Brighter Days Story: Service Works and the Mission Hill Community Garden
On any given day, The Mission Hill Community Garden can look pretty different. But whether a few green stalks are just starting to quietly push through the spring soil, or families are gathered to harvest their thriving flowers and veggies — at its roots it’s a place about connection. The small plot of land has […]
Brighter Days Story: Jules and Davina from Aim High AmeriCorps
As a freshman at Bowdoin College, Jules enrolled in an Introductory course to Contemporary American Education. It was a broad class, examining the philosophy of public schooling. She found herself loving it, partly because of the incredibly inspiring professor (who would become her mentor) and also because she had spent many of her teenage years […]
Brighter Days Story: Niru and Marie from English Language + Literacy Program
When Niru was 12 years old, she and her family left their home in India, and moved to the United States. Both of her parents were educators, and Niru had been raised multilingual, so she fortunately had a solid foundation in English when she arrived. She went on to study optometry and practiced as an […]
Brighter Days Story: Justin from LearningWorks YouthBuild
When Justin was in elementary school, he and his family left Maine and moved to the Bronx. “I had a couple of friends, but I’ve always been the observer — quiet and walking behind everyone else – watching and listening.” School in a big city was tough for Justin — he remembers being bullied, often […]
Brighter Days Story: Lillian from LearningWorks Afterschool
When the pandemic hit, a lot changed for 7 year old Lillian and her family. School, which she loved more than anything, all of the sudden meant learning on a screen at home. It also meant that her mom, a single parent, would be away at work each day, while Lillian and her older sister […]