An article and report by artist and changemaker Amara Phelps and Yasamin Safarzadeh – general rabble rouser and curator.
This article was written after having attended the MY TURN 8th Annual Bright Futures Event. The event and the keynote speakers and awards recipients were such an inspiration, we felt that this article, attempting to summarize our mutual love and appreciation for MY TURN, needed to be written.
Photos by Esmeldy Angeles
With a landscape some may find difficult to describe, or a culture outsiders want to force onto Manchester, New Hampshire’s biggest little city, it feels like the passage of time yields the neighborhoods to varieties of liminal strip malls, office buildings and large nondescript brick structures. Manchester has always been blue collar and familiar. Though traditional notions of the nuclear family are changing, and churches hold less and less space as heartbeats for the good work being done, we still find a need for community, purpose, family and love. As we all find ourselves sometimes moving too quickly to get to the next meeting or catch drinks with friends, we miss these minute secrets, which are nestled in every apartment building, multi family home, lived-in car on the street, restaurant and school.
Tucked right in the heart of the city, in one such unassuming red brick structure where the East Side meets West, is the MY TURN Granite Street location. This organization is a morsel of hope that has held an eternal flame of compassion alive in our city and seven other locations for four decades. Like many of our city’s most active and important social programs, MY TURN, remains underfunded and under the radar as they stretch in Mister Fantastic-ian ways to support our neighborhoods’ great and increasing needs, especially for our youth and young adults. MY TURN’s executive team is one of the most active executive bodies I’ve ever witnessed, and is an organization made up of the people they uplift. This is the one trait of any organization working with marginalized demographics which garners the most observable success; if the make up of the organization isn’t representative- can the work be as optimal and efficient as we could hope?
Their website describes a humble and concise list of programs spread across New Hampshire and extending into Massachusetts. Their list includes programs such as Diploma and Employment Plus, meant to help individuals on a personalized journey to their own self-determined goals. This is a highly important guiding principal; what is the drive of each client or participant, and how can MY TURN help to guide and empower each person to reach the potential they are capable of? The drop-in center, called Project Connect, is full of snacks and games and meant for teens in high-crime neighborhoods to hang out and find community. Project Connect also serves as a violence prevention program, imparting social-emotional skills to young adults and court-involved youth to provide the tools to become positive members of their community and strive for their goals. Even beyond the waves of change which help at crucial junctions in an individual’s path, the most lasting impact of MY TURN’s wraparound services lies in what’s between the lines – the impact of true human connection from compassionate souls, sowing seeds which continue to blossom.
Each participant and staff has an autonomy of sorts. For some, the staff transform into a support system to hug you tight as you enter the world of new motherhood with pro-tips and funds for diapers and formula. The MyTurn office is no stranger to a pack-n-play adorned in toys, with staff goo-ing and ga-ing over adorable infants while they, simultaneously, plot the successful course of navigation for their family, reminding us that it truly does take a village for a child to grow and thrive. For some, MyTurn is more about people showing up and turning out, packing the stands of basketball games with program peers and leaders alike as a personal fan club for their very own MVP, primed to score their one-thousandth point in the paint. And to others like Sydney Radict, who received the Out of School Participant of the Year award at this year’s 4th anniversary Bright Futures event and fundraiser, MY TURN can truly grow into a family when it feels as though the earth has crumbled out beneath your feet.
As she tells her story, gGrowing up in the Jehovah’s Witness church, Sydney expressed feeling alienated and conflicted for much of her life in her youth, often the subject of name calling and bullying due to her religious upbringing. She had always been loyal to her family, and as such would follow strict complementarian gender roles. She was married briefly to someone much her senior and after the end of high school was expected to settle into married life before she was even legally able to buy alcohol. At the age of 20, Sydney chose what she knew was inherently right and just, instead of being guided by the desires of those around her, and took steps to seek divorce from her husband to discover her own path. Choosing this life was not so easy as it meant she had directly disobeyed the Church, and therefore would have to cut contact with her family and loved ones, as Jehovah’s Witness’ communities rely on shunning to eradicate from social circles those who have left the faith or been driven from the church.
Facing the branching point on this jumbo sized game of Life, Sydney had little preparation for the expansive world ahead outside the lens of her upbringing, not to mention any employable skills due to a deprioritization of said skills in her faith which also left her financial outlook less than bleak. While she had goals and dreams for herself in mind, she felt she didn’t possess the means by which to make them happen. Turning to couch-surfing (a version of life often overlooked in the public’s thought of what constitutes the term “homeless population”) as her only means of a safe place to sleep each night, Sydney was left with no idea of where to go from there, with no warm, embracing space to retreat back to. As is the same turning point in so many incredible stories shared throughout the night of, here enters MY TURN to save the day.
Their higher education programming and scholarship funds were able to help Sydney secure EMT training to embark on a meaningful career path she truly loves in health and human services, where she graduated top of her class and has recently moved on to the next step in her journey at the start of a degree in nursing. She credits MY TURN and the endless support of the team in their Rochester office with turning her life around and making it one she feels proud and excited to live. Now, on her own with her partner and an adorable rescue dog who loved her along the way, she is on her own path to fulfillment. Programming like this, with little to no barriers to entry presented in welcoming and non-judgmental environments, can be revolutionary for adults who may have missed out on educational milestones in the past and are looking to change the course of their future.
While this ideal of education may seem limited in its reach, these same principles are woven into the very fabric of the quilt that makes up their reach and breadth. It is this mindset which enables their participants to soar. MY TURN’s unique ability to meet people of all ages, races and lived experiences exactly where they are with authentic human connection, love, and kindness is the magic that so many other organizations cannot replicate. Truly lightning in a bottle, their own ranks are composed of individuals whose very presence is a testament to the impact their services and help delivers upon a life.
Bright Futures Alumna of the Year recipient Jane Rodolf’s story begins far away from those whose stories she touches each day here in the Queen City. Originally immigrating to the States from the nation of Sudan as her family fled their village in escape of civil war, the seeds of her becoming the ray of light she is in our community were originally planted long ago. Jane first found MY TURN during her academic transition in her early teens, where their support and guidance through schooling challenges as she adjusted to a new life and language alongside culture ultimately helped her to graduation as part of their 2009 class. After all these years, members of the MY TURN team (like Executive Director Allison Joseph, who has been a staple fixture through her years of incredible work) have remained by her side as the proudest folks at each and every milestone, achievement, breakthrough and loss, from her teens now well into her adulthood. Not only was MyTurn a critical part in her first step into the career world as an LNA, but they continued to love her as if she were each and every one of their own, as she started her own voyage into motherhood.
Just like a real family, MY TURN was there in hard times, too, giving an essential space of refuge and healing to Jane as her brother Emmanuel struggled during a battle with leukemia and she became his bone marrow donor. When the remission her selfless act had granted him couldn’t last forever, Emmanuel passed away the following summer. The team stood strong in compassionate support of one of their own, which Jane is, through and through; she recently celebrated her second anniversary now working for the MY TURN high school programming at West High School. She is often considered the first black teacher most of the young people of color have encountered, and this is empowering to them as they feel seen and heard and inspired that they, too, can grow to be where Jane has gone in her professional life. Once again, we hear the thrumming with that same pulse of authentic, human programs run by real people, who connect in natural and normal ways. This is the very ethos of MY TURN which continues to breathe life into the cycle of community, hopefully inspiring the “Jane” of the next generation’s path.
The success and impact of nonprofit work and cooperation like that captured in MY TURN’s reach is measurable in the unique tapestry of lives that make up the moving pieces of Manchester. Each student, adult, mother, child, and person they help becomes a pinpoint of light in our community – a light ebbing and flowing as a testament to the power of simplistic human love and support. The rippling effects are noticeable in the artwork spread across the courtyard of Jane’s school, West High, a venture spearheaded as a paid MY TURN summer internship for teens and adults to learn what it means to be an artist in a professional setting under the tutelage of their Community Partner of the Year Yasamin Safarzadeh; or in the stories of alumni like Francesca Alcala, whose decade-long journey with MY TURN continues to spread the light onward to others in her role as a Program Assistant for the Nashua division while nourishing tummies and souls with her catering side hustle, Phran La Phoodie.
The waves of positivity and love that emanate from these spaces, and continue to carry out in conjunction with the skills and tools individuals take with them in their time, are the true underlying common denominator behind all of the things that make Manchester a uniquely magical place. Almost a factory undercover, pumping out an intangible product that has shaped each of our lives and the legacy of our city. While so many concern themselves with their opinion of the Manchester they think we have become, they are blind to the work being done right under their noses; finding those who need them and saving their world quietly, with no expectation of a thank you.
Leave no stone unturned as you allow yourself the time this summer to go out, discover and once again fall in love with the community you are immersed within; for who could ever otherwise know the magical geode of untapped golden energy inside its unsuspecting outer shell.
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