June is for Joy
Grand Opening Celebration of the workshop by urban university
Good People - Happy June to you all. If you happen to follow us on Instagram, you may have seen my posts titled, “June is for Joy.” There is one post that captures the “afterglow,” of our social enterprise team building session and you don’t want to miss the post where I am swinging on a swing yall, in a friend’s yard (one of my favorite things). I am happy to lead by example and be an ambassador of joy, so let’s do this, let’s shoot for joy, right in the middle of our changing world! And feeling this way doesn’t make the bad stuff go away, it just creates a space where we can also participate and appreciate the goodness of life and there’s a lot of goodness going around in June - from Pride, to Father’s Day to Juneteenth.
In addition to swinging in swings, I am joyful about the launch of the workshop by urban university - our new learning and community space located right next door to our social enterprise. Led by Taylor Thompson, our new Workshop Consultant, I invite you to stop by, say hi, take the survey to “shape the space,” and share what you feel when you’re in the new space. Feel free to reach out to Taylor by email (theworkshop@urbanuniv.org).
For me, the two values that resonate when I walk through the workshop space are: learning and community. Regarding learning, I see the workshop as the “university,” in urban university. Right from our very name, learning has sat front row to our mission - from our ‘back-in-the-day,’ soft skills trainings that helped shape our inclusive approach to teaching low-income individuals how to thrive in unfamiliar work environments to our current monthly Single Moms at Work team building sessions where we discuss the collaborative culture we strive to create as we implement our mission (and the missteps in between), providing the opportunity for our single mothers to have their own unique space to learn and laugh and unlearn and shake their heads about relevant matters is powerful and I’m so grateful to the CA Rise Initiative for supporting its launch. And then there’s community, and with that I’m inspired by Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), who often speaks about the importance of "proximity" as a way to create change and understand the world. Stevenson often encourages people “to get close to those who are suffering, marginalized, or disfavored, as this proximity can reveal truths and empower individuals to work for justice.” It is my hope that the workshop events and classes will bring you closer to our beautiful mission and maybe even inspire you to support our work by volunteering to teach a class, help out in the store or host an event.
With that, coming your way is the launch of our urban Arts and Crafts Program on 6/14.
In this new initiative, we’ll offer a variety of maker and creativity workshops. We launch next Saturday, with a beginner’s sewing series for the community, taught by Inga Langford. Also, on the horizon is our upcoming open house for the workshop honoring Juneteenth on 6/18, hosted by Taylor. Good People - we are bringing the joy and standing in community with single moms and each other at the workshop by urban university. We invite you to join us.