eNews
December 2022
GRATITUDE
Deaconess Community,

Practicing gratitude brings joy. As we are wrapping up 2022, with deep gratitude we are reflecting on our connections with our community, neighbors, partners, and one another. Though the year has not been without hardship, the blessings are abundant. We are grateful for the in-person reunions and convenings that 2022 brought us as Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being hosted more in-person gatherings and welcomed the return of young scholars to our CDF Freedom Schools program site. The children’s laughter, song, and dance filled the halls and our hearts with joy.  

We celebrate the expansion and growth of our Deaconess team and family this year. We welcomed three new full-time team members to join us realizing our vision. We are grateful for each of them, their talents, and life experiences and the added capacity to connect with our community and partners in greater depth. 

As a community, we cared for one another and united in times of devastation as historic flooding claimed lives, displaced families, and caused extensive damage just a few months before the heartbreaking tragedy at Central Visual Performing Arts High School (CVPA) and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience (CSMB). We are grateful for our partners’ rapid response to crises that thoughtfully and holistically centers the needs of the people directly and indirectly impacted. This work is endless, and we are greater as a community when we compassionately care for one another at all times.

In this season, may you find time to rest and reflect on that which brings you joy. We look forward to being in community with you in the year ahead. 

In service to the mission,

Deaconess Team
FROM THE FOUNDATION
The year-end is a time for rest, replenishment, and rejuvenation. In honor of that, Deaconess Foundation is implementing a practice of sabbath to close the season.

"The systems make us hard. Rest keeps us tender. There is power in our collective rest and care. Rest is medicine, it allows for physical mental, and spiritual generations, it restores us and makes us whole. Rest is reparations, an act of freedom and willful resistance." Desiree Adaway, The Nap Ministry

Closure Dates

Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being is closed through Monday, January 16, 2023. During this time, the Center's convening spaces are closed for deep cleaning and maintenance.

Deaconess Foundation's offices will be closed from December 23, 2022 through January 2, 2023. Our staff team will return to the office Tuesday, January 3, 2023.
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: LEADING LIBERATION RETREAT SERIES
As an institution grounded in the pursuit of healing, Deaconess Foundation seeks to invest in holistic opportunities for enhanced health and well-being for leaders of color. In recognition of the deep and intensive work of movement building for organizers, advocates, and Black leaders across the bi-state region, we are offering an experience specifically crafted for Black women who are catalyzing change.
 
The Leading Liberation Retreat Series, designed by Rebeccah Bennett, Brittini Gray, Rev. Gabrielle Kennedy and Dr. Billie Mayo creates safe containers for Black women change makers to experience restoration, liberation and culturally responsive healing practices. This series includes three distinct experiences:

  1. An introduction to the intersections of liberation and well-being;
  2. Personal liberation and healing for the servant leader; and
  3. Seeding the healed future through community liberation.
 
The first retreat session was entitled “Standing at the Crossroads: An Introduction to the Intersections of Liberation, Healing & Well Being.” Attendees had opportunities for group processing and individual reflection exploring the interconnectedness of liberation and healing. A prevailing theme that was reiterated for participants throughout the day long intensive was "You and your well-being matter."  
 
These retreats are free to attend and for anyone that identifies as a Black woman within a Deaconess partner organization. Updates will be provided in 2023 for future retreat dates and registration openings in the spring and fall next year. For questions, contact Program Manager Deleshā George at deleshag@deaconess.org.
PARTNERS IN THE NEWS
5 area groups receive $16,000 grants to help St. Louisans heal from gun violence

Andrea Y. Henderson | St. Louis Public Radio | December 16, 2022

The St. Louis Regional Racial Healing + Justice Fund awarded $16,000 grants to five St. Louis-area organizations to help students and the community recover from the school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience.

The fund’s community governance board issued crisis response grants to the T/Bullet Related Injury Clinic, Black Healers Collective, UnGUN Institute, Freedom Community Center and the St. Louis Community Health Worker Coalition. The money will cover existing programs and overhead costs and allow the organizations to help students and others heal from trauma.

Young people need outlets where they can be heard and where people will listen to them, said Darian Wigfall, a member of the community governance board.

“I think we are going to see, at the very least, more youth in St. Louis, be positively impacted and have a positive outlook for their future,” Wigfall said. “But then that leads towards them being adults that have that same mentality.”

The Deaconess Foundation, Missouri Foundation for Health and Forward Through Ferguson established the fund in 2020 to invest in organizations that will help achieve racial equity for people of color with resources for healing and justice. Read more.
Mayor Jones' executive order establishes Reparations Commission

Alvin A. Reid | The St. Louis American | December 8, 2022

ST. LOUIS — Mayor Tishaura Jones took the historic step of establishing a volunteer commission to explore and recommend opportunities for reparations in St. Louis on Wednesday. 
 
She was joined in Room 200 by advocates and community members as she signed Executive Order #74.
 
“I am totally supportive of this. It is long overdue,” she said shortly before adding her signature to the order. Let’s be frank. It is time for our people to win.”
 
Kayla Reed, Action St. Louis executive director, said she is eager to “open the dialogue.”
 
“I’m excited about what is possible. It is time to look honestly and forthrightly at our past” and its impact on us now. People in North city need to know how it got that way. What decisions were made.” Read more. 
PARTNER OPPORTUNITIES & EVENTS
Now Hiring:

  • December 21-23 & 26-30: "The Christmas Break Experience," activities for ages 5-17 during the school break period by The St. Adolphus Rock Community. Register.
  • January 7: “Black Men: Do you really know where you at?” by The T. Register.      
  • January 31: Monthly Renter’s Meeting on the last Tuesday of every month (no December meeting) by Action St. Louis and ArchCity Defenders. Register. 
  • February 1: Community First Responder (CFR) First Monday’s Series by The T. Register. 
MEDIA THAT HELPS US GROW
ICYMI: PEOPLE'S ASSEMBLY MEETING
Earlier this month the North Central Plan's People's Assembly convened at the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being for its last meeting in 2022. This public forum continues to give residents and stakeholders of the Covenant Blu Grand Center and Vandeventer neighborhoods opportunity to lift activities and projects that have been making the North Central Plan a reality. In the spirit of accountability to the Plan, participants added their work to the new Needs and Offers Dashboard, a crowd-sourced tool created to ensure value aligned work is celebrated and tracked.
 
In addition to residents, attendees also included members from Forest Relief of Missouri, STL TreeLC, Trailnet, Great Rivers Greenway, St. Louis Arts Chamber of Commerce, St. Louis University, and Washington University all who share projects and activity in the North Central Plan footprint.
 
The schedule for the 2023 People's Assembly gatherings will be announced in January.
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