What's Happening

July 12, 2024, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Adrian Resilient Community Initiative – approved in 2022 by the 2016-2022 General Council – is making a difference in the lives of youth who live in Adrian’s Historic East Side. 

The initiative, Growing up Resilient: The East Adrian Youth Resilience Collaborative, focuses on connecting participating youth and their families in East Adrian and the two Hispanic neighborhoods on the outskirts of Adrian with available community resources to expand literacy and family education and to connect the families with the resources they need. 

The plan includes developing Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs housed at the Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee and creating an Adrian Dominican Sisters Youth Learning Center and computer lab, to be housed in Ebeid Learning Center of ProMedica. This healthcare system encompasses southeastern Michigan and northern Ohio. 

Sisters, Associates, Co-workers, and the general public heard more about the initiative and its progress during a Lunch and Learn program offered June 12, 2024, at Weber Retreat and Conference Center.

“Our intent was not to duplicate efforts but to work collaboratively with other groups” to meet the needs of youth in the marginalized Historic East Side of Adrian, said Jennifer Hunter, Chief Operating Officer for the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and Co-chair of the Adrian Resilient Community Initiative Committee with Sister Sharon Weber, OP. 

The committee compared the population of the East Side with those of the rest of Lenawee County to determine the needs of the youth and families in that area and discovered several disparities. For example, 30% of East Adrian households are below the poverty line, compared to 11% in the rest of the community. 

Their discovery “formed our committee’s vision: a collaborative initiative among community members to provide youth in East Adrian with an opportunity for age-appropriate education and assistance in overcoming barriers,” Jennifer said.

Cody Waters, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee, spoke of the various programs offered by the club. Programs offer children the opportunity to develop in the areas of character and leadership, health and sports, academics, art, and career development.

In particular, Cody spoke of the organization’s summer camps to offer children a safe place while they experience art and enrichment in reading and mathematics. In the club’s peer-to-peer program, he said, older students help younger students improve their reading skills. 

Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee also relies on volunteers to help the children. “We want kids to enjoy what they’re doing and we want volunteers to enjoy it,” Cody said. “Relationship building is the key thing. Our team is trying to come up with different ways to get more mentors into the building.”  

Frank Nagel, Director of Community Impact for ProMedica, spoke of the healthcare system’s practice of screening patients for social factors that put them at a high risk. “When we have a patient at high risk for food insecurity, we can see at a ZIP Code level how these factors are taking place,” he said. People in Adrian’s ZIP Code, 49221, were in the “top five” of geographic areas with the need for greater resources, he said.

ProMedica first established an Ebeid Neighborhood Promise in Toledo “to address the gaps people have in attaining the resources they need,” Frank said. With the power of collaboration in Adrian, he said, “we can make sure that people are empowered to make lifestyle changes” that would improve their lives.

Lynne Punnett, Manager of Community Resilience for the resilience initiative in Adrian, said the Ebeid Center in Adrian has, since September 2023, been offering programs in areas such as financial literacy, home ownership, and parenting.  

This summer, the Ebeid Neighborhood Promise of Adrian is offering a six-week Literacy Pop-Up program in Adrian. For six mornings in June and July, children will be mentored as they focus on reading, writing, and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), Lynn said. Volunteer mentors include godparents, community members, and six Adrian Dominican Sisters.  

Partnership with the Adrian Dominican Sisters has “catalyzed this work … and brought us to a whole new level,” Frank said. “The power of this collaboration and partnership has been a humbling experience. I look forward to seeing the progress that is made because of our partnerships.”      

In late Spring, Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee publicly recognized the initiative by bestowing its Blue Door Award on the Adrian Dominican Sisters. “Through their generosity and steadfast support, the ‘Blue Door’ to our Club has been opened to so many local youth, and with the establishment of this new mentorship initiative, their impact on our Club and youth throughout the county will remain for decades and decades to come,” said Sara Herriman, Director of Development and Community Relations. 

“It was wonderful to be honored by and to partner with the Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee, an organization that has served the youth of our community so well for many years now,” Sister Sharon said.

“We were honored to be notified that the Adrian Dominican Sisters were being awarded the Blue Door Award by Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee,” Jennifer said.

•    Growing up Resilient is one of six initiatives developed by various regional groups of Adrian Dominican Sisters in response to the Congregation’s 2016 Resilient Communities Enactment. The other initiatives are:

•    Developing Resiliency in the Community of San José, Preravia Province, Dominican Republic. This initiative supports the construction of a technical school to offer training to local residents in fields needed by the local community.

•    Creating a More Resilient Immigration Community in McKinley Park (Illinois). The proposal is to establish a Comprehensive Adult Education Hub at Aquinas Literacy Center in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood to offer GED instruction and literacy programs in the areas of computers, finances, the environment, and civics.

•    An investment to construct a second building at the Dominican School of Angeles City in the Mining barangay, Province of Pampanga, Philippines.

•    Affordable Housing as a Platform for Education Equity and Community Resilience. In partnership with Mercy Housing Northwest (MHNW), the initiative calls for extra in-house academic programs and social opportunities for children and their families in affordable MHNW housing projects to help them succeed academically.

•    The Empowering Resilient Women Initiative provides women in Flint, Michigan, who suffer from abuse with the resources they need to gain control of their lives, support for their families, and develop stronger communities.
 
 

 

June 4, 2024, New York, New York – Indigenous People need to be accepted for who they are and for the gifts they bring to the world and need to be offered a place at the table, especially when decisions are being made in the area of sustainability and restoring Earth. 

Those were the takeaways of Sister Mary Rae Waller, OP, and Rose Johnson after they attended the first week of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Sister Durstyne Farnan, OP, Dominican UN representative, and the Dominican Leadership Conference (DLC) sponsored the women’s attendance at the Forum. (Read more about Sister Durstyne’s experience of the Forum.) 

Rose, of Comanche and Aztec descent, is a member of the People of the Four Winds, an evolving group based in Adrian and composed of people with Native ancestry, people who serve in Native communities, and other interested people. Sister Mary Rae is of Cherokee heritage. 

The 23rd session of the forum, held April 15-26, 2024, drew 2,000 participants from around the world in addition to UN delegates. The theme was “Indigenous Peoples’ Right to Self-Determination in the Context of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” 

The United Nations first issued its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. The formal UN proceedings focused on ways for Indigenous Peoples to enhance their rights to self-determination through such means equal access to funding.

Rose and Sister Mary Rae attended side events – workshops and forums offered by civil society, UN governments, and their NGO partners. They came away from the Forum with new perspectives – and a new understanding of their identity. In the opening session, David Choquehuanca, Vice President of Bolivia, encouraged participants to embrace awareness of themselves as “Ancestral Peoples” rather than Indigenous Peoples. 

“Indigenous relates to something that’s boxed, put away,” Sister Mary Rae explained. “Ancestral embodies memories of healing, memories as guardians of life relationships on Earth.”

We speak for ourselves, Rose said. “We talk about our own ideas as ours. It comes from generational ancestors. We all have a gift of some sort that we can speak out about.” 

Rose and Sister Mary Rae focused on the need for the governments and the mainstream culture to listen to Indigenous Peoples in the area of the environment. “We ask that you see we carry in our genes the memory of how to keep in balance,” Sister Mary Rae said. “We ask of you, let us bring our insight, our experience, and our knowledge to help save Earth. We’re not asking that you don’t have all your advancements but invite us to the table.”

Much of the conference focused on climate change and on mining companies that have been moving into native lands without their permission. Rose and Sister Mary Rae attended a reflection session by Indigenous Peoples of South America, focusing on mining practices and on mining companies that came into the Amazon 10 years ago, cutting down trees and bulldozing. The UN began to monitor the mining companies, beginning a process in which the miners would first have to engage with the Indigenous Peoples.  

“What they’re doing is killing the bloodline of Earth with their mining and stripping,” Rose said. “Mother Earth gives us everything we need when we need it … Mother Earth can heal herself if you give her time.”

Sister Mary Rae gave an example of the healing power of Earth. Part of the Amazon rainforest was destroyed and went barren, she said. “The ancestral people came in, began working with and nurturing her, and she came back to life. Earth has her own life force and if it’s nurtured and brought back into balance, it can be restored,” she said.

Rose and Sister Mary Rae also reflected on efforts in the past to kill the culture of Indigenous Peoples. Rose pointed to the boarding schools in the United States that tried to force children to adapt to the white European culture. Some children lost the use of their native language in the boarding schools, she added.

The boarding schools followed the notion of “kill the Indian and save the person,” Rose said. But “you can’t kill the Indian. You can’t kill what God made in our hearts. You can’t kill our soul, even though they tried.”

Rose added that she felt safe at the UN. “I was amazed,” she said. “The first thing I thought of was that could have been shot not long ago for all of us being together.” In the opening session that began with a procession that included an Ecuadorian drum and a pan flute, “I knew I was in the right place,” Rose said. “It was really an interesting time, and I definitely would do it again.” 

Sister Mary Rae sees hope in the healing of relationships between Indigenous Peoples and people of the dominant culture. “The advances in society have given us the opportunity, and the mindset of the United Nations has really helped so much with advancing the rights of all the people,” she said. “We still have a long way to go, and I felt the commitment to stay the course.”