Justin Hosbey
Observer
SciCycle
I think one thing across the two conversations I saw connection was that is tough to do, I guess in the mandate is to go into communities that are underserved and do this work of creating awareness and adding resources or capacity building within those neighborhoods. I think it's the way that I guess the time constraints on it undermines the mission in a sense, because I think what we've determined from Atlanta and New Haven is that to really build that capacity and do that work that I think people are earnestly trying to do with it, it takes a long time because these are structural things that have emerged over a long time. I think that so much pressure gets put on people who put on these events to do X, Y, Z, and A, B and C. And I think that oftentimes when it's like that, it's hard to grapple with the reality of the everyday politics of just building rapport with people, as you're trying to actually communicate with organizers and events and then integrate with another ongoing event. You're really integrating into that with Atlanta, for example. So that made it so much tougher to even do all of that. And it was a hope that I think the other organization would do some community building work that they didn't seem interested in doing that kind of work. So I think that it made me think about how these initiatives are structured and how, I guess maybe funding cycles or grant cycles are structured and how many ways the structure of the grant cycle and the accountability measures of the short, measurable time grant cycle that undermines the overall mission of building capacity in neighborhoods and communities. And I think that maybe, with recovery to think about it is just alternative approaches to I think nonprofits or philanthropy efforts or whatever that I think that oftentimes there's constraints of budget, the timeline, get it done. And I think that if there's a commitment to trying to wither away at the structural inequalities, that won't happen in the funding cycle and that it's going to have starts and stops. And I think that may be an overall approach to this work has to change on that level too.