2022. As much as we prepared for it in 2021, it kicked off with a wave of grief and shock. We embarked that first week of January on our Pilot of the Ramp Up Fellowship with Erin Perry, and the Legacy Arts Project team. We were in masks. We had just learned about the murder of Amariey Leja, a 21-year-old trans woman which happened on New Year's Day in Wilkinsburg. She was a past participant and teen teacher from Legacy Arts Project. Weeks later, the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed, with Erin Perry’s parents on it, in the red truck. Our hearts collectively held space for our friends and partners at Legacy. We also had weeks of school closings or remote classes due to COVID spikes. In retrospect, we are in a much different place today with COVID but we are still healing from the collective loss of life and injustices of oppression. 

Though we might be surrounded by sorrow and pain, the world we continued to build and practice at Assemble offered solitude to our youth, families, staff, and myself. Being able to come together in person was a gift. It became so apparent that healing from the isolation during 2020-21 would be a long, in-depth process. We also continued our commitment to Anti-Racist and Abolitionist teaching practices as a means of trauma-informed care. Again, healing became a crucial aspect to our work through many of our STEAM projects. Social Emotional Learning was critical to all of our workshops. 

There was so much joy in how we continued to share our dreams as we built the cities and YOUtopias of the future. We expanded our team’s capacity by bringing on Tany Hayes as our first ever Afterschool Coordinator, and brought on our first-ever OffSite Programs Coordinator, Jazmine Bailey. Dale Gaddes joined us in January as our new Marketing and Development Manager. With our team’s collective efforts, our Summer programs and partnerships expanded while we also continued to reach out to our community in a deep way. We continued to be consistent while working to (re)introduce Assemble to so many folks. 

We learned so much about how to work together, lift each other up, and show up in real ways. I am grateful for every kid, every neighbor, every guardian, all of our board members, community partners, interns, and of course, our staff. We started to plant the seeds for what would be an even more monumental year in 2023, where we could take action toward being an equitable workplace. Thank you, as you read this, for your support and care. I hope you will be assemble-ling with us soon.

<3 Nina Barbuto, Executive Director