this weekend.
Join us for the renovated Lippitt Park Ribbon Cutting on Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 4:45 pm!
Hi Everyone,
Please note that we had decided at our last meeting to push the September meeting to the fourth Monday of the month, September 26th.
If you have anything to add to the agenda, please email snaprov@gmail.com and it will be included
The Zoom invite is below.
Topic: SNA September Monthly Meeting
Time: Sep 26, 2022 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 885 0659 0776
Passcode: 902271
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Hi there, see the community yard sale map below to find all the popup yard sales happening on Sunday, 9/18/22 starting at 10 am! Thanks for supporting your neighbors and the Summit Neighborhood Association.
By Ethan Gyles, SNA President
On behalf of current and past SNA leadership, and many many Summit neighbors, I’d like to share gratitude for the hard work and friendship of Monica Anderson, who served for many years as neighborhood liaison for The Miriam Hospital. Miriam is the largest institution in our neighborhood, and we appreciate the collaborative approach Monica worked to foster with all of us who live around their campus. In recent years with Monica as a liaison, Miriam/Lifespan have provided significant community grants and engaged in charitable activities serving the Summit and Mount Hope neighborhoods.
Monica has accepted a role at Orlando Health in sunny Florida, and we wish her the best. Thank you, Monica. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with Miriam and its staff, who continue to maintain the neighborhood hotline at 401-793-4040.
By Sherry Waldman and Ethan Gyles
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Providence in March 2020, Councilwoman Nirva LaFortune convened a call with local non-profit organizations including SNA, Mt. Hope Community Center (MHCC), Jewish Collaborative Services (JCS), and others to discuss how to prepare to help neighbors in need. SNA contributed by organizing a mutual aid list to match volunteers with need and administered it throughout the past year, as well as fundraised to offset the costs of food and goods purchased for folks who were experiencing financial hardship. Volunteer services included picking up medications and groceries for those who couldn’t leave their homes, or who were especially vulnerable to health complications. Over one hundred and fifty volunteers signed on. We also worked with Rep. Rebecca Kislak to run a check-in phone bank to call our elderly neighbors and make sure they were okay, as well as provide information about available resources.
In addition to answering the dozens of individual requests for aid we received, tapping into the outpouring of community volunteers also helped SNA assist MHCC to deliver food bags to people who could not get out, as well as helped Higher Ground International’s Rukiya Center deliver hot meals to those in need. Volunteers were eager to assist and, on Wednesdays and Fridays, up to ten volunteers came to the MHCC offices to pick up groceries and bring them to primarily elderly and disabled community members.
On Friday mornings, a few volunteers also help unload pallets from the RI Food Bank truck at the Camp Street Community Ministries (CSCM) across the street from MHCC, and then bag up the food for delivery. Each of the forty-three to sixty recipient households gets two to three bags of dried goods and fresh produce weekly. This has been a year-long effort of coordination between multiple community organizations and individuals – an impressive feat of endurance!
In addition, local business leaders Milena Pagan from Rebelle Artisan Bagels and Becca Brady from Hometown Poke & Cafe donated or offered at heavy discount a bounty of baked goods and fresh produce to the MHCC’s food pantry over the past few months. A big thanks to these businesses that continue to give more than delicious food to our neighborhood, and to all the community organizers and volunteers who jumped in to support their neighbors!
SNA is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Helen Dukes, Eugene Monteiro, and Marcus Mitchell at MHCC, Jackie Watson at CSCM, Henrietta White-Holder of the Rukiya Center, Erin Minor at JCS, Rep. Kislak, Councilwoman LaFortune, and to help our neighbors!
Contact Sherry at slwaldman1@gmail.com if you’d like to volunteer – the need goes on!
Hi neighbors,
The SNA Board will draft a public response for the following, which we successfully lobbied for a public input deadline extension on. We welcome input from neighbors on this – please send to SNAProv@gmail.com. Please send to us by 1/13/21. You’re also, of course, welcome and encouraged to directly submit individual input, by 1/19/21.
The SNA Board is acutely aware of the sharply increasing housing prices in our neighborhood, while Rhode Island incomes have been slower to grow, and how that creates a higher and higher barrier to entry to new families and may displace others, including renters. Many residents – my own family included, actually – would no longer be able to afford to become a first-time home buyer in our neighborhood. We’re eager to participate in a process toward fair and equitable solutions.
Best,
Ethan Gyles
“City of Providence Charts Bold New Course for Affordable Housing
This month, the City of Providence unveiled the City’s Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy (the Strategy) and first-ever City Affordable Housing Bond. As COVID-19 amplifies the critical housing needs facing Providence residents, the City’s comprehensive housing plan builds an actionable 10-year road map for policy recommendations, new programs and housing investments. Key findings outlined in the plan include:
The key findings reflect Providence’s diverse housing ecosystem and the varying needs of renters, homeowners, landlords, developers, and community members. They helped shape the programmatic, policy, and regulatory approaches the City will take to advance affordable housing, including:
A full overview of recommended policy and programmatic changes, including recommended funding strategies, is available in the draft report, here: https://www.providenceri.gov/…/comprehensive-housing…/.
As the City anticipates the release of the Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy, the public is encouraged to review the draft report and provide comments over the next 30 days. The City will integrate community feedback into the final plan, to be released in early 2021. For more information about the Strategy—including how to submit feedback—visit the City’s website, here: https://www.providenceri.gov/…/comprehensive-housing…/. For more information & to read the full press release, please click here: https://www.providenceri.gov/city-providence-charts-bold…/”
We will be announcing the date for the 2022 annual virtual meeting once it’s been determined.
After a hiatus of a few months while SNA has focused on administration of the Ward 3 area neighborhood aid program, we’ll host our normal July meeting (Monday 7/20, 7pm) virtually via Zoom. Please e-mail us for a Zoom invitation if you’d like to participate! Please also e-mail any items you’d like to discuss, so we can add them to our agenda. And finally, if you are interested in joining the SNA Board for 2020-2021, please let us know (and join us for the 7/20 meeting!). The more dedicated volunteer capacity we have, the more we can do to serve. We’d love to hear from you!