By Victoria Mejicanos
AFRO Staff Writer
vmejicanos@afro.com
Associated Black Charities (ABC) will continue their Community Convos starting Jan. 22 in the Hamilton community from 6:30-8 p.m. at Eastern United Methodist Church. The event continues the organization’s monthly event, designed to inform how resources are invested across Baltimore neighborhoods. The conversations serve as listening sessions where community members shape the organization’s priorities.
The conversations were started in 2023 by ABC CEO, Chrissy M. Thornton to reconnect with the Black community in Baltimore City.
Each community conversation is structured to remove hierarchy so that residents and their needs are at the center of every single conversation.
“There’s no person in charge of the conversation,” said Thorton. “We give people an opportunity to really discuss what’s on their hearts and what’s priority for their specific neighborhood.”
Dr. Nia Imani Fields is the executive director of GreenLight Fund Baltimore, an organization that invests in innovative solutions in communities. GreenLightFund will be supporting the January Community Convo and regularly works with ABC through their selection advisory council, which is a cross sector council made up of local leaders and residents that works with the fund to help them decide which projects to invest in based on their interactions with the community.
“What we invest in, we want it to make an impact,” said Fields. “We want it to align with the puzzle of other resources that already exist across the city, not be duplicative, but be additive, to really supercharge the impact.”
Credit Courtesy of Nia Imani Fields
Although there are broader social and political issues that impact the experience of Black people obtaining opportunity, they are constantly shifting and changing depending on the neighborhood.
Thornton also noted that some of the biggest needs are those that seem small in comparison to broader issues such as not having enough books in libraries, a lack of resources for the elderly to age with dignity and access to healthy food.
“We’ve found that a lot of the things that are told to us during those listening sessions are things that are highly solvable, if the resources are brought directly into the community,” said Thorton. “The resources are available, they just don’t always make their way into Black communities. We’re hopeful that as we begin, in partnership with the AFRO, to issue these calls to action, that those with resources–those with decision making authority–will start to see the needs of these communities and begin to respond to them in real time.”