BCAT News

The Mama Bear Effect office is in a small strip mall near DaMore Law. It’s a small space, with some posters and resources for talking to kids about sexual abuse. But on a rainy Wednesday night in July, the office is filled with about a dozen chairs squeezed into a small circle, and the chairs are full of some of Burlington’s most passionate helpers. 

This is a once-per-quarter meeting of the Burlington Community Collaborative, an informal group started by People Helping People’s food pantry manager, Julie Lewis. Representatives come from town departments, including the police, the library and the school system; local nonprofits like Wee Care and Womenade; and the faith community,  United Church of Christ Minister Andrew Harris. 

The meeting starts out a little awkwardly. There are encouragements to try one of the delicious-looking chocolate cookies or chocolate-dipped strawberries on a table in the back room. Everyone gives their introductions and updates from their various organizations. Forty percent more kids are participating in this year’s summer lunch program. The community garden is on track to produce way more veggies this summer. There are eight homeless youth currently in need of housing around town. The migrant families housed in a local hotel are pretty much stuck there; with no transportation, the kids are going stir crazy over the summer. 

And then the real stuff starts: The collaboration. 

“The families don’t have a community space,” said Gloria Wojtaszek, Burlington Public School Director of Family and Community Engagement and a frequent coordinator with the families housed in Burlington’s hotels. Young children are spending their whole summer holed up in hotel rooms, no summer programming, parks, swimming or spaces to play.

“The barrier sometimes is transportation. Childcare is a big issue. Loneliness is a big factor, because they only have those rooms,” Wojtaszek says. 

“The people housed in the [hotel], I’ve got people asking me all the time from church asking how we can help them more,” says UCC minister Harris. “At our church we’ve got a lot of volunteers and a lot of space. People have asked, could we do an after school program or a reading thing or homework help. I wonder if there’s ways that we could collaborate on that.”

By the end of the meeting, there is a plan to enlist church volunteers to drive Youth and Family Services vans to bring migrant families to the library for access to toys and play space. The police department can contribute the carseats. Maybe they can make it to the Concerts on the Common, free kid-friendly entertainment that could help build connections across the community. 

This kind of cross-town support is what Lewis hoped for when she founded the collaborative more than a year ago. She told BNEWS recently, “I thought it was important to bring organizations together to work in concert with each other just for the betterment of our community.” The work earned her a Commonwealth Heroine Award earlier this summer. 

There are plenty of challenges that didn’t get resolved. YFS is struggling to find apartments for Burlington’s unhoused youth in part because landlords always have a less risky tenant to choose. The library is still looking for experts to put on a series of workshops on caring for those with memory loss. But attendees agreed that getting everyone into one room to see what can be done helps break down silos and increase the chances of helping those in need. 

“I work with some of our most vulnerable students in the district, so it was great to hear from different people I can lean on if I have a situation,” says Jill Graham, Director of Alternative Education at BPS and a first-time attendee of the collaborative.

“It’s really wonderful and so inspiring,” says Riley Murphy, Individual and Family Therapist and Groupwork Coordinator with YFS. “I just love how this community comes together and has so many nonprofits that are working together like this, I think it’s really rare.”