CCECR staff and Americorps volunteers have launched several successful initiatives to help BHA residents since the start of the year
Boston Housing Authority’s Center for Community Engagement & Civil Rights has been very busy so far in 2021. Within the last few months, the CCECR team, along with BHA’s AmeriCorps Vista member, Danielle, have put together multiple noteworthy events for residents, including community closets, job fairs, and wellness giveaways.
Helping BHA residents with career opportunities has been a significant focus of the CCECR team. In March, the team began collecting professional attire from staff & local organizations to create closets for public housing residents going on job interviews or court appearances. The team received more than 300 donations of professional clothing, shoes, and accessories that were used to begin filling the closets. These business professional community closets are located at BHA’s Ruth Barkley and Franklin Field sites, but serve residents at Alice Taylor as well. The closets provide attire for all genders. Residents are able to choose from a wide selection after setting up an appointment with their service coordinator.
“It has been great to see the positive response that we’ve gotten from these closets so far!” said Danielle, the AmeriCorps Vista member. “We are grateful for all of the donations we initially received and will eventually be accepting more.”
CCECR also hosted a virtual career fair on Zoom that about 20 residents attended. Residents got to listen to speakers talk about opportunities in tech, hospital training, moving companies, etc., and were given the chance ask questions and express their interests. The organizations that had speakers at this career fair were Apprenti Technical Training Program, Building Pathways Pre-Apprenticeship Program, BEST Hospitality Training Program, Best of Care, Inc., CCHERS/HEART Consortium Training, Charlestown Adult Education / Works, Olympia Moving Company, and Boston Housing Authority.
“The Q&A portion of the fair was very active,” according to Danielle. “We were so happy to see so much interest from the residents!”
The next event held by CCECR is the “Spring Virtual Career Fair” on May 20. The career fair is free and open to all BHA residents!
During AmeriCorps Week, a week dedicated to thanking and honoring the many AmeriCorps members for their
service and sacrifice, the CCECR team and Danielle put together gift bags for residents that contained health and wellness items, such as face-masks, wipes, shampoos, lotions, chapsticks, etc. They put together 125 bags, and were able to give away 25 bags at Hampton House during an elderly vaccine clinic and split the remaining 100 bags evenly between Alice Taylor, Franklin Field, Mildred Hailey, and Ruth Barkley, during meal distribution times.
The CCECR team is always doing great work, and they have much more planned for the rest of the year!