My late father-in-law, Dave, could be anywhere in his house and still be able to hear one of us who might be searching for something in the kitchen and would call out, “Whadda ya need?” It has become an oft-repeated family line.
Dave kept an eye on things but also knew where everything was. If you were looking for something, he could guide you toward it or, if not, how to get it.
For the last few months, I’ve thought a lot about Dave. In mid-March, the Community Foundation needed to find a way to help our nonprofit partners in response to the pandemic. We asked them, whadda ya need? And they let us know. They needed funds to keep families fed, to keep people housed, to provide mental health support, to give kids a summer experience, to provide daycare for essential workers, to provide internet connection for schooling, and to ensure that creative voices are still heard so that our community could continue to know joy, wonder, and hope. And so, we announced our Emergency Response Fund, and you overwhelmed us with your response raising more than $5,600,000 to support these and many other efforts throughout our region.
Through those conversations, we also heard that now, more than ever, we needed community. We needed to know that we could rely on each other. That the well-earned trust between the Community Foundation, along with other funders, and the local nonprofits could be relied upon to assure each other that, together, we could make it through this. So, every two weeks, we have facilitated a virtual Meet Me for Coffee gathering of nonprofit leaders to share best practices, a bit of self-care, and to just catch-up. And in late May, when the reality of police violence toward Black people was once again starkly brought to the fore with the murder of George Floyd, our gathering provided us an opportune moment of catharsis and a community-wide demand for action that many of us have embraced and have built upon. While these virtual meetings are not the same as meeting for a cup at the Green Bean or a pateis de nata at Portugalia, it has offered us a chance to remind ourselves of our wonderful, generous, diverse, and supportive community. Something we all need.
Together we have learned so much this past year. The gift of 2020, and yes, I mean that, is a new lens, a better filter, a raised consciousness. For too long we have allowed racial inequity to remain the status quo while members of our Black community are being murdered and systemically persecuted and kept out of the possibility of America. We have allowed our national leadership to demonize immigrants, transgendered people, and others, who while falsely perceived as some sort of threat, are actually the fulfillment of this country’s promise. We have kidded ourselves in thinking that in this land of plenty that hunger was history and that homelessness affected someone else.
We look forward to 2021 with fresh, honest, disciplined, albeit slightly tired eyes that will strive to see the reality, the need, and respond as Dave would have. We will continue to ask what is needed and to find ways to support nonprofits and those whom they serve as they re-imagine their work – which is so sorely needed.
I am grateful today for Dave’s simple but clear question, “Whadda ya need?” We invite you to be more like Dave.
John Vasconcellos – President, SouthCoast Community Foundation
