#UjimaWednesdays | Tending the Soil, Building the Future: The Woolson Street Story | DATE TBA

Month Description:

Our workshops this May, in keeping with our 2025 theme Power, Transformation, and Miracles, center local and small-scale worldbuilding. The Power in Proximity: Small Worlds, Big Shifts focuses on how  intimate spaces, from neighborhoods to collective gardens, shared workspaces to cultural hubs, become powerful sites of resistance, connection, and transformation. In these small worlds, power is not abstract or distant; it is immediate, lived, and deeply personal.

This series invites us to ask: How do communities reclaim power through the creation of shared spaces that reflect their needs, histories, and visions for the future? How can local organizing, mutual aid, and art or culture shape the way we challenge larger systems of inequality and injustice? What happens when communities create and protect worlds that center collective care, autonomy, and mutual respect? We will learn how local, grassroots movements grow from the most personal connections— from relationships and trust that form when communities come together to meet their own needs—and how they can ripple outward to challenge larger structures of power.

Event Description:

In this workshop, Mattapan Food & Fitness Coalition will share how community members transformed a street and vacant lot, once marked by violence, disinvestment, and environmental harm, into a thriving green space rooted in care, connection, and community power.
Together, we'll explore how small, local transformations can challenge systemic neglect and create examples of the futures we are building every day.

Please Note: This workshop is being rescheduled. If you RSVP, we’ll notify you as soon as the new date is confirmed.

Facilitator Bio:

Robyn Gibson is the Principal and Founder of R.E.G. Solutions, a consulting firm dedicated to centering community voices in decision-making through research and evaluation. Her notable projects include serving as the Community Engagement Partner for the Massachusetts Flooding Vulnerability Project and contributing to the Healthy Neighborhoods Study. Robyn also serves as the Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board of the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition and is the Woolson Street Community Garden Coordinator. In 2023, she was recognized as an Emerging Scholar. Outside of her professional endeavors, Robyn enjoys jogging, pop culture, and Black cinema.