Two community-based organizations in Winooski are seeking to connect people of color by providing counseling and other supportive programming in private residences and backyards.
The organizations using this innovative strategy, Conscious Homestead and Marigold House, have been awarded over $288,000 this year by the Vermont Department of Health through a capacity-building program launched to combat racial inequities exacerbated by Covid-19.
But for Marigold House, the strategy has proved challenging thus far to carry out. Its scheduled late-September opening was disrupted when what a press release from project organizer Coco Shah described as “a dispute over property access” halted planned construction.
The organization had intended to open a community space in part of a Winooski home. Its aims are to provide a variety of healing services to people of color, such as therapy, support groups, bodywork and ancestral cooking classes, according to Shah.
The grant program funding the project came as a result of the pandemic, as the health department declared racism a public health crisis after evidence of racism was demonstrated in its Covid-19 data, according to the department.
“Part of the goal of this grant process is to really lift up the work of community-based organizations and to prioritize them for receiving funds to continue work that’s addressing those needs, both in Covid and beyond,” said Ashley Kraybill, director of health equity for the health department.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded around $5 million in grants to the Vermont Department of Health, according to the latter. So far, 24 of 80 organizations that applied for the funding have been accepted, and grant amounts average around $150,000, according to Song Nguyen, the department’s manager of health equity.
Nguyen explained that the grants were provided only on a reimbursement basis, meaning that organizations would have to spend the money first and seek reimbursement afterward.
“It makes it challenging for a lot of organizations, but we’re not able to just write a check for X amount of dollars for the grant award for them to spend,” Nguyen said.
Shah founded Marigold House in an effort to redistribute their wealth and land access, they said in a promotional video. Shah and their then-partner decided to renovate part of their home into a “gorgeous, intergenerational community space that centers cross-cultural growth, connection and rest,” Shah said in the video.
The property-access issue stems from circumstances in the personal relationship between Shah and their former partner shifting one week before construction was set to begin, Shah said. No further details were provided, but Winooski records indicate that Shah’s former partner is the current property owner.
Over 500 donors “successfully funded the center’s groundbreaking in June 2022,” according to the Marigold House press release. But without property to build on, no construction has begun.
The property-access challenge reveals that attempting to run an organization out of a private space can be messy and complicated at times, according to Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski. But she added that for people of color that sometimes is the only option.
“The primary thing I would highlight is just the barriers that there are to be able to build and grow in public space, especially for people of color in Vermont,” she said. “The opportunities when it comes to loans, when it comes to credit, when it comes to being able to get that initiative and support is so staggering.”
Small said that these inequities were amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic and specifically impacted people of color trying to start businesses because they had increased difficulty obtaining loans.
Another Winooski organization is pushing through the challenges. Conscious Homestead is a community care center with similar aims as Marigold House.
The two organizations successfully applied together for the grant funding program under Conscious Homestead’s fiscal sponsor, Community Resiliency Organizations, according to a draft of the grant agreement. The total amount jointly awarded to the two organizations is $288,300, according to the draft.
Owner Candace Taylor built the space on their own property within their “recently transformed backyard,” according to the Conscious Homestead website.
Taylor said that they and Shah had multiple collaborative projects planned in Winooski, but because of the postponement of the opening of Marigold House, they are unable to proceed with them.
“We have already had a great number of offerings to Black or brown folks in our community that have been impacted,” Taylor said. “Those offerings center on providing the essential needs that Black and brown folks have that are not being met by other spaces and places in our community and in our government.”
Small said she has been involved with Marigold House since its conception and has also attended Conscious Homestead events. She agreed that both organizations offer services to people of color that the state has failed to provide.
“Often, when we’re talking about health inequities, we really leave out the global majority, which is Black and brown people of color,” she said. “I think both Conscious Homestead and Marigold house provide exactly what we need in both Winooski but thinking in the state more generally.”
The timeline and construction plan for Marigold House remains unclear for now. But Shah is keen on keeping their promise to Winooski.
“I vowed to build an intergenerational community care space within Winooski to specifically uplift people of color,” they said. “Over 500 people and businesses and organizations including the Vermont Department of Health funded that promise in good faith and I take that very seriously.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Song Nguyen’s name.
