Bridging History

This article on Kennett’s Inheritance is intended to give the reader a backdrop to hold when exploring Bridging the Community. Inheritance is a gift that has come to us through the land we inhabit and the legacy that the residents, who lived before us, have left behind. Kennett’s inheritance is central to many of us, who have been involved in our community work, and in listening to the stories, we are certain that you will hear the same resonance.

We all have in common living on the same inherited land. This is the smallest whole that is not divisible when working as a community. Reflecting on the spirit, the essential virtue of the land, a grassroots group came to see it as “peaceful progressive inclusivity” and took that as our living philosophy for overall guidance and meaning in our community work. Bridging the Community, came out of this and continues to be a grassroots leading process, a process which includes an openness to exercising choice, people choosing to step into the grassroots leading and volunteer process. You will marvel at the many ways initiatives have started and continue because of the living out of this philosophy.

Behind all this, Kennett Square has been nourished, fed and inspired by the Quaker Friends, who created a platform for peace, caring and inclusivity in the early 1800s. One can walk down East Linden Street and see the plaques on the homes that identify Quakers and run-away slaves, who lived side-by-side, essentially living out a higher order of humanity together. They saw the dignity in each human being, regardless of the dangers involved in feeding, clothing, protecting and aiding a run-away slave. The Quaker process has instructed and influenced what Kennett is today; the Quaker’s way of being is behind the care and attention that is being given to each child through the variety of youth programs and the way the town faces and processes adversity and divisiveness.

Today, the dominant culture in this country looks at a problem and tries to solve it by generating causes to keep us energized. The infrastructures and costs involved then use up the resources of the community and through time often reduce any spirit that was present.

The people of Kennett start from the heart, stay on the potential-side, encourage and support grass-roots leaders and volunteers, and build community spirit from this foundation. It has been proven time and time again, that this way of living sustains us through hard times and brings inspiration at creative times.

We, the people of the Kennett community are committed to honoring our inheritance and leaving a personal and group legacy of advancing humanness and nourishing life for the next generation. It naturally follows that this underlies the secret of our community’s ongoing progress in moving towards wholeness and oneness.

Walking the streets in Kennett in 1982, I experienced a comfortable, quiet town that was comprised of residents who had lived in the community for quite some time. The town square had a 5 & 10 store with a lunch counter, a pharmacy, a mercantile goods store, a couple of diners, a sub shop, an historic inn and restaurant, a jewelry store, and a men’s clothing store. There was a grocery store at the edge of the town square where most residents shopped. In addition to the commercial stores, there were the lawyers, accountants and medical clinics. The town cared for the local residents, and only a couple of the places drew customers from beyond the Kennett area. The town residents would say that it was a great place to raise a family.

During this time, I visited mushroom camps and provided preventive health care services to the Mexican men who had recently migrated to the area to work in the mushroom industry. Many of the men were housed on the mushroom farm property, so they were not very visible in the town of Kennett. The community didn’t seem to be impacted by the immigration that was taking place at that time.

In 1986, amnesty was granted for the undocumented worker through the Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA): “A blanket amnesty for some 2.7 million undocumented immigrants.” This was the first dramatic change that the town of Kennett experienced. Mexican families were now joining their husband/father in the United States and settling into the town of Kennett and its surrounding area. It took a couple of years before I started to receive referrals for prenatal Mexican women, who were living the dream of having a child born a United States citizen. However, by the time I retired from my public health nursing job in 2014, my caseload of thirty-five plus families was mostly Mexican women.

Housing and health care became two of the major issues related to this change. Landlords came into the area and filled their apartments quickly. Realtors found opportunities for home ownership. All of this helped serve the new population entering the town community, yet rents and mortgages were high, and doubling up family habitation was the trend. The pay for a mushroom picker was paid by “piece” or volume, which still left the Mexican worker with a low salary despite long work hours for seven days a week.

I recall one event, when a neighborhood was concerned by the large number of cars that were being parked in a driveway on their street. A long-time resident led a procession accompanied by other long-time residents, placing yellow ribbons on the mailboxes of the over-populated residences. The aim was to draw the attention of the code enforcement officer about the doubling up of housing and the impact that this may have on the value of their home properties. This led to educating the residents about town safety and zone rules, but only through a formal process. There was no neighbor-to-neighbor communication since there was a language and cultural barrier. Obviously, we had a lot of work to do to become a vibrant, interactive, harmonious community. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that a team of community advocates organized neighborhood meetings, and held these meetings in the very neighborhood where the yellow ribbons had been placed. During these meetings, the code enforcement officer, the landlord, and a group of apartment residents accompanied by an interpreter discussed what the roles and responsibilities needed to be for each group. This communication appeared to bring some new neighborhood interaction between the permanent residents and the Mexican immigrants. The best part was that a local group of bilingual youth assumed the role of walking around the affected neighborhoods and spoke to each household about Kennett’s housing codes in the spirit of inclusivity. Later that year, Nancy Ayllon received the Chester County Outstanding Youth Citizen award for this volunteer leadership.

Provision of health care was the other issue that had to be faced with the new influx of Mexican immigrants. A couple of years before amnesty, a bilingual and culturally competent public health nurse and practitioner had left the traditional public health government agency and joined with La Comunidad Hispana, a social service agency, to bring a nurse managed health center to the community. Peg Harris understood the need for preventive health care, as well as the importance of basic medical care for the vulnerable, and took this on as a mission. The model of a nurse managed health clinic was a fairly new concept, and one that matched the Mexican culture and could be operated at a lower cost. The immigrants arrived in the United States healthy and with few medical issues.

Over time, performing the back-breaking agricultural work, eating the American fast food diet and having less opportunities for walking than in Mexico, brought about a need for medical care that addressed more orthopedic, diabetic, arthritic and high blood pressure issues. Prenatal care came later, and to date, the infant morbidity rate remains above the national average. Through Peg’s leadership and others, the health clinic today is a federally qualified health center (FQHC), which receives federal funds for the underserved and sees over 4,000 patients a year.

The story of Kennett Square’s current revitalization begins in 1998, when my public health nursing hours were reduced due to budget cuts. My experience as a home visitor helped me realize that many resources were needed in the vulnerable Mexican community and African American neighborhoods, and when I engaged the larger community, I experienced the potential for providing those resources. I decided to activate the idea of volunteerism community-wide, and also volunteer my time to take on a community leadership role. It was at this time that the corporate headquarters of Genesis Health Ventures was relocating to this conventional community. Also, there was the development of the Kennett Square Revitalization Task Force that received a Main Street PA grant to develop the economic/business side of Kennett Square. There was a voiced concern that the town would lose its unique “small town” culture with “big business” coming to town. In concert with this major town change, the number of Mexican family residents was growing, and it was clear that the Mexican people had moved to Kennett for a better life and planned to stay. The mushroom industry was in need of dependable workers, and the Mexican culture considered agricultural work “honorable.” The mushroom industry was unique because it called for agricultural workers year around, as the mushrooms were grown in small buildings with a controlled temperature. The Mexican youth also started to fill the schools and the parents expressed high hopes for their children to have a better life in regards to higher education and employment in the United States.

With the help of my friends, Terry Anderson and Sandra Maslow who were working in organizational development, I gathered a diverse cross-section of community members to discuss how we could deal with the community changes in a positive way, especially the changing structure of the town and the ongoing influx of migrants. We spent several sessions reflecting on the history of Kennett and what brought settlers to the area. We drew on the wisdom of the Lenape Indian, who responded to the energy of the land, as their way to build a home that matched the tribe’s nature. The Lenape Indian was peaceful and was drawn to southern Chester County’s peaceful land that included an immense variety of flora and fauna over rolling hills. This grassroots group decided to create a phrase that described the energy that drew the Lenape Indian to settle in this area, as well as the peacemaking Quaker settlers. We came up with the phrase – peaceful, progressive inclusivity, which we then started to promote as our town’s living philosophy. This was the birth of the “current Kennett” – an awakening of the spirit and nature of our town that was calling the early settlers way back when. The nature of the land is something that belongs to all of us; thus it is an obvious starting point that could serve as an all-encompassing unifier for the residents of Kennett Square area.

In looking for a forum that brings people together to learn about our inspiring roots, we came up with the concept of Bridging the Community bi-monthly meetings led by guiding principles.

• • Come from the heart, not a task
  • Keep our community efforts a process, not a program
  • Focus on potential, not problem
  • Work for community, not personal agenda
  • Add no infrastructural burden; which means no officers, membership or dues
  • Each person discovers a role to play, not only delegated officials

The original plan of scheduling the meetings at different locations around town continues to this day, and reminders of each meeting are advertised in the newspapers and recounted via word-of-mouth. By traveling around town, we enter neighborhoods where many residents haven’t entered. We meet at mushroom farms where many residents have never visited. In the near future, we are gathering at La Comunidad Hispana, which will be the first visit for many. We hold meetings at local businesses where many have never shopped. It is a peaceful, progressive, inclusive way to introduce community members to the broader community. In fact, the Each and All Dialogue Group formed at the same time with an open invitation to any interested community member. We joined in a reflective dialogue process to deepen our understanding of how to live by our town’s philosophy.

As a public health home visiting nurse, I served mostly minorities. Through time, I experienced and respected the core values and talents that this minority group offered the broader community. The community forum (i.e. Bridging the Community) encourages each person to see that there is a place for each and all. I might add that each community member is needed in creating a thriving community.

Bridging the Community has been a vibrant and community life-giving process since its birth in September 1997. (Previous meetings had been held and called Community Bridging Generations.) Bridging the Community is an ongoing, bi-monthly gathering of between 35 and 70 persons of all ages, creeds, economic levels, and cultures; always with old and new attendees. Never has the Bridging the Community gathering been cancelled due to weather or other events and proudly celebrated its 100th meeting on March 11, 2015. When the tragic terroristic attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred and everyone was in total despair and disbelief, Bridging the Community went on with a group of about fifty community members gathering together to affirm commUNITY!

Coming together to share resources and needs and to bring new ideas while providing an arena for anyone to step into is progressively changing the Kennett Square culture. In the documentation of the meetings, we can see that there is a gradual entry of the Latino residents into the community circle. First the providers of Latino services attended and continue to attend, then there were ESL students who attended with their teacher to practice English and join in, and recently in 2015, two new Mexican residents came to “Bridging” and announced that they wanted to learn more about volunteerism because this concept was unfamiliar in Mexico. The meetings have a bi-lingual co-facilitator, who can interpret for anyone that needs help. There are also certain Mexican residents who attend meetings regularly and bring information back to their friends and family. The same progression of participation in Bridging the Community meetings occurred with the town’s African American minority group. First, the African Methodist Episcopal Church representatives attended the meetings; then some of the local leaders showed up, followed by the clients who received services from local agencies.

One of the most stunning examples of how the African American community took leadership, as the result of the empowerment that came out of engaging Bridging the Community was reported in a local newspaper. The Wilmington News Journal POSTED: 09/03/09

“Joan Holliday has been employed for 28 years by the Chester County Health Department as a public health visiting nurse. One day in October 2003, she was chatting with longtime resident Theresa Bass, 52 years old.

“Theresa was complaining about the conditions of the neighborhood, that it was really going downhill, and no one seemed to do anything or care about it,” Holliday recounted. “I told her that it was her street, and if she wanted change, the people who live there were the only ones who could do it.”

Bass teamed with longtime residents Donnie and Laura Jackson, and with Holliday’s guidance sought the assistance of the Alliance for Better Housing. That led to two five-year grants: $686,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development for improvements to secondary downtown streets, and $450,000 from the Wachovia Regional Foundation to develop tutoring, computer and financial planning programs for residents.

“At the beginning of the project, people thought they could not make a difference,” said Holliday. “Now they know they are the only ones who can do it. East Linden is a vital street, with a lot of spirit.”

The Bridging the Community process continually promotes working with our youth. When we speak about potential, it is a no-brainer to focus on the youth, who are our future. “Come from the heart” and “No infrastructural burden” are two additional principles that have guided the community youth efforts such as:

• • After-The-Bell, an after-school program for middle school students in partnership with the schools and staffed mostly by volunteers.
  • Study Buddies, which provided after-school tutoring for elementary schools in four town church basements and was totally operated with volunteers for over eight years. Currently, one program has become its own neighborhood nonprofit and holds Study Buddies all four nights.
  • Mentoring Youth in Kennett Elementary, which provided mentoring to the town elementary school students by retirement community volunteers for over eight years. Together for Education, a nonprofit organization staffed entirely by community volunteers except for the coordinator position, continues mentoring the elementary school students.
  • The Garage Community and Youth Center, which provides after-school tutoring and mentoring for middle school and high school students and is now a nonprofit.
  • Migrant Education, which organized after-school tutoring at the Kennett Area YMCA for Latino youth using volunteers.
  • KHS youth-led street fairs to make REAL the living philosophy of Bridging the Community with the themes of “Chip and Dip Festival” (promotion of volunteerism), “We are Family,” and “Colors of Kennett.”

Picture for the Future: In my heart of hearts, I believe that Bridging the Community is now part of the Kennett community culture and will continue, even when I and other regular attendees are gone. Bridging the Community is an ongoing volunteer process and not a funded program. The only formality is one of assuring that there are two facilitators at the meeting to share the Bridging vision and philosophy along with its guiding principles and the structuring of time for the meeting. On leaving a Bridging gathering, Tom Hoehle, a volunteer Bridging leader would say, “I feel like I have been shot out of a cannon!” or “We accomplished more community work tonight than a board of directors in a year!” There is a bonding and joining together that can’t be measured. There is an affirmation of one’s role in the community, and the good work that is being done. There is a refueling of one’s mission, and when everyone experiences that, we ultimately are on the same page. There is a crossing of boundaries with new ideas offered and new volunteers signing-up for efforts. It is a great place to be for one and one-half hours bi-monthly, yet more importantly, one that carries the message out into time and space beyond the meetings.