Kavette Smith, Nikita Sharma, Raymond Nichols, Bernard Jones, Mike Lantz, Ben Arrowood, Mary Watkins
As we welcome ourselves to the new building with a lot of unpacking, purging, cleaning and organizing, we wanted to look back on some of the wonderful memories we have created in our building at 9 East. Franklin.
We were in the building from 2014 for about seven years. In that span of time, we grew a lot as an organization. We celebrated our 10th anniversary with a big cookout and a bigger fundraiser Mask-R-Aid to celebrate the milestone. A lot of members have joined us, worked towards goals and left to do better things in the community. We are so proud of them. We also added the communications unit and gained a lot of community and employment partners. As we grew in size, we started to explore more public sources of funds and are now an accredited PRP. Of course, we did not hold back on having fun at all, social events such as winter luau (winter beach bash), brunches, thanksgiving etc. always brought us all together.
We asked some of our colleagues about their favorite memory and it seems like a lot of good ones were made. Kavette is grateful that she found her first job working as a Florist Assistant with Dino and Joe when she started out as a member in that building. Ben shared that he had the opportunity to make a lot of new connections. Networking with state legislators has been one of his highlights.
Crystal Berman, a longtime member shared that the building provided her a platform for learning new things. “I learned how to communicate with people and also do different things such as greeting, answering phone calls, writing articles for the newsletter etc.” Social events such as picnic days and bingo night brought her a lot of joy as well.
Mike L always enjoyed stepping into the building and meeting members and staff. He shares, “all of them are very nice.” Raymond recalls going to the Lacrosse game as his favorite memory and he equally enjoyed working with Gina too.
For Bernard, joining as a member in that building was life changing. “In the past 2-3 years, I have gotten my mental health back together. Just being there and working with Clara and Morgan was very enjoyable. I had some great conversations, shared poetry, made food and had delicious lunch every day. I got my confidence back up. I am currently working towards a bachelor degree and hope to get a job at Amazon. Some of my favorite memories revolve around the tours we had for Mayor Brandon Scott and a professor from Coppin State and also being on a radio show with Clara.” We are glad that the place holds a lot of positive memories for Bernard.
Mary became a member a few months before we moved to our current location. It was the place where she started connecting with other members and hopes to have better experiences moving forward.
We are so grateful for the years we spent at 9 East Franklin St. and hope to take the foundation of relationships, networks and growth into our new building and make it better.
