Skills-based volunteers from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts collaborated with East Boston Social Centers to develop frameworks for nonprofit managers to support their team’s mental health in moments of crisis.
As COVID-19 cases continue to climb across the country, many Americans are experiencing a mental health crisis too, especially healthcare and frontline workers. At East Boston Social Centers (the Social Centers), a nonprofit that provides afterschool programming, childcare, nutrition, and activities for the elderly, the staff were not exempt from the mental health toll of the pandemic. Blue Cross Blue Shield of …
In the spirit of service this MLK Day, we had the exciting opportunity to interview Amiko Foster of Youth Finance Institute of America (YFIA), a California-based nonprofit that provides personal finance education programs designed to teach finance life skills to youth in disadvantaged areas.
Skills for Cities Spring 2021 is dedicated to building the capacity of Midwest nonprofits as they continue to respond to COVID-19, racial inequity, and the digital divide.
Last year we worked through the “why” of our work, asking ourselves “so what?” until we hit our north star. We work towards alleviating inequality by building the capacity of social change organizations fighting for equity through skilled volunteerism by partnering with companies, the largest and most sustainable source of pro bono expertise. Our 2020-2022 …
[There is] this narrative of ‘This is not who we are,’ when a lot of us, and I think a lot of folks from marginalized communities – Black, Indigenous folks, etc. – are saying, ‘This is exactly who we are, who we have been.’ I think about it like a twelve step program where you cannot really heal and change if you don’t go through the first step, which is to admit you have a problem, and we just haven’t done that. We as a nation just have not acknowledged that we have a problem here. This is who we are.
There’s been an intense focus on getting back to normal, but what this year and our Pro Bono Perspectives guests have highlighted is that normal is not okay and we don’t want to go back there. That to me is the light that is shining through the cracks: we are coming out of 2020 with a new and clear mandate for social and racial justice and a renewed sense of purpose.
It’s really important for those of us in a position of power – as a funder with nonprofit organizations especially – to be very transparent about it and not allow it to be a barrier for meaningful partnership. We’re not going to have the impact that we want to have if it’s us telling you exactly how we want you to run programs for us; it will be far more fruitful for us to have a conversation about the outcomes we seek to achieve – ideally together – and then to think about resources we have or you have and hopefully align on the impact we can have together.
“This experience helped me realize that things I see as core to my daily job or skills I employ day-to-day are still new, thought-provoking, and helpful for others to recognize the true assets that exist within their organizations.”
As COVID-19 cases surge, so does the urgency of basic needs in our most vulnerable communities. Food, work, housing, healthcare, and more are at risk for many.
