, The Phoenix Society holds an annual conference for burn survivors, family members, medical practitioners and fire-service workers. The Phoenix Society started in the 1970s out of Alan Breslau’s house in Levittown, Pennsylvania. After suffering major burns in a commercial airliner crash in 1963, Breslau spent five years in the hospital where he underwent 52 surgeries. As he was healing from his injuries, he met a fellow survivor in a burn unit and realized the important role that peer support plays in recovery. In 1977, the society was fully incorporated and has since expanded well beyond Levittown and now connects survivors from around the world. Along with the American Burn Association, the Phoenix Society is the largest support group for burn survivors. One of those survivors is Christy Montoya. In March 2016, Montoya and her family took a road trip to visit friends in the mountains of Virginia. In the middle of the night, the families woke up to a fire, which quickly engulfed the house in flames. While Montoya and her family made it out alive, the two sons of her friends weren’t as lucky. After being medically airlifted to a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Montoya woke up with major burns that covered 20 percent of her body. But she also woke up to a fellow burn survivor. Survivors Offering Assistance in Recovery, an initiative of the Phoenix Society, had dispatched a trained volunteer to offer support, guidance and, perhaps most crucially, the kind of compassion that only someone who has been there can provide. Currently, SOAR is stationed in 77 burn units across the U.S. The SOAR volunteer showed Montoya how to prepare for the bigger picture of her long-term recovery and how a community of fellow burn survivors could help her along the way. “That’s been the big resource and push for me, specifically, through this journey,” Montoya said of her peer supporter. “Their burns are obvious themselves, and as a person sitting with a fresh burn, you’re able to see somebody who’s clearly gone through something difficult and made it out on the other end of it,” she told NationSwell. The Phoenix Society works with survivors on social skills, too, like how to respond to probing questions and what to do when someone can’t stop staring. Their multi-day program for youth survivors, called Phoenix UBelong, similarly equips kids, teens and young adults with the tools they need for navigating uncomfortable social situations. “In your regular community, there’s not typically a lot of other people like you,” said Montoya, who has become an avid advocate for fire safety. For her part, she’s learned how to handle the curiosity of strangers in the grocery store or the questions she gets from members at her church. At the World Burn Congress, considered the world’s largest gathering of the burn community, there’s no staring, and any questions come from a genuine place. The event is a fresh reminder for burn survivors that so many others have shared life experiences. That’s what keeps Sandra Cramolini coming back year after year. So far she’s attended 15 congresses. “There are some survivors who have lived with their burn injury for years, sometimes 40 years, and have never talked about it,” Cramolini, a retired nursing director of the regional burn program in Fresno, California, told NationSwell. “Many of them need to feel like they’re in a safe and supportive environment.” Cramolini stressed that it’s a supportive environment not only for the survivor but for every person who interacts with a burn patient. That’s why she encourages nurses and medical practitioners to attend — it gives them hope to see patients turn into advocates and success stories. Cramolini added that it’s also an opportunity for medical professionals to approach their work with a renewed sense of purpose. “You walk away like, ‘Wow, this has energized me one more year,’” said Cramolini, who continues to work with survivors as an instructor for SOAR. “Burn nursing is physically and emotionally challenging,” she added. “And when you attend the World Burn Congress, you see how well the patients can do with the right resources.” More: Helping Traumatized Kids
Topeka K. Sam sits on a plush purple sofa in the living room of an immaculate row house in the Bronx, ordaining all of the ladies in the room. Sam, a founder of Hope House, a residence for previously incarcerated women, points to her cofounder, Vanee Sykes. “She’s a Lady of Hope,” Sam says, then swivels and points at another woman who has just entered the room. “That’s another Lady of Hope.” And, apparently, so too is this reporter. “The Ladies of Hope is you, and it’s all of us,” she adds. “If you are a resource to women who are coming here, then you are a Lady of Hope, you know? It’s about all women empowering other women and providing them hope and opportunity.” Both Sam and Sykes know something about needing hope to thrive, having been formerly incarcerated themselves. Their experience with the difficulties most women face when trying to reintegrate into society led them to found Hope House, which officially opened its doors in October 2017. The idea of Hope House, Sam says, is that women coming out of prison have the deck stacked against them. “You gotta start with basic needs,” Sam says. “I can’t advocate for myself or feel that I’m powerful enough to go get a job if I don’t have somewhere to live and I don’t have food in my stomach.” In addition to food and shelter, Hope House provides another crucial ingredient: community. The house currently accommodates five women, all of whom sleep on the upstairs level. Signs featuring positive aphorisms, like “Love Life,” hang on the walls, and the beds — which the women are required to make every morning — are decorated with stylish coverlets. Downstairs is the kitchen and cozy living room, all walls painted a soothing shade of gray. It’s here that the women gather, cook, talk about their day, and allow themselves to grieve and to heal. One of the shared bedrooms at Hope House. So many women who land in prison are victims of sexual abuse, Sykes says, and Hope House is a place where women can safely process their pain in order to move forward. “Any given night here, we’re hugging and we’re crying, [because] it’s a safe space,” Sykes adds, tearing up as she speaks. “And it’s not just a safe space where we can live, but it’s a safe space mentally. You know, where it’s OK for me to say that this has happened, and that there’s other women here who are not going to judge, but who are just going to say, ‘This is what worked for me’ or ‘This is how I got through this.’ And that’s what I love about being here.” Sam and Sykes met in 2013 while at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, a low-security prison about 70 miles north of New York City, and the inspiration for the fictional “Litchfield” prison featured in the hit Netflix show “Orange Is the New Black.” Both did time for nonviolent offenses — Sykes for embezzling money, Sam for drug trafficking — and when they got out, they witnessed the insurmountable barriers that women with a rap sheet can face, the greatest of which is, arguably, finding a landlord who will rent to them. “It was in my heart to do a house [like Hope House] while I was in prison,” Sykes says. But they were also lucky and had supportive families to come home to. Many women, especially poor women, are not so blessed. “When I got home, I started going around, organizing with other women around women’s issues and incarceration,” Sam says. “And just seeing that it was the same issues happening: Women need housing, women need resources, women need all these things.” She threw herself into community activism and founded Ladies of Hope Ministries, an organization dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated women and girls re-enter society and out of which Hope House grew. Along the way, Sam earned several grants and fellowships, including at Columbia University, where she was named a Beyond the Bars fellow in 2015 and a Justice-in-Education Initiative scholar in 2016. She also received funding and support from Unlocked Futures, a program backed in part by singer John Legend. Sam modeled Hope House in part off of a California-based nonprofit called A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, which helps women with housing and related services when they leave prison. The founder of that organization, Susan Burton, became instrumental in offering guidance and seed money to help Sam get Hope House off the ground. “Weneed to make investments to get people started in the struggle to reduce recidivism, strengthen our communities, and repair the harm done by mass incarceration,” says Burton, who wrote a memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton, about her own journey from prison to community activist. “And that’s what Hope House stands for.” Not that Sam and Sykes didn’t hit some road bumps along the way. They scoured the city for months to find a place to set up shop before they found the cute, fully remodeled row house in the South Central Bronx neighborhood of Castle Hill, a stone’s throw from bucolic Pugsley Creek Park. The landlord loved the idea of the house, but neighbors kicked up a fuss. So Sam and Sykes took to social media and started a campaign they called Stand With Hope House. They did media interviews and went to community board meetings. Eventually their neighbors relented. A group of women shares a meal in the Hope House dining room. “We stood up for ourselves and said that we’re not going anywhere,” Sykes says. “We have a right to live here, just [like] anyone else.” Sam and Sykes used similar social media savvy when decorating the house, crowd-funding the project via funds donated from strangers around the world. “We put up the registry on social media, and people donated,” Sam says. “It was absolutely phenomenal.” They now have the funding to open another Hope House in New Jersey and after, that, in Brooklyn. Their hope is that others will step in to help them scale the project, possibly turning Hope House into a franchise. “Ultimately our goal is to have a Hope House in every single state in our country and abroad,” says Sam. In 2017, Sam won a Soros Justice Fellowship to work on a project around probation and parole accountability. “It came from my experience on probation and parole, [witnessing] the arbitrariness and counterproductiveness that was happening,” she says. “And I knew if this was happening to me, it had to be happening to many other people. I found out that 4.7 million people are on operational parole in this country.” The majority of people sitting in prisons are there because of technical violations, Sam says. They need support, to be given access to resources and to opportunity — not to be dumped in a federal halfway house and then shackled with an ankle bracelet for six months, adds Sykes, speaking from personal experience. Burton’s own success speaks to this: Since 1998, she has helped over 1,000 women and children with her re-entry homes, and in 2017, she had a 100% success rate in keeping her residents from being reincarcerated. The stakes are even higher for people of color: Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to be incarcerated in prison or jail, and Hispanic women are 69 percent more likely to be institutionalized. In addition, black children are almost nine times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison; and Hispanic children are four times more likely to have a parent behind bars. The impact on their families can last generations. Sykes had three children when she was incarcerated — her oldest then a senior at Howard University, she says with pride — but her spouse died before she was released. And Sykes considers herself lucky: She comes from a stable upper-middle-class family, and so she saw her children, who were then living with her parents, quite frequently. Many women are not so lucky. “The hardest part of incarceration is not being with your children,” she says. Jessie Jones (not her real name) has been living at the Hope House since last December. Jones, 64, had been out of prison for a decade — after having spent 23 years at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for a drug-fueled robbery gone awry — but her housing situation had become untenable. Her last apartment was cheap, she says, because it was illegal and basically falling apart. The landlord started making passes at her, which she allowed once before trying, and failing, to make him stop. Desperate to avoid moving into a shelter, Jones stumbled upon Hope House. Like all residents, Jones had to apply to live in the house, and she pays 30% of her wages as a cook for a nonprofit as rent. (Residents are required to either have a job or be in school when they apply. Students are exempt from paying rent.) “It’s a beautiful house, and Vanee and Topeka are the best people, the vision of healing,” Jones says. She still has her bad days, but living at Hope House with people who genuinely love and care about her is helping build her confidence back up. “Hope House is exactly what it is,” she says. “It gives you hope.”
Lindsey Brewer is a mother — and she refuses to stay silent. “If I can help one family grieve a little better, that would mean everything to me,” Brewer, a paramedic from Janesville, Wisconsin, said. Her son Grayson was stillborn at 21 weeks, and a photographer was there to capture the family’s final moments with their son. Brewer says the photos and the online community she found through social media helped her stay strong as she processed her grief. Brewer is one powerful voice in a growing movement of women who understand that sharing their stories is the first step toward dismantling the stigma around the trauma of pregnancy loss. Watch the video above and read our full article to learn more about how families are helping each other heal. Homepage photo by Michael Cullen Photography.
Rikers Island, the infamous and isolated jail complex located off the coastline of New York City, is officially being shut down. And in its place is the possibility of new community jails that are designed, specifically, for better treatment of inmates. Improving the city’s jails, and especially Rikers — which critics have long charged is inhumane, unsafe and dysfunctional — has been a top-line agenda for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Since taking office, his administration has focused on curbing the jail population; reducing the use of solitary confinement; and easing the transition back to society for the formerly incarcerated. In conjunction with closing Riker’s 10 jails, an independent commission last year recommended the city open smaller facilities — called “justice hubs” — that would be located next to local courts and integrated into existing neighborhoods. The vision for this modern system of jails includes built-in amenities that would be shared with local residents (think exercise facilities, community gardens and art studios). “Our understanding about design and incarceration has evolved significantly since the jails on Rikers Island were built,” says Elizabeth Glazer, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. “Light, sound and the arrangement of space are important in creating a safer, calmer environment for the people residing and working there.” There’s evidence prisoners’ surroundings can affect their outcomes. In upstate New York, for example, camplike facilities that are embedded among pristine lakes and trees, and where inmates sleep in barracks, not cells, have seen markedly low recidivism rates. The idea of using design and architecture to influence behavior is not a new one for New York City. In August of last year, officials partnered with the Center for Court Innovation and the social-impact design firm Zago to overhaul the interior spaces of Manhattan Criminal Court. Changes included installing new, visitor-friendly signage and erecting a defendants’ bill of rights. “Manhattan Criminal Court is a pretty foreboding and intimidating place, especially for those who are there for the first time,” says Emily LaGratta, director of procedural justice initiatives at the Center for Court Innovation. She notes that many courts across the country evoke similar negative feelings. “Courthouses were built years ago, when the justice system was addressing a different scope of problems. That, plus new innovation, has imposed additional needs on these spaces. So a lobby that was built to be grand and open is now accommodating security lines and magnetometers.” Just as the needs of courthouses have changed, so too have the needs of New York’s jails. The city has announced a plan to reduce incarceration numbers to 5,000 in 10 years, and officials are exploring the possibility of eliminating the cash-bail system. But incorporating the proposed justice hubs — and the prisoners within them — into residential neighborhoods might be a hard sell for the city. Still, officials are pushing for jails that could address community needs, similar to a public library’s social outreach programs, that would help reduce the stigma of incarceration while building stronger, healthier communities. To replace Rikers Island, city officials have recommended smaller “justice hubs” that seamlessly integrate into communities while helping to reduce the stigma of incarceration. Initially, the effort seemed purely physical — move inmates to jails that are closer to their lawyers, courthouses and neighborhood resources. But it also got city officials thinking: Can correctional facilities be designed in a way that’s safer for inmates and guards, while also engaging the communities in which they’d be built? “Over the past few decades we have learned, and commonsense informs, that when those who are incarcerated have regular contact with their families and lawyers, it improves both the atmosphere inside, the relationships with officers and staff, and the transition back to neighborhoods,” Glazer says. “This is especially important in jails where most people stay for a short period of time.” The city issued requests for proposals last year on designs for the new jails and in January chose the firm Perkins Eastman, which was awarded $7.5 million and given 10 months to finalize a blueprint. “Buildings are not static things … they work with or against the people that are intended to be within them, and there is no better example than a prison,” says Michael Murphy, co-founder and executive director of MASS Designs in Boston. “Even in the most well intentioned prisons, they are intended to separate or to torture people who are incarcerated and restrict access to freedoms. “There’s almost an intentional lack of design,” he adds. In reimagining what tomorrow’s prisons will look like, firms like Murphy’s are turning to the past, when other historical institutions left their aesthetic imprint. “A great example are public libraries,” says Murphy. “You have the Carnegie libraries largely built with foundation dollars from the Carnegie family, which are these beautiful, opulent temples to books.” Compare that to the “Lindsay boxes” of the 1970s, when New York Mayor John Lindsay had pushed for a library branch in every neighborhood. The results were quickly constructed, one-story buildings made of cinder block. “It’s a stark difference in imagination,” Murphy continues. “We’ve lowered our expectations of what we deserve. That’s what prisons identify.” And what we know about design with the greater good in mind is that it works, says Brad Samuels of SITU, an architectural research and design firm in New York. “These [kinds of designs] are already happening; they’re not speculative,” Samuels says, adding that his firm has worked with low-wage immigrant communities to build housing in Queens, where families are often stuffed into cramped quarters. “We found the best way to build is through community groups and organizations who understand what their needs are.”
In Deer Isle, Maine, more than 60 residents just became business owners, thanks to the formation of the Island Employee Cooperative.
More than a year ago, the employees of Burnt Cove Market, V & S Variety and The Galley learned that the couple who had owned the businesses for 43 years was retiring and selling them. Fearful that the change in ownership would result in loss of jobs and other negative changes, the employees took the only sensible option — they bought the businesses.
This is the largest merger of businesses in the history of cooperatives — collectively, it’s now called the Island Employee Cooperative — and it’s the largest co-op in Maine and the second largest in New England.
The process to establish this groundbreaking co-op wasn’t easy and took more than a year due to all of the legal work and the size of the businesses. Fortunately, the worker/owners had some help from Independent Retailers Shared Services Cooperative and the Cooperative Development Institute , which assisted with the organization of management, governance, legal and financial systems.
In addition, Coastal Enterprises and the Cooperative Fund of New Englandpitched in financially to help get the cooperative off the ground.
The Island Employee Cooperative’s feat was not an easy one, but it’s an important one. Not only did it preserve the jobs of its employee and the businesses vital to the residents of the town, it also serves as an example for other workers and cities. That’s because the events leading to its formation and its business model are easily adoptable and adaptable to other businesses across the country.
While the Island Employee Cooperative has shown that it’s possible, the road to the formation of cooperatives would be far easier if cities would invest in their development. Some cities are beginning to do so, such as New York, which just pledged $1 million to facilitate the start of worker cooperatives. Ohio has also been dappling in co-ops by giving small grants for research and technical assistance.
However, until more cities start participating, it’s up to the employees. Clearly, we should never underestimate the little guy. MORE: These Organizations Are Empowering Female Workers
Urban farm movements seem to be everywhere nowadays. But two farmers have a bigger vision in mind: they want to create a whole local food district.
Meet the Mullens, the husband-and-wife team of Derek and Kamise, who are the masterminds behind Everitt Farms in Lakewood, Colo. (a suburb of Denver). Just over a year ago, they began farming on the 7.5 acres that they own and an additional 18 acres that they lease. The fruits of their labor? A wide variety of produce, Christmas trees, horses, chickens and hay.
The Mullens use traditional intensive growing practices, which involve burying root vegetables within a single trench at different levels, surrounded by leafy greens and vine crops. The process is based on an old 1800s method, which is space saving.
Each weekend, Everitt Farms welcomes more than 100 families that purchase locally-grown vegetables and other products. “We both have really wanted to do something like this for honestly, a good portion of our lives,” Kamise tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “It really wasn’t until we got married about four years ago that we actually started really growing food and trying to farm at all.”
To expand their urban farm even further, the Mullens held a Kickstarter campaign this past January, raising enough funds to add a greenhouse, irrigation system and the starting preparations for an open-air market with a farm stand constructed from the materials of an old barn.
Ultimately, the couple has a larger goal than just feeding their neighbors; they hope that their few acres of farmland will spark a lifestyle change and that others will see the benefits of a community food district complete with a bakery, restaurant, butcher and local products store.
“The people around us still all have at least a quarter acre lot and up to two or three acres,” Kamise tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “There’s a lot of people that grow their own food, there’s a lot of people that process, have jams and jellies, have products they make themselves. We’d really like to incorporate the fact that this was agricultural land and draw the community back into this area and back into farming through trading goods with them.”
She continues, “We’re still in the planning stages for the businesses we’d like to build, but the community is starting to realize when they have extra zucchinis they can come bring it to us and trade it out for tomatoes, jalapenos and things that they couldn’t grow.”
And with the success that the Mullens have had with their own farm, there’s no telling what this power couple can accomplish. MORE: The Rooftop Decoration That Could Cut Your Energy Costs
