Agenda
Summit Day 1
Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
8:00 - 8:55 a.m.
Registration & Breakfast
9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
Opening Plenary
10:15 - 10:30 a.m.
Break & Transition
10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block A
Education Panel
When the Village Leads: Community Power, Civic Engagement, and Action
This signature panel brings together two visions of community power: civic engagement that equips people to shape their democracy and meet their communities' immediate needs, and the belief that the village itself is the intervention, holding the wisdom, relationships, and cultural strengths that help children and families thrive. Exploring how informed, active civic participation and asset-based community leadership reinforce one another, and invite participants to shift power, build authentic partnerships, and turn community strengths into sustainable, equitable change.
Community Food Systems Workshop
Strategies for the Solidarity Economy
An overview of the Be, Build, Block Theory of Change, with small-group breakouts that use problem trees to trace the root causes of food insecurity and build narratives that reframe how communities talk about and organize around hunger.
Birth Justice Workshop + Film
"Go Back and Get It": Sankofa & Cultural Revitalization
Aditi Subramaniam and Marie-Celeste Condon
Rooted in Sankofa wisdom to go back and get what is precious before moving forward, this storytelling workshop shares the Sankofa Infant Mental Health History Project, retrieving the under-told stories of providers and communities of color in the care and healing of infants and families and inviting participants to recenter healing, ancestry, and culture in their work.
Relational Health Facilitated Discussion
Centering Justice: Group Care as a Path to Restoring Dignity in Healthcare
11:30 - 11:40 a.m.
Break & Transition
11:40 - 12:40 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block B
Education Lightning Talks
Centering the Overlooked: Voice, Belonging & Lived Expertise
A featured Education session pairing two short spotlight talks on centering the voices and expertise of those too often overlooked, followed by shared discussion. Featuring: “Restorative Democracy: What Happens When You Hand Children a Real Decision” (Njeri Gachathi) and “Healing-Centered Housing: A Community Lab for Black & Brown Neurodivergent Families” (Grace Ejiwale).
Community Food Systems Learning Lab
Seeing What's Already There: Asset Mapping for Neighborhood Wellness
Gabby Cole and Martell Bell
This interactive learning lab brings together asset mapping, a real-world case study of the St. Louis Avenue Wellness District, and practical planning tools to help participants identify overlooked community strengths, explore how assets can be connected across sectors, and imagine new possibilities for neighborhood wellbeing.
Birth Justice Workshop
When the Mission Outgrows the Leader
An interactive workshop that reframes burnout, turnover, and stalled progress as a capacity problem rather than a commitment problem, giving leaders, organizers, educators, and healers language for what quietly drains them and practical tools to protect the energy, systems, and relationships their radical dreams depend on, with one Mission-Rich action to carry forward.
Relational Health Workshop
Building Beloved Community: A Parent-Led Framework
An interactive workshop introducing the Beloved Community Framework from Parents Engaging Parents New Jersey, a parent-led approach that centers trust, healing, shared leadership, and civic engagement to move communities beyond transactional engagement toward authentic partnership and lasting systems change.
12:40 - 1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30 - 2:30 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block C
Education Workshop
Curiosity and Connection: Storytelling to Build Belonging
An interactive workshop from Everyday Boston on how curiosity, storytelling, and deep listening can bridge differences and build belonging, giving participants hands-on practice in story exchange, active listening, and follow-up questions that help people feel genuinely seen and heard across lines of difference.
Community Food Systems Workshop
What Feeds a Community Beyond Food?
Angel Hammon, Carl Harrison Jr., Shy Palmer, and Alexandra Sossa
An interactive workshop using personal food stories to uncover the memory, knowledge, and belonging that hold a community food system together, and to identify what participants can carry back into their own work.
Birth Justice Workshop
The Village Begins Here: Community-Led Peer Support
An interactive workshop on how community-led peer support can strengthen maternal and infant wellbeing by fostering belonging, reducing isolation, and weaving together peer supporters, parents, doulas, breastfeeding counselors, providers, and local organizations into sustainable ecosystems of care.
Relational Health Facilitated Discussion
From Black Joy to Fatherhood
A facilitated conversation connecting Black Boy Joy as a community protection strategy with father-centered community building, tracing how belonging, leadership, and wellbeing are cultivated across the lifespan from boyhood into fatherhood. Craig Aarons-Martin and Anthony Henderson draw on the “village blueprint” and Father Engagement frameworks and invite participants into dialogue about how schools, families, and organizations can affirm identity, engage fathers as assets, and build the village that helps Black boys and men thrive.
2:30 - 2:40 p.m.
Break & Transition
2:40 - 3:40 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block D
Education Workshop
Centering Youth Voice: Empowering Immigrant & Undocumented Students
Jasiel Fernandez and Jaien Josefina Lee
An interactive workshop on centering youth voice and moving from asset-based language to the authentic empowerment of immigrant and undocumented students.
Community Food Systems Panel
Organizing Toward a Food Sovereign Detroit: Reflections on the Dream Tank Event
A panel of Detroit community food leaders and graduate food systems fellows reflects on a recent Dream Tank leadership retreat, where they gathered to “dream big, organize smart, and build the future of food together,” then invites the audience to imagine solutions for food and nutrition systems that are democratized, decolonized, and community-centered.
Birth Justice Lightning Talks
Reclaiming the Seeded Lineage: From Postpartum Nourishment to Neighborhood Food Power
Femeika Elliott and Cassandra Loftin
Spotlight talks exploring the connections between land, growing, and nourishment, from reclaiming food traditions that support birth and postpartum care to transforming neighborhood yards into sources of fresh food, education, and community food power.
Relational Health Facilitated Discussion
Flourish: Centering Connection in Perinatal Care for People With Substance Use Disorders
Lauren Graber
Lessons from Flourish and the Perinatal Substance Use ECHO about creating relational, trauma informed, and stigma free care for pregnant and parenting people with substance use disorders. This talk explores how centering trust, connection, and relationships can transform perinatal care and strengthen support for parents and families.
3:40 - 4:00 p.m.
Break & Transition
4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Day 1 Closing Plenary
Day 1 Evening | Extended Programming
5:30 - 7:00 p.m.
Boston Breastfeeding Coalition - 10 Year Anniversary Reception
7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block E
Creative Arts & Healing Experiences
Time Out! Press Play!
Come As You Are
P.A.U.S.E.D
Healing Village
Heather. Evoy
Summit Day 2
Friday, October 23, 2026 | 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
8:00 - 8:55 a.m.
Registration & Breakfast
9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
Day 2 Opening Plenary & Keynote Speaker
10:15 - 10:30 a.m.
Break & Transition
10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block F
Education Workshop
Radical Belonging: Reimagining Early Childhood Leadership
This interactive session reimagines early childhood leadership as a collective responsibility rooted in belonging and collective care, exploring how authentic partnerships across higher education, workforce development, and community can build human-centered systems that honor educators, children, and families.
Community Food Systems Panel
Community Power in Practice
Three practitioners working across community-based research, policy and advocacy, and community engagement explore how these disciplines reinforce one another to build lasting community power, followed by a hands-on skills-and-assets mapping breakout.
Participatory Research Panel
Evaluation in Two Languages
BCNC program leaders offer an honest, mid-stream look at Operation Evaluation, exploring what culturally-responsive, bilingual evaluation demands of a multilingual, multi-program organization across 50 years of serving Greater Boston’s AAPI communities, and inviting attendees to trade practical evaluation moves across difference.
Relational Health Lightning Talk
Beyond the Budget: Whole-Family Financial Wellbeing
This interactive Learning Lab explores how stress, trauma, emotional regulation, and executive functioning shape financial wellbeing, while introducing practical tools to support whole-family economic mobility.
11:30 - 11:40 a.m.
Break & Transition
11:40 - 12:40 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block G
Education Workshop
From Collective Care to Collective Power
This interactive session explores how collective care, belonging, and meaningful youth voice can create communities where young people are supported to thrive, lead, and shape change.
Community Food Systems Workshop
Food as Ceremony: Ways to Assert Who We Are
Cami Fredericks, Grant Gliniecki, paradyse oakley, and Dulce Mirian Porras
A hands-on, experiential workshop in which we join together in altar-building, collective art-making, and eating as a practice of ceremony — honoring ancestors and asserting who we are.
Birth Justice Lightning Talk
The Village Around Birth: Maternal & Infant Health
A featured Birth Justice session bringing together three community leaders for short spotlight talks on culturally affirming, community-led maternal and infant health, followed by shared discussion. Featuring: “Building Beloved Communities Through Queer Birth Work and Reproductive Justice” (Tayla Kelly); “Breastfeeding & Pumping Support: Community-Centered Strategies to Help Families Meet Their Feeding Goals” (Brittany Regan); and “Birth Justice in Action: Community Solutions to Maternal Health Inequities” (Brandy Watts).
Relational Health Workshop
Healing Beyond Systems: Community-Centered Approaches to Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families
A community-centered workshop exploring approaches that heal beyond systems and support the wellbeing, dignity, and belonging of immigrant and refugee families.
12:40 - 1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30 - 2:00 p.m.
Poster Session
2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Block H
Education Workshop
Theater as an Organizing Tactic
Gabriela Fuentes
Reclaiming theater as a community organizing tactic, this hands-on session draws on Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, Brecht’s Epic Theater, and Iowa’s first Spanish-language community theater, Proyecto Echoes Migrantxs, to show how performance can recruit new audiences, tell uncomfortable truths, and sustain organizers, moving people from witnesses to participants through voice warm-ups, improv, and collaborative scene-building.
Community Food Systems Workshop
There is No Agriculture Without Culture
In this hands-on workshop, program managers and aspiring community organizers learn the co-design process and map the networking community already present in their region, so the food systems they build grow from local culture.
Birth Justice Learning Lab
Planting Intentions: Creative Expressions for Community Healing
An interactive arts-based learning lab using storytelling, grounding practices, and a symbolic planting activity to show how creative expression can support emotional wellness and community healing, sending participants home with replicable, culturally responsive strategies for schools, youth programs, and community spaces.
Relational Health Lightning Talks
The Ties That Sustain Us: Connection, Dignity & Relational Wellbeing
Christy Moulin, Vicente Sanabria, and Lathan Singleton
Spotlight talks on connection, care, and the relationships that sustain wellbeing, followed by shared discussion. Featuring: "Aligned Masculinity" (Vicente Sanabria); "From Lost in the System to System Navigator: Building Community-Led Health Navigation Programs" (Lathan Singleton); and "Collective Calm: Lessons from the Caregiver Assist Line of Massachusetts Launch" (Christy Moulin).
3:00 - 3:10 p.m.
Break & Transition
3:10 - 4:30 p.m.
Day 2 Closing Plenary