About this event

When you think of locations that are important for taking care of residents in Boston’s Black communities, what place or places come to mind?

Join us for a panel conversation on Black Boston Stories: Taking Care on Thursday, June 15 at 6PM at the Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library. Three Boston residents will reflect on taking care in and of Boston’s Black communities, and lead a wider conversation with participants.

Food will be served starting at 5:30PM. Registration encouraged but not required.

Meet the panelists

Apolo Cátala, Farm Manager of OASIS on Ballou. Apolo Cátala is an alum of Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute, Urban Farming Institute and Trustees of Reservation Master Gardener training programs and a recipient of the Urban Farming Institute 2019 Community Cultivator Award. Apolo serves on the boards Boston Farms Community Land Trust, Tufts University Medical Center IRB as well as Stakeholder Panel Member of Tufts University CTSI, and Boston Public Health Commission Health Equity Advisor Board (2020-2021), and is also active with Boston Food Access Council, UFI, FSNE, and Dorchester Food Coop through which he champions local farming and sourcing as a means of promoting individual, community, and environmental health and equity across the urban, peri-urban, rural, regional and beyond food system continuum. 

Reggie Jean, Executive Director of Haley House. Reggie Jean, a Boston native, most recently was the executive director of the YMCA of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He is also the co-founder and president of IWC Boston which assists individuals in financial literacy and education on wealth building. He holds a degree in economics from UMass-Amherst.

Jo-Anna Rorie, Consulting Midwife at Neighborhood Birth Center. Dr. Jo-Anna Rorie (she/her) has an extensive background in nurse-midwifery, public health, diversity workforce development, social justice advocacy and has held many well-known leadership roles in midwifery at the local, regional and national levels. She began her career in the late 1980’s when Massachusetts was faced with an infant mortality crisis, especially in the Boston neighborhoods of North Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. In 1993, she served as Associate Director of the Boston University Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (NMEP). She continues to do clinical practice as a postpartum rounder for the Nurse Midwifery practice at Boston Medical Center.

Organized as part of the Leventhal Map & Education Center’s ongoing exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases.

Image courtesy of the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción records at Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.