Recap: From Safety Net to Springboard Reframing Human Services

Our annual Community of Practice is an opportunity for nonprofit and community leaders, elected officials, and members of philanthropy to connect, engage in shared learning, and align resources and support to drive meaningful change. Year after year, we witness these third spaces invite brave conversations, vulnerable participation, a deeper more nuanced understanding of one another, and generative and visionary solutions to the diverse and shared challenges across the county.

In her opening remarks HealthSpark Foundation President and CEO Emma Hertz invited guests to reimagine the health and human services sector – to move from crises intervention to intentional, coordinated, and organized movements that operate across generations.  

“For decades, we have described human services as a safety net, something that catches people when they fall. That story isn't wrong. It’s one HealthSpark itself has used. But it is too small.”

“What we know, however, is that human services are a springboard both for individuals and for communities. They open pathways to economic mobility. They help close wealth gaps that have held families back for generations. This work is not simply a response to crisis. True investment into health and human services is one of the most hopeful investments we can make: in people, in each other, and in our shared future.” - Emma Hertz

Liberatory movements that reorient to longer time horizons, as Emma noted, also permit rest. When rest and wellness are prioritized it creates the space needed to imagine, dream, and build systems that truly center equity, justice, and belonging. Rather than a privilege to be earned, rest is a right and a practice that lends itself towards durable social transformation. 

As Emma closed, she invited guests to move through the day with curiosity and a willingness to investigate the limiting narratives that dominate the health and human services sector and to explore what it means to build generational collective power that is rooted in communities.

Keynote

Emma introduced keynote speaker Amanda Misiko Andere, Co-President of Neighborhood Funders Group, who offered a powerful reflection on the realities of inequity while calling us to lead with hope.

Amanda challenged us to move beyond fixing the systems that brought us here and instead imagine and build new ones rooted in equity, justice, and liberation. Drawing on her personal experience of loss and the structures that create homelessness, she reminded us that housing justice is racial justice.

She left us with a question: What kind of ancestor do we want to be?

Amanda called on us to do more than resist harmful policies. We must reimagine and build systems of care that make home possible for everyone. And as we do this work, we must remember that rest and joy are not rewards, but birthrights.

Her message to philanthropy was clear: fund movements like you want them to win. Give communities the resources, time, and space to dream, organize, and rest.

Her message to the room was five powerful calls to action:

1. Funders: Invest in the long-term work of building, dreaming, and imagining what the next 50 years can look like.

2. Nonprofit advocates: Challenge funders to do more and push yourselves to be in spaces that challenge your own perspectives. Be unapologetically Pro-Black, Pro-Indigenous, and Pro-LGBTQ.

3. Share power: Recognize our role as gatekeepers of resources and ask ourselves how we can meaningfully shift power to Black and Brown communities.

4. Create lasting seats at the table: Are we bringing people folding tables or offering them a permanent chair? Justice and liberation require agency and self-determination.

5. Draw on our roots: Lean into the courage, wisdom, and strength of our ancestors.

Table Talk

After Amanda’s keynote guests were invited to reflect on the following prompt and share their answer with a fellow guest.      

What aspects of this morning’s discussion struck a chord with you? How does it stir your imagination to imagine the world 50 years from now?

Fireside Chat

After the plenary and table talk, Mydera Taliah Robinson, Executive Director of Theatre Horizon, Councilwoman At-Large for Norristown, and HealthSpark Foundation Board Member joined Amanda for a fireside chat moderated by Emma Hertz. Together they explored liberatory practices at the community level and what it takes to move from crises intervention to intergenerational movement building.

Amanda and Mydera reflected on what it means to engage in and lead movements for social transformation. Amanda contributed a national view from her work aligning movement-building organizations, and Mydera brought a local view where she leads both an arts institution and a seat in local government. Important themes that surfaced included granting themselves permission to fail, especially as black women who experience societal pressures, and giving power, especially to black and brown folks.

Workshops

After the fireside chat, guests broke into one of five pre-selected workshops.

This year, we moved away from traditional presentations to participatory workshops. Each workshop explored a theme central to the work needed to shift the way we talk about human services and how we value them. Field experts facilitated interactive workshops that included real-life examples of the work they are seeing and creating in their respective fields while participants helped to shape the conversation and move from theory into practice.

Workshops included:

Board Development: Seeing the Vision, Sharing the Work

Facilitated by Marsha Eichelberger, CEO Family Promise Montco and Debbie Badger Chief Operations Officer of Family Promise Montco this workshop explored what it looks like to build boards that are curious about the work, willing to learn, and ready to use their leadership to help make that vision possible.

Harnessing Resources: People, Power, & Money

Every community already holds the resources it needs to shape its future: dollars, relationships, time, lived experience, and the stories people tell about where they live and what they deserve. This workshop explored how those resources get organized, and who decides where they go. 

Facilitated by: Melissa Hamilton, artist, organizer and Program Officer at People's Media Fund, Enni Aigbomian-Werley Communications Manager at People's Media Fund, and Keynote Amanda Andere 

Shaping Public Understanding

This workshop illuminated the types of language, messages, and stories we can use to shape public understanding of human services.

Facilitated by: Brian McShane Associate Director for PA & NJ at the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), Correne Kristiansen Advocacy Coordinator at the Bucks-Mont Collaborative, and Rosie Richeson Volunteer & Outreach Manager for Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania

We Are the Common Good Sector

Facilitated by Jason Alexander and Meghan McVety Principles and Co-Founders of Capacity for Change, this workshop engaged participants in the idea of changing what our sector is known as, because if we do, we will be able to shine a clearer, brighter light on what is possible when people come together for the common good.

Where We Live, How We Thrive

Inspired by the Social Determinant of Health - Neighborhood and Built Environment, this workshop guided participants through what the places people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age in should look like. 

Facilitated by: Ann St. Claire Annual Giving Officer Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation, Christina Miller Administrator for the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services Office of Public Health, and Jordan DiVito serves as District Director for Pennsylvania State Senator Art Haywood.

Our team will be analyzing the outcomes of each workshop to produce actionable strategies for collective work.

Closing

Andres Dircio (Andy) shared his personal story to bring the day to a close. A young artist from Norristown, Andy combines artistic and technological principles to manipulate, record, and reproduce sound. He is also a musician who likes to experiment with different genres of music such as jazz, hip-hop, pop, and rock. As an immigrant youth in Norristown and participant in CCATE’s youth programs, Andy has been inspired to leverage creative arts like podcasting and storytelling as tools for positive social change amid an environment of fear, chaos, and pain.

HealthSpark Foundation Director of Programs Akshara Vivekananthan shared a few final remarks and gently reminded guests about the importance of joy, play, and rest in sustaining long-term movements for liberation and social transformation.