Chef Space, a Community Ventures kitchen incubator, wanted to find a simple way to help the community. They started by collecting food for residents when COVID-19 was at its peak. This summer, once they learned students were going back to school in person, they decided to help them with the supplies they needed for the school year. While backpacks may not have been a necessity last year with kids at home, they are now.

Jamill Martinez, director of network organizing at Lawrence CommunityWorks, Inc., a NeighborWorks organization in Lawrence, Massachusetts, has spent her recent afternoons visiting bodegas. That's where many residents in her community who rent single rooms in homes or apartments go to eat hot meals of empanadas, sub sandwiches, plantains and more. So that's where Martinez and her coworkers have gone to talk about the dangers of scams.

Leslie Reid was born into a family of two: It was her and her mother, alone in New York, in need of better prospects. Reid spent time in foster care while her mother went to find them a home. Her family grew exponentially when she rejoined her mother, who had found work in Boston with a community of social workers. They'd started an organization for homeless youth, Reid says, and they lived together and worked together, providing shelter and services. 

Girls and teens used to meet in Sharon Curry's living room. First there were eight. Then 12. Then 30, and Curry's house was bursting at the seams with girls meeting for discussions and mentoring as part of Girls to Teens to Women.
 
"I took it to the backyard, then to the park," says Curry, who lives in Massachusetts. Today, some of these girls have gone on to become lawyers. Some have attended and finished college. Some are mothers. Some run day care centers. "These girls, they are all over Boston; they all achieved their goals."
 

Climate and sustainability haven't always been first in the minds of the people who live in the Talbot-Triangle Eco-Innovation District in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and the surrounding community. Gail Latimore, executive director of Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corp. (CSNDC), knows this.

Kat Aristyl and Molette Smith, both U.S. Army veterans, were searching for new places to live in Georgia this summer. Both women found homes with help from Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP) a NeighborWorks organization that creates and preserves affordable housing.

Kwe, Bree Herne, iónkiáts. Akwesasne nitewakie:non. Kanien'kehá:ka Wastòn:ke non:we kì:teron.

For many people, the drive-in is a symbol of the past. But with COVID-19 and the call for social distancing, it's become a symbol of the present, and residents in Roxbury couldn't be happier about it.

"This has ever nhappened in Roxbury," says Erica Davis, director of Massachusetts' Madison Park Development Corporation's community center. Cars line up during weekdays and weekends alike.

The AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers at The Neighborhood Developers Inc. (TND), in Chelsea, Massachusetts, had been at their various assignments for just over seven months when everything changed. Starting in March, when the spread of COVID also caused the spread of hard financial times, there were new needs. For the VISTAs (Volunteers in Service to America), there were new responsibilities.