 Good morning, everyone. And welcome to the 2022 Vermont Community Leadership Summit. My name's Julie Moore, and I am both the chair of the VCRD board, as well as the Vermont Secretary of Natural Resources. And it is a pleasure to be here in person with so many of you this morning. Our first order of business is to get to hear a little bit from President Parwinder Graywall, who is the new or began as president of Castleton, VTC, and NVU earlier this summer on July 1. But on July 1 of 2023, will become president of the new Vermont State University. President Graywall brings a tremendous amount of experience in higher education, as well as R&D experience in government and industry from across the US. He was the founding dean of the College of Sciences, among other positions, at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, which was also a new university created through the merger of three major institutions. His academic background in agriculture, plant pathology and zoology. And he is an internationally recognized nematologist, meaning somebody who studies the interaction between microscopic worms and plants. His most recent research focused on community resilience through local self-reliance and food, energy, and water. It's a really impressive background and one that seems extremely well suited to some of the challenges and opportunities facing Vermont. And we're grateful to him and his team for welcoming us here today and hosting all of you community leaders from across the state. And so with that, I will turn it over to President Graywall. I just want to welcome you all to this particular summit. I'm in fact, I'll just stay behind a little. I'm very, very excited about this summit. There are many reasons for that. It's not just because I'm here and invited to say something because I relate this to personally. This kind of work, if you engage in community engagement, community development type work, to me it's one of the most rewarding piece of work or any activity that you would ever do. It's from my personal experience at Ohio State University when I was a professor, I engaged in with the city of Cleveland after the real estate crisis. They were dealing with issues such as vacant lots, vacant properties, crime. And we engaged along with our students and other faculty with the city, with the local communities and with community organizers, with nonprofit organizations to re-envision how we can repurpose those vacant properties. And we ended up developing community gardens, market gardens, and putting in renewable energy mechanisms in those lawns and or vacant properties. That work not only was personally satisfying to me, but I took students that were working with me, high school students, undergraduate students, PhD students, and even post-doctoral scientists. The change that I saw in my students was even more rewarding. They started to think that they are not here just to get a degree. They can actually make a change. They can do some bigger things in their life. They started to form goals. Based on the rewarding experience that I had, we started to develop research, to develop community resilience through local self-reliance in food, energy, and water. That work we published and we received so many notes on that, so many people contacted us about that. So I see that all of you passionate about the work that you do, and I know that it is very, very rewarding work. Based on that initial work, when I moved to University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, we established a formal program in the university called Community Engaged Scholarship and Learning. The main premise of that is faculty and students working together with community leaders like yourself as equal partners in co-envisioning solutions to local problems and building solutions and implementing solutions. And that is now a university-wide program for students that just start within the university and then they can further engage in with higher level courses as well. So the good news here is why I'm so excited to see so many of you engaged in this work in this small state that the new university that we will build Vermont State University. We plan to set it up as a state-wide community-engaged university in addition to the mandate which is to build a hybrid university. So I invite all of you to work with us, to work with our faculty and students. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me personally if you need to do so so that we can build those partnerships that are meaningful, that make a difference, that will have impact on our local communities. And that's my personal passion and I relate that to you because I see all of you do this work from your heart. And especially all those who are volunteers. I love you all because this is amazing that you engage in this kind of activity. So welcome again and have a wonderful conference. There will be a lot of good ideas exchanged here today and I look through the program and it is really an exciting day. Thank you. Thank you President Graywell for the warm welcome and those really on the mark remarks. So as board chair for the Vermont Council on Rural Development for nearly four years now it's been a pleasure to see the impact of this organization's work in Vermont communities. VCRD is an independent nonpartisan nonprofit that believes in local leadership and the ability of communities to help set local priorities for action and works to unleash the power of Vermonters to create a better future. Fundamentally the Vermont Council on Rural Development is about civic engagement and democracy and through our work creating opportunities and forums for ideas to be exchanged for people to meet one another and for projects to come into being that orient a community towards the future. We're honored, truly honored to have all of you here with us for this day of celebrating local leadership, sharing and training and framing ways to strengthen all that we do together in service for the future of our communities and our state. So you have my thanks and warm wishes for a great conference. And with that I'll ask the VCRD Executive Director Brian Lowe to provide a bit of an overview for the day. Wow, there are a lot of people here. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you President Graywall for those nice remarks to welcome us and good luck to you in the important work that you have ahead. Julie, thank you for your leadership of the VCRD Board and always pushing us to be thinking about what else we can do for communities around the state. And to everybody here today, thank you. Thank you for giving your time and coming to join with us today. It's exciting to see so many new faces, some familiar friends, and our hope today is that you leave here feeling rejuvenated and recommitted to your work, that you get to see some friends and reconnect after years and that you get to meet some new people and make some new connections. In a moment, and is this too loud? Can you guys hear me okay? Okay, good. In a moment we're gonna hear from the accomplished poet and author Rajni Eddins. Rajni's art touches many themes relevant to our collective work. Our shared humanity, the centrality of community and youth, the importance of being open to learning from one another. He also speaks to the challenges that we face and a line from one of his works has really stuck with me because it embodies a central challenge that drives much of our shared effort. He says, as part of a larger poem, that quote, American ideals must be a strive for reality rather than a cliche banality. And that is it exactly. As we gather here today to rightly celebrate community successes, successes that will be apparent on panels about creative ideas around housing, new community spaces, successes in the creative economy or in developing and implementing community scale climate solutions. What we are really celebrating are small steps towards strengthening or repairing or building a new, the civic fabric that binds us and all of our communities together. And as we gather here today and speak of striving for ideals, we need to acknowledge the long history of this place that we love and the many hundreds of years of stewardship of these lands by the Abnaki people. We are also going to talk honestly about some challenges that we need to face together with workshops and discussions focused on issues like freedom and unity and Vermont's polarities, how to engage the next generation of leadership, how to think about demographic change in Vermont and how to have necessary conversations about racism in Vermont. Talking and thinking about these challenges is equally or more important than repairing or strengthening or equally or more important to repairing, strengthening and building a new, the civic fabric that we share and that on which so much depends. Striving for these ideals matters a great deal. Smarter people than I have referenced this quote that I will share, but I believe it with an equal fervor. Abraham Lincoln called American democracy the great experiment. And it is, there's no guarantee that it persists and there is an uncertainty inherent in democracy that requires every citizen, every resident, all of us to step forward and contribute to the challenges and opportunities that we face in our communities. And that is why I'm so excited to be with you here today. So if I can get this to work on the slide, yes, I did it. I think somebody just lost a bet. On the slide behind me. On the slide behind me, you can see a map of Vermont with many towns colored green, meaning that at least one person is here from each of those towns. And since we did this, we've had about 200 additional registrations. So there's a lot more green on the slide than you can see. What it says to us is democracy requires participation. It requires showing up for your community. It requires stepping forward to support a better future. And that's what you are doing today and that's what you're doing in your work. This next slide, you can see a consolidated list of some of the comments that we got from you all through the registration portal. This slide gives a sense of what communities across the state were different volunteers and leaders. What are they working on? Some of these issues like housing are not surprising, but sometimes it can feel like you're working alone trying to push a heavy rock up a hill. And maybe there's some comfort in knowing that a lot of us are trying to push heavy rocks up that same hill. You can see on the next slide here that there are many different issues we're working on. And this is included in the program because I know it's hard to read from afar some of these details. This next slide captures some of the biggest needs people highlighted when they registered. This is not simple or easy work. And there are a lot of needs in front of us. One of our hopes as the Vermont Council on Rural Development is that today you'll be able to listen and learn from different speakers and different presenters. Hear their ideas and address some of the issues that you raised when you registered. We have an impressive and talented group of speakers and presenters. And we have the opportunity not just to hear from established leaders and high-ranking officials who have great wisdom to share, but also from volunteers, from veterans, from people with lived experience, from people who never saw themselves as community leaders and still might not call themselves community leaders even if they are. You have the chance also to learn from experts who are giving workshops on practical skills like leadership under uncertainty, fundraising, how to keep leadership sustainable, and much more. All the speakers and presenters today are people whose work strengthens their community, strengthens our shared civic fabric, and strengthens our democracy. I am really grateful to them for their time and commitment today. I also wanna note and thank the Vermont professionals of color who will be hosting an affinity space for black, indigenous, and people of color right outside next door in Conan, room 103. Many of the breakout sessions will be in Conan, and that affinity space will be in Conan 103. That space is reserved for black, indigenous, and people of color participating in the summit. As Julie said, VCRD is an independent nonprofit that often acts as a neutral facilitator in communities or on complicated projects throughout the state. We believe in locally defined progress, the potential to build prosperous and resilient communities, and in the marshaling of resources, democratic engagement, and collective action. We know this work is hard. It can be hard to overcome inertia in your community. It can be dispiriting to see the politics at the national level at times. And honestly, it can be hard to engage in your community even when you want to, even when you believe in that shared future with so many distractions and so many other responsibilities. But you're here, you made it. There's enormous potential in this room. And our hope today is that you participate in the summit, that you learn some new things, you meet some new people, you see yourself in a panelist or in a presenter, and you take that idea back with you to your community. So I've got to say a couple words about how the day will work, just some of the kind of key logistics for how we're going to move 500 people around VTC over the next couple of hours. I'm learning as a first year executive director that VCRD does not do things in half measure. So in the next hour or so, we'll hear from Rajni Eddens and we'll hear from a number of community leaders about their story, either for their organization or a project they're working on in their community called Spark Stories. These are short, five minute, exciting stories, inspiring stories from different leaders around the state. Then we're gonna hand out three awards to some transformational leaders who've done really tremendous things with their time in community or across the state. Then we break up for different sessions. And so this is important. The day is organized in a way that aligns with many of the interests that we heard from people. And so I wanna make sure you understand our design. And I'm gonna do this quickly because I know we're running a little bit behind. If you see on your program in the agenda an S, that stands for skills workshop. This is an expert led workshop that is meant to teach practical skills if you're interested. An F, F stands for forum, forum or events with kind of larger discussion topics. And they're led by expert facilitators who are asking these broader questions because we want to learn from you. These are issues that matter a great deal for Vermont's future. And we'll have scribes in those forums taking down your ideas, your concerns, your thoughts about challenges or opportunities but not your name so that we can hear and think and grapple with some of these difficult challenges. P is for panels. I'm pretty excited about a number of these. You're gonna see just an incredible range of wonderful people who are sharing their time and their experience with us. And these are the folks we hope you really see yourself in and take some ideas with you back to your community. And then N, N is for networking. This is a new thing for us. You're gonna have to let me know how this goes if you participate. To us, it's all about people. We want to give people a chance to meet one another, to learn from one another, to meet major foundations, to meet different organizations that focus on leadership or different funders. And honestly, it's been a hard couple years. We want people to meet each other and have fun here today as well. If, like me, you're a little bit introverted, fear not. Each of these different networking sessions has a central activity. So the burden of meeting people is not placed only on you, right? There's an organizing activity so you can participate and meet people. And it's not all about, it's not all you having to introduce yourself to everybody. We're gonna need to work together to make today go smoothly with this many folks here. Please be punctual. Please be disciplined in listening and reflecting back. Please be respectful to the moderators who are volunteering and giving their time to bring different voices together. Lunch will be served in the VTC cafeteria, which is on the other side of Morrill Hall. There's a map on the first page of your program, but it's on the other side of Morrill Hall. It's about a five minute walk. So keep that in mind. It's only about an hour for lunch. There's seating for 250 in the cafeteria. There's seating outside. You can bring your lunch back here. All lunches are boxed so that it's easy for you to decide where you want to sit and so you can move around. And then at the end of the day, there's gonna be an ice cream social with Ben and Jerry's ice cream. So don't miss it back here. I'm starting around four or four, 15. Finally, two last things from me. First, I wanna thank a couple people starting with the VCRD team. Margaret Gibson, Jenna Koloski, Alyssa Johnson, Jessica Savage, Kim Rupp, Hannah Carpino, and Laura Cabin Bailey. This is an incredible group of people dedicated to our state and dedicated to listening and lifting up others' ideas and approaches to some of the hardest problems that we face. Thank you. To Paul Costello, who unfortunately could not come today, but who built this wonderful crazy ship that we are all now collectively sailing. Thank you. To the VCRD board, to the Vermont Technical College, to our many sponsors who are listed on the agenda, and who in particular I do wanna take a moment to thank because we would not be able to do this without their generosity. Northfield Savings Bank, Velco, the Vermont Community Foundation, the Vermont Humanities, Front Porch Forum, Ben and Jerry's Foundation, VSECU, the Alchemist and the Alchemist Foundation, Efficiency Vermont, 7th Gen, the Tillitson Fund, Union Mutual, UVM's Office of Engagement, Killington Resort, Cabot Creamery, National Life, Preservation Trust, the Small Business Administration, the Vermont Economic Development Authority, Vital Leadership Coaching, VT Digger and CCTV Productions. Thank you. Second and last, the, I would like to call your attention to a list of names in your program on page 30. These are people that have been nominated by their community to come to this conference because of the way they have stepped up, either during the pandemic or giving their time to support a community project that wouldn't have happened but for their energy, or for a long history of selflessness on behalf of their community and others. These are great leaders. And at a time when it can be hard to find heroes on a national stage, it's nice to know that there's a good number among you today. So I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope this is rejuvenating summit, that you get to see some old friends, meet some new people, think differently about our state, its history and its future. Thank you for all you are doing to strengthen the civic fabric in your communities and to collectively help us strengthen democracy and make the ideals for which we strive more than a cliche banality. I think I missed a couple slides there, sorry, or maybe we're on a different loop, but let me see here. I'll leave it there. And with that, it's my honor to introduce the poet and author Rajni Eddins. Rajni, just a quick introduction and then we'll pass it over to Rajni. Rajni has been working with community audiences for 27 years. He was the youngest member of the African American Writers Alliance at age 11. Of all the testimonials and descriptions of Rajni's work, I thought I would share an excerpt from the accomplished Vermont librarian, Barbara Shatara. She says, I am struck by the many ways Rajni Eddins has enriched this library and our community. His work in schools, the Young Writers Project, the Clemens Farm, and as an artist and performer at Area Ventures has expanded the audience for poetry and the spoken word. His mentorship and workshops have inspired writers across generations. His readings took my breath away and the poems have a raw power to them that Rajni brings to life in his readings. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Rajni Eddins. Good morning. Good morning. How are you today? Good morning. Blessings, it's good to see each of you. It's definitely a blessing to be here with you all. I'm going to share a little bit about my story and a few pieces with you and I hope that you will find it inspiring, encouraging, empowering, and challenging all fundamental aspects of leadership in service to community and to each other. The first thing I want to share with you is I stand on the shoulders of the people who came before me. My mother, Randy Eddins, is the founder of the first Black Writers Group in the Northwest in Seattle, Washington, known as the African American Writers Alliance. So as a child, she would often encourage me to read her pieces with feeling, feeling was key. So having that emotional connection to the power of word sound power and the music of language is something I came by quite naturally from her tutelage, so please give her a hand. I'm going to open with a piece, actually, that's written by her. Some of you may already be familiar with it. It's called, I'd like there to be a war where nobody came. So it is called a response. When you know your part, please, I invite you to sing along. Could everybody rub their hands together like this? When it gets warm, send the energy my way. It's called, send in love. I receive it, I reciprocate it. I'd like there to be a war where nobody came. I'd like there to be a war where where the gunners didn't show and the flyers didn't flow like a river carrying death to those below where artillery moved too slow, missed the boat and the whole dang show. And we all refused to go. I said, we all refused to go. I'd like there to be a war where I'd like there to be a war where where the infantry said no in crisp tones the taste of snow and the bombers stated clear they won't go in an ear and sharpshooters closed their eyes much to the brass great surprise. And there was peace with no reprise. We chose the peace with no reprise. I'd like there to be a war where I'd like there to be a war where where we first would check ourselves see what our causes do foretell tweak where tweaking would do well and maybe check ourselves again. Remembering some crazy macho in does not signify a win cannot signify a win. So I'll say it once again I'd like there to be a war where I'd like there to be a war where we'd like there to be a war where wouldn't you? Beautiful. That's the real singers in here. I think it's important to start with that particular piece not only because it came from my mother but also because the messaging behind it speaks to us not compromising with warfare with honoring that that piece is a vital right of humanity that our love for ourselves and for each other is a key component to any leadership we exemplify. My time in Vermont since I moved from Seattle, Washington some 12 years ago has been challenging in many ways dealing with a lot of microaggressions and assaults on my character for speaking truth. My experiences racially it taught me about the kind of guys of the Northeast, how Malcolm spoke about the wolf and the fox and the need for more sincere transformation that speaks to the value of humanity from Africa to the present. So I'm glad I was fortunate to have the upbringing I had that has allowed me to be able to alchemize the things I experienced to heal myself and to hold space for teachable moments. So in light of all of the brutality that black people have experienced in this country and seeing through that lens as an undergirding connection to all of our humanity I share my art in this vein. So this is a piece that was written shortly after the verdict of George Zimmerman who was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin and it's been spoken many times since especially during the year of 2020 during the time of more active global uprisings and protests. So I share this with you for that purpose to empower you, to challenge and grow, to encourage and inspire you. Lynching is not dead. It's done in broad daylight. Under the hot lights of media frenzy for black blood, white guilt, white fear and white acquittal where brown boys are still expendable. Michael Vick should have had Zimmerman's lawyer. Brown boys are worth less than black dogs. Trayvon should have been a brown lab. Maybe then we see more of a humane society's presence. If poems could march in the streets, overturn verdicts, bring corrupt police to justice. They could bring a boy back his life and a mother back her son, a father back his boy, return bullets to a gun, unloose the lynch rope and unravel the knots from choke throats. We would not be choking on tears. When do our lives become valuable? In the eyes of the law, when does hate cease to be exonerated behind a badge and lighter skin? And God forbid you wear a hoodie in the rain while having black skin with skittles in your pocket. You can taste the rainbow, but you can't taste freedom. You can taste your own blood, but you can't taste the rainbow. Diversity is white people's cold word for niggers. You can taste the rainbow, but not if you're too dark. The rainbow may come during the storm. If you're too dark on a block in a hoodie and the skittles fall from your pocket, you never taste the rainbow. Your killer has the right to stand his ground. He may shoot you in the heart and America may relive it in sordid detail. She's only reliving her nightmares. She dreams nightmares often. Open caskets, ashes, weighted limbs, no coffins. Two. His name is Trayvon Martin. Say it. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Corrin Gaines. Charlene Elios. Oscar Grant. Ahmaud Arbery. Walter Scott. The Charleston Nine. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Kamani Gray. Timothy Stambary. Sean Bell. Sandra Bland. Maya Hall. Tarika Wilson. Alonzo Ashley. Eric Garner. Keith Fadal. Michael Brown. Kajene Powell. Tamir Rice. Manuel Loggins. Chavez Carter. David Latham. Yvette Smith. Luis Rodriguez. Matthew Paolo. Ahmaud Diallo. His name, he has the name. His name is I Can't Breathe. His name is Emmett Till. His name, his name, his name. You must remember his name. James Bird Jr. He may whisper it in the wind. You may hear it in your skin. His name is Guilty. Innocence. Freedom Viner. Martyr, Troublemaker. His name. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King. He has the name. His name is Black Boy. Blacklisted. Blackboard. His name is Black Power. Black babies in the black market for green cash. Stolen life. Tied to a tree. Burked at the stake. His name. Probable cause. The Negro problem. Chalk outlined. White man's fear. His name, Ear for Souvenir. His name, Black Nigger Boy. Fred Hampton. Huey P. Newton. Mega Ebbers. His name saves lives. Mobilizes movements. His name is Watch for a Black Messiah. Bullet to the heart. Boy in jaws of wolf. White girl called Rape. Whistle to free. Head too high. His name looked me in my eye. His name must die. Gangster, thug, minute, stereotype. His name is Wretched Like Demon. His name is taken to the Iron Bridge on Main Street. His name. His name's legs are pulled until his neck cracks. Stabbed, hung, shot, burned, ravaged by relic hunters. His name is mistaken identity. Scottsboro Boys. Disguise experiments. David Walker. Living, breathing, Black manhood. Heathen, Pagan, no salvation. His name is. You're freely gonna get over it. Kuntakinte. Stolen African. Strange fruit. Stranger in a strange land. In danger of deranged hands. Enemy of the state. Ginegda Center. Asphalt art. Bloody memory. Collateral damage. White man's burden. That happened so long ago. Chain gang, wage slave, chattel. On the rack, in the irons. On the run. Wanted. His name is Arthur DeKanzer. Felt more thistle than cotton. His name is Put Your Hands Up. Spreader. Stop or I'll shoot. His name is Bam. 41 shots. Assata Shakur. Angela Davis. Breakfast program. Black Panther Party for self-defense. His name is. His name is. He has a name. His name is Speed and Severely. Urinated on-chain by the ankles. His name is Drag for three miles and decapitated. 81 places have to remain. His name is missing an arm. His name is Crackhead. Worn drugs. Worn poverty. Scapegoat. Sacrificial lamb. His name is Kicked Carcass. Convict. Criminal. Thief. Drug dealer. Victim. Still a child, his name will never breathe again. His name has a mother. His name expendable. Sundown laws. Jim Crow cars. Jim Crow bars. His name is Racial Profiling. In court, just call it profiling. Because this is not about race. His name is Marcus Garvey. Frederick Douglass. Ida B. Wells. No rights a white man is bound to respect. His name has a title. When he dies, his name is Mr. Martin. Wearer of the Black Hoodie. Walker of the Home Path. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong skin, wrong crime. His name is Holder of the Skittles. His name, his mother knows his name. Her tears spell it in big, bold letters down her cheeks. His name is Gone Too Soon. His name is Darky, Spook, Chickapoo, Sambo. His name is Different. Too difficult to be pronounced by thin lips with forked tongues. His name dies without justice. Missing. His son child. Star fruit. Young gifted in black. But you can call him. His name is The Sun Is Rising. His name is Waker. Because his name is mine. Thank you so much. I hope our time together was valuable and that you're all touched and inspired to continue to serve and deepen your service to community. I hope this is a blessed experience for all of you when you find ways to network and coordinate and collaborate in ways that serve us all. I'll say a quote from a sister named Nikita Oliver. She says, justice is the most just us. And a quote from my own daughter. The time, the time, the time. The time that's known by few. That time is here. That time is here. And I know soon it will be true. Thank you very much. Rajani, thank you. Thank you for outlining the depth of the challenges we face and also giving us some hope as we think about the future. There is no easy way to segue from Rajani's performance and his powerful work. But one way that we want to do that is by lifting up some voices from community to share some spark stories. And so I would invite the four people who are sharing spark stories today to come sit up here in the front. And I would also like to introduce Allie Richards, who will moderate this session. Allie Richards, as many of you may know, is the CEO of Let's Grow Kids. Let's Grow Kids is driving a movement to refocus our collective attention on the importance and potential of our child care system here in Vermont. She has served in a number of leadership roles, including the deputy chief of staff for the governor and now as the vice chair of the ECRD board. Allie, welcome. Hi, everyone. I think we need a collective deep breath. Hi, it really feels like a long time since we have been in this room together. And it feels good, doesn't it? It feels really good. So thank you all for being here today. As Brian said, I'm Allie Richards. I'm the CEO of Let's Grow Kids. We're facilitating a movement to solve Vermont's child care crisis by 2025. And by doing so, put us on an economic path of stability. I'm actually not here to talk about that today for once. It is my distinct honor to have a chance to host this next segment of the agenda, Spark Stories. So I'll just say a lot of people, especially politicians, will say, let me tell you a story. Why do they do that? It's because they actually know it changes the chemicals in our brain. There's this amazing magical effect when you hear a story that it actually helps you have those chemicals that allows you to experience just a bit of what the storyteller is trying to convey. So combine that with my other favorite thing in the world, leadership, community leadership. And I often think I can't really think about leadership in Vermont without going straight to our motto, and Brian actually mentioned it earlier, freedom and unity. It is an inherent contradiction. What is that, freedom and unity? But actually, what I love about it is I think we all get it. We really get it. We want the freedom to live our own lives, do our thing, innovate, be ourselves. But at the end of the day, we all care about our neighbors. That's a really amazing thing. And freedom and unity in its purest form is powerful. And I hope we all just heard a charge from Rajni this morning about how we can continue to recommit ourselves to freedom and unity together here in Vermont. So without further ado, you're about to hear some spark stories from four incredible leaders here in Vermont. We're going to start with Thato from the AALV, Association of Africans Living in Vermont, where she has worked since 2012. She's currently the associate director and program manager with a deep experience in communications, program implementation, relationship building, also volunteers across the community, including beyond the boards of the Howard Center and Spectrum, Youth and Family Services. And I don't want to give it all away. So these introductions will be very brief, as you'll hear directly from these incredible leaders. So Thato, please come up and tell us your story. Good morning, everyone. I'm trying to communicate with Brian. He's not getting it. Thank you for having us. Wow. We are all finally in person. I'm not in any way a public speaker. So I'm as nervous as a wreck. Plus, I have an accent, if you haven't picked it up yet. So if there is anything I'm going to say that you do not hear, please pull me aside after this and I'll clarify. So today, I'm going to speak about the real leaders that I am blessed to work with. The real leaders that come to Vermont and make the beautiful tapestry of Vermont what it is today, to add into color, to add into diversity. I don't know how I follow that beautiful poetry. I'm going to try my best. I work for the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, AALVs, an organization that serves all refugees and immigrants from across the world. Whoever gets through our doors, they get the services that they need. If we do not have the services in-house, we do refer to our partners. We believe in community building. We believe in collaboration. We can never build the community, or as we say in most of our countries, raise the children alone. It takes a village, and you are that village. I keep looking up, but it's OK. I'm going to go through this. Today, I would like to talk a little bit about what I will call disruption. I want you to imagine this. You are going about your day. You are a farmer. You are a businessman, or you are a businesswoman. You woke up in the morning to do what you need to do, to make inmates, to feed your own family. In a split second, literally a split second, you are called and told, run for your life. You don't know where to go. You follow whoever you can see running towards whatever direction they find. You are looking for safety. You may not know that that's what you are looking for in the moment. You end up with a group of strangers. Suddenly it dawns into you, where am I? Where is my family? Where are my children? Where is my home? Where am I? You stop. You think. You realize that you have lost everything within that split second. The most important thing that grounds you, your family, is nowhere to be found. But yet, you've got to move on. You have to go on, as if nothing just happened. Think about it. You form a new family within a span of hours, with whomever you find yourself with. You start thinking, where am I going next? You plan in the middle of the night. You may be in the bushes. You don't know exactly where you are. You move around. Eventually you find some sort of safety. You form a village. In the middle of nowhere, you call that a refugee camp. In that refugee camp, you have to build your life again, with no family, with strangers, no children. You don't know anything at all about your family. Red Cross comes in. All other organizations come in. They try to help you. Sometimes you may reconcile or reconnect with your family. Other times you may never know where they are. They may be killed in the middle of the war. They may be surviving some way. And they are also looking for you. Your life has been disrupted, just like that. You try your best to forget everything. It never goes away. You leave your own people. They will always be in your heart. In that refugee camp, you form your own family, a new family. You have to do it. You don't have choice. Suddenly, somebody comes in and tells you, I have some sort of safety for you. There is a country somewhere in a state called Vermont that is willing to take you in so you can rebuild your life. Remember, you just tried to rebuild your life in a new space that you cannot even define. You get some hope. You get on the plane. You land in Vermont, of all the places. It's beautiful because you can see farms. You are familiar with farms. You are familiar with the beauty of the city. You are familiar with the green. It suddenly feels like you are safe. After a couple days, you start wondering, where are my children? You start wondering, where is my family? Am I ever going to see my family again? The reality sinks in. But you have to move on. That's where AALV comes in, folks. People walk through our doors every day at 20 Allen Street. Today, I want to tell you a little bit about the real leaders, the real heroes who make it happen. AALV has a staff of about 14, about three on a temporary basis. We go through the doors of AALV every day. We don't know what story we are going to hear. What we know is that we are going to make some connections to get someone help. As people come in, the one thing that brings comfort is they find somebody who can speak their language, someone that they can identify with, somebody that have walked their walk. We speak about 17 different languages in one space. You walk in, if you are not used to that, it may feel overwhelming. But that's where the real heroes, the real community leaders are every day. Folks come in to talk about their stories. Folks come in to say, I need help. These real leaders that I'm talking about make it happen without complaint every day of their lives. They have walked this walk. 99% of them are refugees. We come to Vermont. We become part of this beautiful community. We feel welcome. We may face challenges because they will always be there. What our hope is is that we can all work together to make Vermont a beautiful place to live, to make Vermont where you can see different colors without being threatened, to see our coming here as part of enhancement of the community. That's what makes the community. That's what makes Vermont happen. And on that note, Jacob and I, as well as the team at ELV, would like to thank you all for giving us an opportunity to tell you a little bit about who we are. Thank you. Bato, Ritsevi, everybody. Thank you so much for your leadership and for sharing your story with us today. Next, we have Kate. If you've been around Danville and you see some exciting collaboration or innovative product happening, you can bet she's involved with them. She's the co-chair of the Danville train station committee, a member of the planning commission, the municipal lead through the better connections planning process, deep background in public health, community development, and really bringing the folks together in Danville in a way that I think we could all take a lot of inspiration from. So without further ado, Kate Whitehead, please join us up here. Thanks so much for having me. I wanted to share just a little bit about my story and my path that led me here and some reflections on community leadership and what it means to me. I grew up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. My parents were both educators, my data coach. I went through the public school system here. And looking back, I remember things like economics class, senior year, and presenting on an economic development project that was being proposed in our downtown and learning from a teacher about concept mapping and the importance of looking at how different ideas connected. I still think in this way. All of these things shaped me. After graduating from St. Johnsbury Academy, I left Vermont and spent about a decade out west. I studied community health at Montana State University. And I had an amazing advisor who was a big proponent of role health equity in addressing health disparities. I think of her as being nose deep in her research. And she brought her passion to the classroom. And she had us out in the field talking to people and developing programs and helping find solutions. Her passion is Native American health and building those trusted relationships and bridges and new pathways between communities. I learned from her and I watched her. She's a leader. When I returned to Vermont, I worked in the public health field for a number of years. I met amazing caring people. I learned about the bridges out of poverty and protecting our most vulnerable populations. I learned about viewing individuals and communities holistically and how important that is. In that time, the public health community in Vermont started to look at emerging research about health in the built environment and the concept of healthy community design. In this moment, I found myself standing at the crossroads of public health and community planning. Public health practitioners and community planners were coming together at the table for the first time. And what did this require of all of us? Well, a willingness to be open-minded and challenged the way we were all used to doing our work and looking from a new perspective and new lens and learning a common language. We talked about how health related to local and regional policy. We talked about community infrastructure and how we could be intentional about designing communities that support health. And then we got to work. We engaged communities and saw them come together to create positive change. They are all leaders. Not long after moving to Danville, I joined the Planning Commission. I had attended a community meeting and was asked by one of the members, and I was so honored by that. I've seen over the years how dedicated this community is, how active the local organizations and community groups are and their shared values of neighbors helping neighbors and community service. We've done a lot of work in Danville around planning for the Lemuel Valley Rail Trail and the historic Danville train station. We were awarded a Better Connections Grant in 2018 that modeled cross-sector collaboration, health, transportation and economic development. It brought in regional and state planners to support our team at the local level. It was a partnership. We looked to them for guidance and they turned to us as well in this notion of community as expert. They would offer support, but also empower us to lead the way. This is what leadership looks like. This led to one fall morning of 2018. A group of us in Danville cleaned out the old passenger side of the train station. We moved storage items out. We swept the floors. We wiped the woodwork down. We cleaned the windows. We brought coffee and muffins from the local bakery and invited the community to talk about the train station's future. And now there's an incredible team of talented people working together to restore this historic building. A part of who we are as a community. We sit together. We talk about our values and we support each other and we're excited about the future. And we're building this house of belonging, a community hub breathing life into it and watching it come alive. To me, leadership means seeing the innate health and people focusing on that and viewing them holistically and not just in parts. What you see is what will emerge, keeping the vision alive, being a voice for possibilities, giving individuals and communities enough space to become who they are supposed to be. They're intuitive and resourceful and have an incredible ability to self-organize. Leadership means knowing that we all have a deeper story and looking for the lessons in your own. It means challenging your perspectives and being able to step outside of yourself and then listening to others. It means commitment and showing up with an open mind and an open heart and doing that inner work. It's so important. And sometimes it means wiping the dust off an old window to let the light in. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much, Kate. I can, I just see the image of no job too small with huge goals and ideals. So I can't wait to get up to Danville and see that. Thank you for sharing your story with all of us. Next, I wanna introduce you to Rich. Rich Holshu, I actually have the great honor of working with him on the Vermont, the Future of Vermont Action Team, where he has this wonderful style of being both forceful and kind in moving the conversation along for all of us. He is a resident of Southern Vermont and he's an independent, historic and cultural researcher. He's served on the Vermont Commission of Native American Affairs and is a public liaison and tribal historic preservation officer for the Elnu Abenaki, members of the contemporary indigenous community. He's also the founder of the Atawi Project. Rich, we're very excited to hear from you today. Thank you for sharing your story. Wuli Wuni, Allie, thank you. Quite neat on Bach. Bach when on Guzian. We go down. Nam yolan bam giskak. And tell it with Zee, Lisa. And I want us to go. Tali subqakik. Wuli payo and dakina. Wuli spawns wee wee. Good morning. Hello, my friends. It's good to see you, most of you for the first time. I am called Rich. That is the name I am known by. Not my financial condition. We are known by others. We are created by others to a great deal. I am from what you know as Brattleboro, traditionally known as one Tostagok. In Sakoke Abenaki country, down the Connecticut River, toward the Massachusetts border, the Sakoke people, their friends, relatives, allies have been here for 13,000 years. A long time. Asquano di Bana Yodali. We are still here. That hasn't changed. Nothing changes and everything changes. So here we are. Nia Elnu Wombanaki. I am a citizen, a member of the Elnu Benaki tribe in the southeastern part of the state. One of the four state recognized tribes. That process began in 2010. Not so long ago, compared to 13,000 years. This state is just beginning to grapple with that reality. Histories are subjective. Completely. We have been told a certain history. It's incomplete and much of it is untrue. But we can relearn and we can come back together and complete those truths. I am founder and co-director of Atui Project. It's a nonprofit devoted to cultural education and to uplifting the contemporary Benaki community. In my area, place-based, place matters. Place is everything. That's where your community is. And you have to respond. I also work statewide. I have served on the commission in the past and may do that again. And it's an honor. I wanna share a little story with you of something that's happening right now. It's a good story. I'm happy to be able to share this. I mentioned 13,000 years. Where the Wantas Tuk, today's West River, meets the Quenetuk, the Connecticut River, at Wantas Tukok, which you know as Brattleboro. There are petroglyphs. There are carvings in the rock there, upwards of thousands of years old. That's a long time. They're still there. They're still doing what they were placed there to do in the first place, which is to recognize that place, to respond to that place appropriately. And to acknowledge what is happening there. And what is happening there is a great transfer, confluence of spirit in that place in particular and a few other places. These are sacred places where the people who are in relationship with those places closely can recognize what is happening. They see it. They've been there a long time. They've been witness and they understand. A lot of those teachings and understandings are no longer with us. We need to bring them back to change the story from the one that we've been told to a better story. Make this really short, cause I got my time warning. At this confluence where these petroglyphs are, a little piece of land adjacent to them was going on the open market this summer. We've known this was going to happen. We were trying to be prepared. All of a sudden the time came. Caught us a little off guard. We sprang into action. Two acres of land worth $320,000 on the open market. This little piece of land is right in the middle of Brattleboro, prime residential area on the water. Sprang into action and with the help of the community and the communities, all of you, many of you may have participated in this. Within six weeks, we raised $380,000. And so this place, this special place where the petroglyphs are, a place of ceremony, a place of pilgrimage for thousands of years. Many, many, many ancestors are buried there. This land should never be disturbed. Will not be disturbed. You're welcome to come visit someday. By the end of this month, it will be under the stewardship of the El Noveniki tribe. With the assistance of many others, I want to give a shout out to Vermont Land Trust as our trusted partner. I'm going to also take this moment to give a shout out to my next door neighbor, Becca Ballant, a fellow resident of one Tostagoc. And she knows that name. And other people are learning it now. So thank you. Add this story to yours. And let's create a new one. An old one and a new one. Creation is continual. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think you've made us all that much more rich with your knowledge and perspective. Thank you. Sorry. Finally, we have Nick. Hi Nick. Nick Stark is a French-American multi-disciplinary designer. He moved to Pultney after visiting the family camp on Lake St. Catherine his whole life. He's recently overseen the rebranding of the Slate Valley trails and the town of Pultney. And when he's not working or volunteering, he can be found on his bicycle or exploring with his dog, Reggie. Nick, thank you so much for your leadership and sharing your story with us. Hi everybody. So I go to France tomorrow for my cousin's wedding. So I'm a little rusty. You can help me practice. Bonjour. Merci. Super. So I just want to express my gratitude for each of the other spark storytellers as well as the VCRD organizers. It's great to see such representation up here today. I was honored, surprised, and a bit scared when Kim and Jenna approached me about sharing some thoughts on community leadership. Despite the deep connection I feel towards this land, having grown up, visiting our family camp on Lake St. Catherine in Pultney, I'm also a COVID transplant and an unabashed flatlander. Please don't tell anybody from New Jersey that I'm here. Okay. I now live in downtown Pultney and I want to share a story of community and collectivity, how a team of volunteers successfully completed a rebranding effort at no cost to the town. And some lessons learned about the nuts and bolts of how we came together to see through this collaborative initiative. In the past 10 years, like many other small towns across the street, Pultney's seen its fair share of hardship. Our independent pharmacy closed, our bank left, the co-op shuttered, the discount food store burned down, and in 2019, after 185 years, Green Mountain College at the end of Main Street closed its doors. Thankfully, a few years prior, in 2016, ungroupable local volunteers, selfless landowners, and some gracious benefactors set out to build a public network of hiking and biking trails in the area. Slay Valley Trails was born, and in the absence of the college, conversations and minds slowly turned and began to pivot to the idea of a recreation-based economy. In 2021, Pultney was awarded with an EPA Recreational Economies for Rural Communities grant. Out of a series of workshops, one action goal that survived the many voting rounds was to rebrand the town to reflect its new approach. I was voluntold by my friend James that I would be the gold champion. So, here's how we did it. Firstly, everyone in the workshop that might have been interested in the initiative received an invite to a virtual meeting, and we got to work devising a plan. That makes it sound simple, but the reality was that after a highly-attended first meeting, there were weeks of meetings where it was just myself and Jose Galvez. He didn't even live in Pultney anymore, and it was us two who were figuring out what this town would be, where it would live, and how it would be created. Jose's since left the committee, but his involvement in the early stages of this project was crucial. It kept the flame alive. Thankfully, since then, we've built a solid core of committee members, but that early period led to the first lesson. Welcome warmly and happily bid farewell. People are busy. Take what time they can give and thank them for it. A longer projects, be prepared for revolving door volunteers, and recognize those who consistently engage. So, our committee devised a list of assets that were comprised of new branding, a logo design, a new slogan, a color palette, and typography guidelines. Next, we created a list of community stakeholders, including local nonprofits, social clubs, the select board, and local design professionals. After a few months of scheduling and holding community stakeholder workshops, the bigger groups in town were aware of the effort and why it was important. They had a chance to share their thoughts on what Pultney is and is not. Here's the second takeaway. Go for the low-hanging fruit. Plenty of organizations didn't respond to any of my emails. Engage with those that do and try to make sure that those that don't engage at least know what's going on. After that, we fumbled a bit looking for grant funding. This is something that towns usually pay for themselves. In a stroke of luck, we learned about the Castleton Content Lab, a group of marketing students at Castleton University in the next town over. Their mission was to learn and hone their skills by assisting nonprofits and municipalities with design and marketing projects. They were static to help out, and after a handful of Zoom meetings and pizza-fuel brainstorm sessions, they set to work on designing the new town assets. We went through a few closed-door sessions of refinement and presented the new branding to our stakeholder groups. The Castleton Content Lab really knocked it out of the park, and the branding received universal praise and acceptance. We made sure to get letters of support from the stakeholders we'd worked with throughout the process. Those letters and the new designs were presented and the branding was officially adopted by the select board just over a year after the first branding meetings. This leads to the final lesson. Be prepared for success. I was not. It's easy to get tunnel vision for the next milestone, but lose track of what follows next. We had to scramble to prepare a mini PR campaign around the new branding once it had been officially adopted. So in your projects, I implore you carve out some time to shout out what you've accomplished, recognize what still needs to be done, and of course, leave some time to celebrate. Best of luck with your future projects and enjoy the day. Thank you so much, Nick. I just want to quickly also acknowledge Thato brought today with her some community members and colleagues who are joining us in the bleachers. So just want to say hello and thank you so much for being here. You all are so friendly and lovely and warm, and yet it takes a lot of courage to stand up, especially after a couple of years of being in our home offices. So I just want to give another huge warm applause to our four leaders here today for getting up here and sharing all this with us. I think we should let Nick have the last word and be prepared for success. All of you being here today, this amazing inspirational local community leadership tells us it's possible, so thank you all so much. Folks, I'm going to go right into the next portion of our agenda because we are a little bit behind on time. One of the most exciting things about VCRD's working communities across the state is meeting people who are stepping forward to make a difference in their town. We get to meet some truly astonishing people who work with great passion, great integrity, and great commitment for others. And so it is an honor today to be able to recognize three leaders across the state whose work embodies that spirit. Their work truly is heroic, not just because of its impact and its importance, but because of the way they inspire others around them to lean forward, to do more, and to strive to meet the best ideals of our country. It's an honor to ask Julie Moore to join me here, and we are going to ask those three recipients, Pam Parsons, Brenda Torpey, and Sarah Carpenter to come sit up here if they're willing. And there will be much more time for applause too, don't worry. And while they're making their way to the front, there are seats up here if anyone standing along the back would like to find a chair. The first award we're going to present today is the Community Leadership Award. And this award is presented each year to Celebrate a Vermonter who exemplifies dedication, integrity, and honorable service to community and to rural Vermont, and who has had a transformational effect. We present the award to highlight the work of community heroes who epitomize the best spirit of local community service who are volunteers, not paid employees, or elected officials, and whose work has made their community a better place. This year's Vermont Community Leadership Award is being given to Pam Parsons of Richford. Pam has an incredible story of commitment to her community. A UVM grad, she has diverse interests and talents and a remarkably broad and impressive employment history, including work at Franklin County Home Health and Education, and as the co-owner of a construction company and the executive director of Northern Tier Center for Health or NOTCH. According to those at NOTCH who know her, under Pam's leadership, the organization is thrived, providing good jobs in a region of the state that has a large population with family incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. Pam is an incredible force for good in her community of Richford, and is Tim Smith, the mayor of St. Albans, a VCRD board member, and the leader of the Regional Development Corporation notes, Pam's work has made a positive impact on Richford and really all of Franklin County. Pam serves on a number of boards as well, which is impressive in its own right, but even more impressive when you think of the range of interests and interconnected issues her service touches. She's on the board of directors of OneCare, the Bi-State Primary Care Association, Vermont Rural Ventures, the Richford Economic Advancement Corporation, and the Richford Renaissance Corporation as well as the Pharmacy Network. Pam, it is such a pleasure to have you here with us today, and congratulations. And a giant bag of cheese. I'm gonna say one last quick thing and then have you speak. We just wanna celebrate you a little bit more, Pam. There are a couple other stories as we were talking to Pam's friends and colleagues that we learned, and I just wanna share very briefly a couple of those because they are truly astounding. When the pharmacy in Richford was going to change hands and shut down, leaving people without a pharmacy for about 20 miles, Pam and the Notch team ended up stepping in to keep it open in Richford, and later the same in Swanton and in Fairfax. When the grocery store in Richford shut down, Pam and the Notch team stepped in to keep it open. So in addition to running a health center, Pam is running a grocery store and a pharmacy and decided to also take on running a summer camp that is, according to Tim Smith and many others, a wonderful, has attracted a wonderful following and is itself a great success. When the problem is too big, and it is impossible to take on, like taking over a pharmacy, a grocery store, and a summer camp while running multiple health centers, these are the moments that Pam Parsons and the team at Notch step forward for their community and somehow make all the pieces come together. Thank you, Pam. Thank you. Sometimes you don't think about all these things and if you did think about it, you might have said no. Is that the lesson we should take away from you? No. I wanna thank Vermont Rural, Council on Rural Development for the award because they take emails, they take phone calls. Yes, we took those things on, but they were willing to listen to what we're trying to think about and willing to show up for the grocery store, willing to show up in Richford, give us guidance. We knew it was gonna be hard work, but we needed help and direction and that's what the Vermont Rural, Vermont Council on Rural Development continues, I think, to bring to many communities. I also want to acknowledge two other women that were central in making Notch, Northern Tears Center for Health, what it is today, Caroline Coons, retired nurse who passed away in 2011 and Marsha Perry. The three of us would plow ahead at times, even when we were told it couldn't be done. Marsha gave me a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that is still on my desk today. A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water. As you can guess, we did get into hot water, all for the right reasons. Northern Tears Center for Health grew out of a small rural health center in Richford in the mid-90s. We now have eight medical offices providing behavioral and primary care health. Two large dental practices with about 17 dental chairs, four pharmacies, a grocery store, two summer day camps, one in Richford, one in Swanton, and we serve over 20,000 patients. And I also wanna recognize my board that supported all the crazy ideas that we had. And of course, it's a staff. The staff, we have staff that's been with Notch, along with myself, 10, 15, 20 years that are committed, committed to the culture and the mission of Northern Tears Center for Health. So you can't do it alone. And I just wanna make sure the staff knew that. So thank you. Our second award of the morning is the VCRD Lifetime Award for Service to Vermont Communities. And this year, we're actually recognizing two people. Over the last few years, VCRD has recognized a Vermonter who has dedicated their life and career to their community and to communities throughout the state. This award is given in recognition of transformational leadership in service to community and the people of Vermont. Past awardees include John Ewing, Rick Davis, Paul Brun, Molly and Hank Lambert and Gus C. Leigh. This year, we're excited to recognize Brenda Torpey and Sarah Carpenter for their lifetime commitments and unconditional dedication to dignity, housing, justice, economic opportunity and a fair chance for all Vermonters. We're going to recognize Sarah first. Sarah Carpenter's service to Vermont has taken many forms. Sarah was elected to the Burlington City Council in 2020 and serves on the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, the Charter Change Committee and as Chair of the Human Resources Committee. She served as the Executive Director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency from 1998 to 2018, which is an organization dedicated to promoting affordable, safe and decent housing opportunities for low and moderate income Vermonters. Sarah is also the Chair of the Vermont Rental Housing Advisory Board and served as Executive Director of Cathedral Space Corporation from 1983 to 1998. And I had the opportunity to get to know Sarah through her work with the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. I'm going to turn the mic over to Brian for a few additional words. Thanks, Julie. There's a lot of work and a lot of passion and a great deal of impact in people's lives tied up in the short biography that Julie shared. And as with Pam, the more you learn, the more impressive Sarah's work becomes. From her work building composting toilets in rural parts of the state through her service in the Burlington City Council which began in the depth of the pandemic, she has found creative ways to support communities across the state in many capacities. In calling some of Sarah's friends to learn about her before today's events, a couple themes really shine through. She's committed, she cares deeply about people. She is analytical, she might be the smartest person in the room. She has a strong and successful advocate for providing services alongside housing, starting with her work helping elderly Vermonters and that work has become a template that has been used by many other social service providers. And Sarah builds not just housing but institutions. She builds the structures that help people build community. Sarah, it is a great honor to recognize you today. There's always room for cheese. I truly am so honored to receive this award from all of you, from the council and mostly honored to serve with my wonderful colleagues. You've heard a lot about community connections. Today's about community connections. I've connected in various ways with these women I think over 40 years, hate to say it. We all have a Franklin County connection. Brenda did some community services up there. Pam and I have a mutual friend when I was working for the office on aging. So that's how things start. And I'm just so proud to perhaps be honored for that work. Brian mentioned my little scheme on getting composting toilets to folks, older folks. And as we now age, you know how important indoor plumbing is. And that was really my open eyes to the needs of rural Vermont and our housing needs. And that sort of launched me into my lifelong career of housing and understanding that everyone needs a place to be. We have wonderful community services. You all are doing great community work but unless you've got a place to be a lot of that can't be delivered to you. We can't get your child to school. We can't feed you. We can't educate you. We can't deliver healthcare to you unless you've got a place to be. And I'm proud to have worked for two really wonderful organizations who supported me in being able to bring that out to the community level and provide some really very innovative programs. As Pam mentioned, and I'm sure Brenda will, we rely on our staff and I have had wonderful staff over the year. My successor, Maury Collins is here, carrying on, I know. And others from her staff and I'm sure there's folks from Cathedral Square. And I'm just so proud to be part of this big network. Some people perceive me as maybe being a little brilliant and centric. I'm Vermont centric. This state means so much to me and worth a little engine that could. All 644,000 of us, we can make things happen and you are all part of it. So thank you for taking the time to recognize me and let's get all that work done. Thank you, Sarah, and congratulations. And now Brenda Torpey. Brenda, we're gonna talk a little bit about the work you've done, although I don't know that that can be done justice. Not every Vermonner's ideas have been recognized by the United Nations and set a new international standard like what you and your team at the Champlain Housing Trust have done around the ideas around shared equity and permanently affordable housing. Brenda was a founder and the director of the Champlain Housing Trust from 1991 to 2021 and CHT is internationally recognized for its leadership in community-led, permanently affordable housing, receiving the UN Habitat Award in 2008. Brenda started as a community organizer in rural Vermont, worked as Bernie's first housing director in Burlington and at the VHFA on policy and program development. She formed and led Northgate, a nonprofit, which acquired and preserved and improved 336 at-risk affordable rentals on behalf of the tenants who now govern it. Brenda was a Ford Foundation leader for the changing world and has served on the advisory committee of the region's home loan and federal reserve banks and the boards of the national CLT network and successor grounded solutions network. Brenda now leads technical assistance for CHT providing direct training and technical assistance on these models across the US and internationally. I'm gonna have Brian say a few words as well. So like Pam and Sarah, Brenda's professional accomplishments only begin to speak to some of the contributions that she has made. The incredible list of things that Julie just shared don't explain what John Davies called the quote impossible hours, standing up a new organization called CEDO, the Community Economic Development Office in Burlington and the Community Land Trust. It doesn't cover the collaboration and innovation that came with designing and implementing Burlington's inclusionary zoning ordinance or the critical moments sitting around a table in the mayor's office in Burlington making the case to save Northgate. And of course, famously, it doesn't give all the detail on the long effort that her friends say, and I love this quote exhausted many, many lawyers on the way to shared equity and permanently affordable home ownership. Her friend Amy Wright talks about how Brenda just has this quote knack for putting things in a way that can be understood and how that is equally vital alongside her energy and determination and laughter in getting things done. Gus Selig, who knows a few things about housing himself, when asked, had this long pause and said simply, Brenda is in a class of her own. He went on further and I'm paraphrasing now, not a direct quote, but the concept of a Community Land Trust, the impact of Northgate on even the creation of VHCB, the broad recognition of shared equity, Brenda's involvement in some of the most complex housing deals in Vermont's history, the tremendous growth and continued success of CHT now under Michael Monti's leadership, these are all a testament to our outstanding and transformative impact on many communities in our state. In addition to this energy and relentless work ethic, Brenda is somehow the person who can be both a ferocious advocate fighting with great empathy for the poor and the dispossessed, as well as a person of tremendous patience and above all kindness in the face of these challenging and vexing problems. And I can attest to that firsthand. Brenda, it is a true honor to recognize you today. Thank you for what you've done and for what you've built here in Vermont. Kevin, it's cheese. Short people. Now good morning and thank you. Thank you all so much. This is a really great honor and very, very generous on the part of the council, especially in light of my co-awardees. Congrats. And past awardees who include many of my heroes, my Vermont heroes. Your work at the council is advancing community engagement and help people come together to get things done. This is the aspect of my work over the years that meant the most to me. So it's no surprise that anything that I've achieved, I did it on the shoulder of an incredible group of activists, leaders, advocates, practitioners that I've had the great good fortune to work with all along the way. And for the past many years, none more than the staff at CHT. This is a team of smart, dedicated and very compassionate people who knock it out of the park every day, every day. And especially now under Michael Montee's leadership. We've been equally blessed with our board members. Right in this room, Sarah was a founding member of the Burlington Community Land Trust, hours and hours of volunteer work and her contributions read down over time. More recently, Brian Lill served on her board. So I don't have to tell you how lucky we were, but also that's the caliber of leadership. You can't really go wrong when you have leaders like that in your organization. Early on, those of us who went to work for Bernie Sanders when he was mayor of Burlington were schooled by his example, his courage and his laser light focus and his laser light focus on the poor and the people who did not have advantage and access. And I see some of you here with others who took that, took that with them into Vermont. None more than Amy Wright who took that ethic across the state as an incredible developer and fierce protector of Vermont's most vulnerable people. And always a model to me. So the achievements that you so kindly celebrate today exemplify what's best about Vermont, what drew me here and kept me. It's how Vermonters, you're here today, value and practice civic engagement. And that's nothing more than the hard work but the most rewarding work of democracy. And we need a lot more of this across the country now. Thank you to the council for all you do to support and sustain that work. And on behalf of the entire Posse, recognizing these achievements and from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Somehow, impossibly, we're back on schedule as well. Nice job. Folks, thank you. Really, thank you for everything this morning to all those who spoke, the spark stories and to our awardees. It is really an honor to be part of this event. We're gonna break up now at 10.45 into different breakout sessions. The VCRD staff will be in different places around the campus. If you're lost or confused, we have wooden name tags and we'll be happy to direct you. There's also a map on the front page, the very first page of your program that will help you find where your breakout session is. Thank you to everybody. It is an honor and please head out to your breakout sessions so we can start those promptly. Thank you.