$100 million for community joy ambassadors

Catalyzing eighty community joy revolutions

A community night at 154 Maverick LLC

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There is a special place near Maverick Square, East Boston, locally owned by 154 Maverick LLC. 154 Maverick LLC won a city bid and converted a historic building to host local businesses, ranging from Hugisses Gift Store to acupuncturists, a Spa and restaurants serving great food and beer.

The Tylers lived in one of the residential units and looked after the building. They opened the Atrium of the building to the neighborhood and the commercial and residential tenants of the building.

They made it ours.

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Every month, they hosted community open nights.

We climbed four flights of steps to emerge into a large open room with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, surrounded by a wraparound deck. In front: spectacular views of the Boston skyline; to the right: beautiful summer sunsets over Chelsea Creek; to the left the hill of Jeffries Point.

Kegs were always stocked with delicious, varied local craft beer. They provided tasty snacks. Often a friend played the guitar. Conversation flowed with the beer.

They also made this space available for community gatherings, including a transformative retreat for the organization where I then worked (Children’s HealthWatch).

Building community. Building joy.

We gathered on the wraparound deck at sunset and into the evening.

Community joy ambassadors

The Tylers and 154 Maverick LLC served as community joy ambassadors: people bringing neighbors together and cultivating community joy (emotional wellbeing x time).

We have featured other joy ambassadors here: the founders of Eastie Rising, our committee that started neighborhood nights, the team from ZUMIX.

Individuals can start joy revolutions.

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Do you have an irrational love of polar plunging? Couldn’t plunging be even better with company?

Or maybe you love checkers or chess, bocce, or badminton, standup or improv, learning Russian or teaching Italian.

When you take this passion to your community and enroll others in the activity, you can become a community joy ambassador: cultivating relationships, living into your purpose, and fostering community.

East Boston Social Centers’ Carolina Espinoza partnered with the Mary Ellen Welch Greenway to support a paint night: catalyzing community joy!

Why do we need a community joy ambassador program?

Community joy ambassadors surround us.

Some people naturally step into these roles, but many others are waiting — needing a little support.

A Community Joy Ambassador program can provide that support. When a group of us wanted more social connection in East Boston, Boston’s ONEin3 initiative gave us the structure and connections needed to catalyze neighborhood nights.

Work like this can measurably increase connection in community. We can increase joy by giving more people an opportunity to pursue their passions — together.

Community centers like East Boston Social Centers have a long history of convening community and providing spaces to help people pursue their passions and nurture connections. Once upon a time, a mother sang opera in the Social Centers’ halls, adults cooked big Italian meals, a father coached children in wrestling and gymnastics.

We continue to engage volunteers and foster cross-community connections throughout our programs, but over time as our programs have grown, our space for less structured activities has shrunk. We are not alone; over time American third places have been disappearing.

At the same time, the cost and complexity of supporting programs has increased. Over time, organizations have added needed background checks and other important processes to protect program participants.

We can catalyze more community connections by giving people more opportunities to gather with this additional layer of safety.

East Boston Social Centers hosted community dance classes.

How to structure a community joy ambassador program?

A community joy ambassador program combines those three essential elements: 1) coordination of informal gathering spaces; 2) provision of a layer of safety; and 3) structure and connections.

A Director of Community Joy Ambassadors would catalyze a local movement. This person would:

• Recruit volunteer community joy ambassadors
• Conduct needed background checks
• Deliver training on the pillars of joy and community joy ambassador work
• Oversee community infrastructure to support community joy ambassadors — promoting activities and connecting ambassadors with spaces as needed and available
• Be a thought partner and supporter to community joy ambassadors
• Coordinate regular gatherings of, and ongoing training for, community joy ambassadors

This program’s impact could be amplified if combined with work to increase community third places to for community joy activities.

SparkBoston continued the important work of convening young people, after I had aged out of youth.

What could $100 million do?

This $100,000,000 proposal (part of this series of posts) envisions a $1,100,000 grant ($110,000/ year x 10 years) for 80 communities across the United States. Each grant would support one Director of Community Joy Ambassadors and include a small fund to support community joy ambassador activities.

Centralized support

The funder would provide backbone support: administering grants; providing communities of practice for grantees; supporting process and impact evaluation (with a focus on increased joy, increased sense of purpose, and increased connection in community); working with grantees to identify sustainable funding approaches; and sharing group learnings to build the movement.

The backbone also would develop a training curriculum and operational guide to support Directors, while allowing Directors to tailor their approach for their communities.

Making a difference

Eighty Community Joy Ambassadors programs would strengthen social wellbeing and joy in these communities by forging new social connections, helping people pursue their purpose, and catalyzing fun.

These eighty grants could catalyze a movement of increasing community connection, countering the trends of increased loneliness and disconnection of recent years.

What do you think? Please share your reactions, and your favorite community joy ambassador story (or a photo from one), in comments.

To feature your idea among this series of posts on opportunities to make big bets to catalyze community joy, please contact me on LinkedIn or send me an email.

Please share, subscribe, and join our movement by emailing me or supporting East Boston Social Centers. Look out each week — here and on LinkedIn — for our posts about boosting joy the only way we can: in community.