From the Community
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Hyde Square Task Force Awarded $400,000 Cummings Grant

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Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF) is one of 140 local nonprofits to receive grants of $100,000 to $500,000 each through Cummings Foundation’s $25 Million Grant Program. The organization, based in Boston’s Latin Quarter in Jamaica Plain, was chosen from a total of 580 applicants during a competitive review process. HSTF will receive $400,000 over 10 years. Hyde Square Task Force’s mission is to amplify the power, creativity, and voices of youth, connecting them to Afro-Latin culture and heritage so they can create a diverse, vibrant Latin Quarter and build a just, equitable Boston. In the coming year, HSTF will reach more than 600 children and youth through its Afro-Latin arts, education, and creative development programming.

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From the Community

Boston’s New Chief of Planning Arthur Jemison Tours 250 Centre in Jackson Square

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In his first public address as the Boston’s Chief of Housing, Arthur Jemison joined The Community Builders (TCB) for a hard hat tour of 250 Centre, a 110-unit affordable and mixed-income housing development for residents in Jackson Square. On June 1, the hard hat tour was part of a larger celebration honoring three housing development milestones for TCB, Urban Edge and Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation in Jackson Square. Following the tour, Jemison and Housing Chief Sheila Dillon provided remarks during the event’s speaking program. Appointed by Mayor Michelle Wu as the city’s first planning chief, Jemison has 28 years of planning and affordable housing expertise, that included working with community members of Boston’s Jackson Square two decades ago to plan the redevelopment culminating with the completion of The Community Builders’ 250 Centre site in 2023. Jemison previously served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he led the Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD) and served as the policy lead and HUD partner for American cities, counties, states, and other local units of government.

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From the Community

Community Servings’ Dinners4Dads Fundraiser Benefits Fathers in Need

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Community Servings, a Jamaica Plain nonprofit provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition services and a leader in “food is medicine” research, advocacy and policy, has launched its annual Father’s Day fundraiser, Dinners4Dads, in partnership with Eastern Standard Provisions. Gift givers can send a special dad in their life a small box of eight gourmet Liège Belgian waffles with four topping flavors for $65 or a large box of 22 soft pretzels and four gourmet salts for $95. Each purchase is a donation that will support a local father living with critical or chronic illness with the nutritious food they need to maintain and improve their health. The gift includes a card designed by local artist Susy Pilgrim Waters inscribed with a personalized message. Supporters can also choose to send just a card for a $30 donation.

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From the Community

‘Recovering Black History in Historic Houses’ Event with Loring Greenough House on June 10

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Who gets to create and define our national histories? What role do house museums and historic sites play in our public conversations about race? The Shirley-Eustis House Association and the Loring Greenough House will host a discussion via Zoom with author Corinne Fowler on the ways Britain’s National Trust is reinterpreting its historic estates in light of the newly revealed colonialist profits of their builders. The event will be held on Friday, June 10, from 5-7 p.m.

Fowler is director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted and professor of English at Leicester University. She was editor of a report prepared by Britain’s National Trust in 2020 that researched people who were enslaved at the National Trust’s historic houses.

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Arts

Jamaica Plain Playwright Wartofsky Debuts New Play ‘Late’ at Boston New Works Festival

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Moonbox Productions is thrilled to announce that Jamaica Plain resident Michael Wartofsky along with his co-writer Kathleen Cahill will showcase the play, Late: A New Musical, at the first ever Boston New Works Festival. Late is a musical and was written as a way to express the writer’s heartbreak about the murder of American school children through gun violence. Two weeks after a school shooting, nine teenagers return to class. In a theatrical style reminiscent of Our Town, they try to piece together the fragments of their last ordinary day together. With a contemporary sound inspired by musicals like Dear Evan Hansen and Spring Awakening, Late explores the students’ interconnected stories as they wrestle with identity, social pressure, love, grief, and memory.

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