Over the last two Wednesdays (Feb 23, Mar 2), with great excitement, we launched our first Health Equity program! Our 32 members came from across the Greater Boston community (63% BIPOC, 38% are from a household with income less than $35,000 per capita, 56% female, 6% nonbinary, 31% LBGTQ+) and began to share their lived experiences with health inequity and the stories that brought them to this cohort. Michael Curry, CEO of Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, shared a powerful keynote address that exemplified the kind of proximate leadership we aspire to cultivate this spring. Our lead facilitator, Jeff Rogers, then led a masterclass workshop on understanding racism.

Over the next 12 weeks, our members will build their capacity to critically evaluate, navigate, and drive change on health equity issues - a capacity we call 'civic wellbeing'. We're deeply grateful to each of you - our 30+ community partners who will be engaging with our members over the next 12 weeks - from frontline healthcare workers to policymakers.

We are also excited to share our new partner portal with you, where you can see our program calendar, our evolving community partner catalog, member bios, and recordings/resources from select sessions. Given the sensitivity of some of this information, we ask that you keep the information on the portal confidential. In addition, we look forward to sharing periodic updates of our members' learning journey with you.

Finally, we want to recognize that less than 3 hours after our Feb 23rd kickoff concluded, we heard the news of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. During this difficult time for many, we are reflecting on some of Martin Luther King Jr's remarks from his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture,

"We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."

As we head into this week, we are grateful to each of you for being our partners, as we all do our best to practice and promote love and peace here in our community and abroad.

In partnership,

The GenUnity Team