Tonight, the fabulous Lisa Brukilacchio will be honored at The Welcome Project’s YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City celebration. Lisa is one of those people who “knows everybody,” as her range of work and passion for the community brings her into many people’s orbits. Tonight she will be recognized with the Suzanne Sankar Founder’s Award, which is given to an outstanding individual or group who has served as a leader in building the collective power of Somerville area immigrants.

From The Welcome Project‘s website:

For over 30 years, Somerville resident Lisa Brukilacchio has worked to support immigrant communities in Somerville. Currently the Director of the Somerville Health Agenda of the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), Lisa says her passion for working with immigrants grew out of another love: gardening.

“I had a community garden plot on Tufts property the first summer I lived in Somerville, the summer of 1979, where I first met a lot of “real” people who lived in Somerville,” Lisa said, “Early on, it was mostly Greek and Italian neighbors who would engage with me around growing. Later, when I became more involved in doing outreach for community gardens, I met a couple from El Salvador, who got involved in the team building the garden along the bike path. ”

Through gardening and youth development work, Lisa met Rose Boardman, then director of The Welcome Project.

“I started working with kids from the Mystic Learning Center, including immigrant families who had plots at Mystic and Rose Boardman had me come and do some planting projects.” This work eventually grew into working with Somerville Housing Authority on a landscape training/jobs program for residents.  Meanwhile, over near Union Square, the Community Growing Center started up in 1993, where Lisa helped connect  others across the city interested in supporting youth development and cultural activities to highlight the many populations making Somerville their home.

“As a volunteer working in the city, I got to meet lots of people. I landed here for school, but when I got engaged with the community, I had an opportunity to interact directly with various communities,” Lisa explained. “There were a lot of young people who thought their only way out was the military. As part of coordinating out of school programs, we would spend time with youth, opening their minds to potential options. Working to provide experiential learning opportunities for youth, I met  other community leaders like Franklin Dalembert of the Somerville Haitian Coalition and other members of the Somerville Community Partnerships.  We sought to enrich the role of those kids through literally building a stronger, healthier community together through the process of building the Growing Center!”

This work also connected her with many different Somerville populations, including Haitian, Salvadoran, Tibetan, and Indian.

“It was really the commonality of gardens, growing food, and cultural connections to the earth which brought us together,” Lisa added. “A big part of this work, the mission of the Growing Center, is to bring people together in a safe space to share our different cultural traditions. Community gardens have a unique capacity to do that through providing chances for meaningful activity, community engagement and cultural exchange around growing food.”

Lisa brings this focus on immigrant communities to her work in healthcare as well.

“When I first started working In the healthcare field, a large number of the families I worked with were immigrants. Many had come over from Italy, like my own grandmother, some were political refugees and some had grandparents who were slaves in the rural south. I learned a lot from them all,” Lisa said. Later after working for the City of Somerville and for Tufts University, Lisa returned to healthcare at Cambridge Health Alliance.

“CHA comes to health care from a population health and community perspective. I’ve found so many colleagues who are committed to addressing health disparities and an institution that has served vulnerable populations for a long time.”

Lisa added that understanding people’s cultural background is a critical piece of health work.

“We all have different perspectives on what we want our lives to be – how you enjoy life, where you find pride, purpose and meaning. It’s so basic, so integral to a person’s well-being,” Lisa said. “Health care is really about trying to bridge our cultural understandings of wellness.”

The Welcome Project is thrilled to recognize Lisa Brukilacchio with the Suzanne Sankar Founders Award at the 2015 YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City celebration.

Tomorrow night at their YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City celebration, The Welcome Project will recognize local leader Franklin Dalembert with the Intercultural City Award. For over a decade Franklin was founding director of the Haitian Coalition of Somerville. As The Welcome Project celebrates its 25th anniversary, Franklin’s story highlights how the City has changed.

From The Welcome Project‘s website:

In 1991 there was one Haitian program in the city: Haiti Vision, a SCAT television show for which Franklin Dalembert served as a producer. Under his remarkable leadership, that show would eventually grow into the Haitian Coalition of Somerville, which incorporated as a non-profit in 1998 and remains a cornerstone of Somerville cultural organizations 17 years later.

“People would come on Haiti Vision and talk about the issues they were facing,” recalled Franklin, who served as founding director of the Haitian Coalition from 1998 until early in 2015. “Young people would come. Parents would come. As we heard all those issues, we started to invite the heads of organizations and city officials to respond and talk to those people.”

These on-air conversation between Haitian residents and city officials eventually led to the creation of the city’s first Haitian Taskforce, created under then Mayor Michael Capuano.

“The taskforce was formed to serve as a bridge between the city and the community,” Franklin explained. “We would meet regularly with Mayor Capuano and others to discuss the issues faced by the Haitian community. One day, Mayor Capuano suggested we should organize as a group – that we should create an advocacy organization and advocate on behalf of the Haitian community.”

That’s how the Haitian Coalition was born.

“Not only did we create that organization, we helped to create a lot of changes,” Franklin said. One of its first steps was calling for help from the Department of Justice.

“The Department of Justice investigated treatment of Haitians at the schools and how Haitians were treated by police. A set of agreements were signed between the Haitian Coalition, the City of Somerville and the Department of Justice.”

One of the recommendations from the DOJ, Franklin said, was to create a Human Rights Commission in Somerville. After the city passed an ordinance creating the commission, Yves-Rose SaintDic, a Haitian leader in the city, served as its first director.

The issues tackled by the Haitian Coalition have shifted over the years. In the early days, the organization primarily focused on building cultural sensitivity towards the Haitian community and making sure these residents access to resources.

“At that time people felt they were not welcome, that nobody understood them,” Franklin said. “There were no people who could speak their language or understood their culture. This created a tension and a lack of understanding. People felt that their voices hadn’t been heard.”
On top of that, immigrants face unique challenges as they acclimate to life in a new part of the world, and at the time there was no one to help them through the transition.

“When I moved to Somerville in 1990,” Franklin said, “I spent a weekend in November in an apartment without heat or electricity because I didn’t know I had to call the gas company. Sometimes people take it for granted that everyone knows that basic info, but we didn’t need heat in Haiti.”

Today, the Haitian Coalition organizes around issues of affordability and gentrification.
“Twenty-five years ago, the work was welcoming immigrants in Somerville. Now we have another challenge – to keep immigrants here,” Franklin said. “People are leaving, they can no longer afford housing costs in Somerville. We have to do something about that. If we lose the immigrant community, we are losing something very important. Immigrants play a vital role in Somerville.”

Throughout it’s history, the Haitian Coalition has partnered closely with The Welcome Project.

“The Welcome Project paved the way for the Haitian Coalition,” Franklin said. “We consider them a sister organization, because we share the same mission. The Welcome Project affects all the immigrant communities, provides a voice for the immigrant community.”

The Welcome Project is thrilled to recognize Franklin Dalembert with the Intercultural City Award at the 2015 YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City celebration.