June 16, 2026 – HRDEI Committee – Video & Transcript

June 16, 2026 - HRDEI Committee

Autoscroll:

Good evening. I am Karen Blumenfeld. It is June 16, 2026, at 6.04 p.m. And we are the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. So we're going to start with a roll call. When I say your name, which are alphabetical this evening, by last name, when I say your name, just say your first and last name and say here, please. Marianne Borkowski, I know she is not here. Ken Bruss. Ken Bruss, here. Sophie Chen, here. Kyle Davidson, not here, but maybe he'll come later. He's one of our new members, student member. Denise Fortin, Denise was going to come on Zoom, but she's not here yet.
Kevin Goodwin? Yeah. Okay, Marianne Lifty, supposed to come, but she's not here yet. Janot Mendler-De Suarez is not here yet. Hernan Murdoch, I know he's coming, but he's not here yet. He's one of our other new members. Heather Pino? Heather Pino, present. Q, Sarah Student? Sarah Student, present. And Yao Wu-Tang is here, and Karen Blumenfeld is here. And Janot just popped up. Janot just popped up. Janot, oh, okay. Yes. There you are. And Sophie, we'll just keep an eye on, if you could, and I will try to notice what time people come if they come late.
Wonderful. So, Sarah is going to read our land acknowledgement, and then we'll see if there's any public comment. Oh, Hernan. Welcome. We're just taking attendance. Are you here? I am. Can you say your name? Hernan Murdoch. Wonderful. Terrific. And we'll do introductions shortly, but go ahead, Sarah. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on Wacom as soon as possible after the meeting. Anyone who would like to make public comment may do so. We ask that public comment be limited to two minutes per person. The Indigenous Land Acknowledgement. Today, as we begin, we would like to acknowledge the following Indigenous peoples on whose traditional homelands we live, work, and gather today. The Massachusetts, the Nipmuc, the Wampanoag, and the Pawtucket. We acknowledge their ancestors, particularly Carto, of the Massachusetts tribe, who was steward of much of the land now encompassing Sudbury and Wayland, when European settlers arrived to colonize this place in 1638. We seek to understand, acknowledge, and remember the painful, ongoing history of war, genocide, and forced removal of Indigenous peoples by European settlers. And we offer a living celebration of the Indigenous communities who are not just part of the past, but who continue to live and make new history here today. May we all commit to deepening our relationships with Indigenous communities and to being their allies in working for justice. Thank you so much. Do we have any public comment?
I see far online. No, we don't. We don't. Okay. And nobody here, so. Okay. So, let me then begin by introducing our new members and acknowledging some member reappointments. And people online, can you hear me? Okay. Am I loud enough for you? Yeah? Okay. New members. First, Mariam was appointed last night as a voting member. She had been an associate member. So, we're very excited for her. And then also last night, her name, Murdoch, and Ken Bruss, and Kyle Davidson, a student who isn't here yet, were also appointed. So, we have three wonderful new members, which we're excited about. And member reappointments, three of us re-upped our membership because our membership was expiring now, and that would be Kevin, Marianne, and myself got reappointed. So, I don't know if the new people want to say a word like a sentence, you know, just a very short introduction if you'd like, but don't feel like you need to. And then we can also tell you who our names, and we recognize that unless we have it. If we're not inside a box, it's going to be hard to remember, but you'll get to know us. Okay. I'll start. My name is Hernan Murdoch, and I've been a resident of Wayland since 2005. Very happy to be joining the committee and to contribute to the mission, and hopefully I'll be able to make some positive contributions to making Wayland a more welcoming and inclusive community for our group. So, thank you. Thank you. I'm Ken Brash. I've been in Wayland about a year and a half. I'm a woman from Lexington. I'm still not certain if this is the right committee for me or not. Reason being is that a lot of my focus is around interfaith work, particularly, you know, so that in Lexington, we have an organization called Lexington United Against Antisemitism. And part of our success was because of the fact that it was such a vibrant interfaith initiative. And in light of the startling painful statistics for antisemitism, I'm looking here, but I'm also looking to see what the interfaith landscape is. Thank you, and welcome to both of you and to Kyle, who might not come this evening.
We're going to move to the next agenda item. Can we just do our names? What else? Yes, thank you. Yes, go ahead, please. I'm Heather Pino. I'm the vice chair. I'm Sarah Stutton. Who are you? Yeah, who are you? Who are you? What's your name? Old time. That's about what. I'm waiting for 52 years.
Long time. You get the prize. Yeah, you get the prize. Yeah. And Robbie, can you? I'm sorry. This is my starting six years for the committee.
Robbie, can you just explain who you are and what you do with us? My name is Robbie Bullard. I've been working on talent for about four or five years now, since 2021, and so I've done all the board meetings in person now. These are tech members.
And Kevin? I'm Kevin Goodwin. I live in Wales. I've lived in Wales since 74, since I was a kid. Well, my parents were a kid, so. And I'm also on the cultural council, plus I'm on several committees with a state, and a lot of volunteer work, so. Thank you. Sophie?
Yeah, I'm also a high school member, and I'm in 10th grade right now. And I was brought in by another high school member called Maya Raj, who is unfortunately leaving us, but. We're so glad you're staying. And Sophie is our co-clerk right now, along with Yahoo, their co-clerks together. And then, Jeno? Hi. Welcome. I'm so delighted that you guys are going to be new members, and I'm looking forward to meeting Kyle. I'm Jeno. And Jeno is a member of many, many committees in town. Yes. She probably gets the prize for the number of simultaneous committees. Housing Partnership and Weyland Interfaith Leaders, Inter-Alya, with some others. But those are the town committees.
And I'm Karen Blumenthal, and you all know me a little bit already. But I've been in Weyland for more than 30 years, a long time, but not as long as you.
Okay, next topic on our agenda is discussion and possible vote to approve the May 19th meeting minutes. And I'm just going to mention that everyone who was on the committee before attended this May 19th meeting, but our newest members will ask you to abstain on minutes, because people, we don't vote on minutes for meetings that we didn't attend. And I usually forget to say that, so I'm saying that she might. Sorry? I observed no reason. Oh, you observed the meeting. Well, still that you weren't. Oh, hello, but thank you for observing. I'm not a voter. Thank you for observing. Are there any comments on the draft minutes from May 19th? If there are no comments, would somebody please move to approve the minutes of May 19th, 2026, as written? I move that we accept the minutes of May 19th, as written. Great. And is there a second? I will second, Shano. I'll second. Good. So, Kevin made the motions or no seconded. Let us vote. Let's do it alphabetically to make it go quick. Okay, okay, Sophie.
Yes. Let's see, who is it? Kevin? Yes. Mario? No, she's not here. Jano? Yes. Heather? Yes. Sarah? Yes. And Yawul. And Karen, yes. Okay.
All right, thank you.
Next, we're going to discuss and take a vote, if we all agree, on HRDEIC officers. I sent you some officer role descriptions, which describe the role of the chair, the vice chair, and the clerk, and the treasurer, if we decide that we need one. And I guess, are there any questions about the roles?
Do you receive any state funding or Wayland funding? Good question. And not a simple answer to that. We do not have a budget line, but we do request funding for specific things. This year, the biggest thing we request funding for is the Wayland Festival, and this coming year, the Wayland Festival funding is going to go through Arts Wayland rather than through us and the town. So it's not clear to me whether we need a treasurer for this year. Okay. We have gotten, we have written grants and received grants also in the past.
Well, if there's no other questions or comments, I would ask, Heather, do we start with the clerk? Or do we start with the chair? I don't know. I don't know if there's a specific order, but let's start with the chair. Is there anybody here who is interested in serving as chair in the coming year? These are voices.
Are you interested or willing? I'm willing to continue serving. Yes, it would be an honor to do that. And I make a motion that we have only felt as chair. Do we want to do it as a slate or individually? I'm fine with individually, if that works for others. Sure. All right. Is there a second? I'll second Kevin's motion.
Yes. Kevin, Amja, no. Okay. Okay. So then, no, did we miss something? No, I was just wondering, with a few people not here, if we should be checking. Do we know if anybody wanted, well, they're not here. They knew it was on the agenda. They knew it was on the agenda. They knew it was on the agenda. They knew it was on the agenda. I would just say that, well, I mean, I would absolutely welcome any of our new members if they wanted to step up and help serve as chair. I think it's great just for continuity to continue with the wonderful chair that we have had, Karen, over the last year. Thank you. And also, I do hope everyone will step up and contribute and help us in everything forward, as those of you who have been here already do. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. So Kevin moved, Jeno seconded, so let us then vote if there's no further comment. So thank you for the trust that you all have placed in me and I will strive to be deserving of it. So thank you. So thank you. Thank you. So thank you for the trust that you all have placed in me and I will strive to be deserving of it. So thank you. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you for the trust that you all have placed in me and I will strive to be deserving of it. So thank you. For vice chair, is there anybody who would like to serve in the role of vice chair? What's that like? Heather, would you like to continue? I am willing to continue, but if somebody else would like to be in this role, that's totally fine and I'm still happy to help behind the scenes. If somebody else is volunteering, then would somebody like to make a motion? Would someone like to make, let me rephrase that. Would somebody please make a motion to accept Heather as vice chair of the HRDIC for the coming year? Okay. Thank you. And you know what? One thing I'm sorry that I should have said is for, besides not voting on minutes, the other thing that we do need to have is for voting members to be the ones who make the motions and the seconds. I apologize for not saying that. I second. Thank you. I'm sorry. Okay. Let us vote. Nobody else is. All right. But they're not here. So, but everybody can vote. So, Ken? Yes. Sophie? Yes. Kevin? Yes. Jenna? Yes. Hernan? Yes. Heather? Do I vote for myself? I don't know. We'll put you at the end. Sarah? Yes. Yes. Karen? Yes. Sure. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Now, for the clerk, we did vote recently because we lost our clerk like a month ago. We did vote recently. I'm thinking maybe just to sink everybody, we ought to vote again. Would you like to continue the vote clerk? Okay. If Sophie's willing to take all... If Sophie's willing to take all, you're willing to not be the clerk. Yeah. Sophie, the pressure's on. Are you willing to be clerk or co-clerk if a second person would step up and work with you? Yeah. I'm fine either way. You're fine either way. I certainly will work with you as you already know, because I like to be the last pair of eyes on the minutes. So, if you're comfortable with that, I'm very comfortable with you being the clerk without a co-clerk. But if anybody wants to serve in that role, that's also good.
Well, then let's take a vote for Sophie as clerk. Well, we have to have a motion. Yes. I know. Would somebody like to move that we appoint Sophie to be our clerk for the coming year? I so move. Who is that? Janot. Okay. Janot. And is there a second? I'll second it. There's no around. Kevin seconded. Wonderful. Then let us vote. Ken? Yes. Kevin? Yes. Janot. Yes. Janot. Yes. Hernan. Yes. Heather. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Yalu. Karen, yes. And Sophie. Yes. Yay. Thank you so much for that. We will give you all the support you need. So, don't ever hesitate to ask questions, reach out, cry uncle if it's too much. Even if you have, like, during exam periods or something comes up at school, let us know. Because we've covered for each other when needed. Definitely. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Wonderful. Thank you, everybody. The next one, discussion of ongoing business, is kind of an easy and quick one. I wanted to let everyone know, I put Reading Frederick Douglass together on the agenda. What I didn't even quite realize when I put that on the agenda is, there are two Reading Frederick Douglass together events. We are not co-sponsors of one of them. So, we're co-sponsors of the one for adults. And that one is Tuesday, June 30th, 7 p.m. in the renovating of the library. And I hope everybody here will try to attend if you can. I plan to be there. It was fabulous last year. It was really good. The second one, which we're not co-sponsors of, so I just, it wasn't quite on my radar, is Reading Frederick Douglass together, Family Storytime. And that is at the library in the Raytheon Room, on Saturday, June 27th, at 10.30 a.m. And that one, so the one in the library is at, is led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes, excuse me, the one for adults is led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes, as it was last year, at 7 p.m. That's the library. At the library. And the one for kids is 10.30 a.m. Saturday, June 27th. And that one is led by Scarlett Hoey, the director of the museum, and Haley Neal, the youth services librarian. So, I think I'll probably show up for that one, too, even though I don't have children of that age, but just to, yeah, just to be supportive. And so, folks, we're all welcome to support that one as well. So, the Museum of Fine Arts Tour, and, and Yawa, where are we with that? I'm, I'm sorry, we don't actually have an update on that. We're sort of waiting for Karen. Can we, can we try to, like, make that happen? Can we, can we try it so that next month we have a, something in the works? Yeah. That'd be great. Thank you, Karen Crown. That'd be great. Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you. Thank you. And if, if, if that is more than you, either one of you wants on your plate right now, you know, let me know when you can make an adjustment. I forgot this person. I saw someone who's going to be a tour guide. Karen, Karen Crown. Karen, yeah. So, so for those of you who are new, there's a woman who lives in town named Karen Crown. Oh yeah, Karen Crown. Karen Crown. She came to our, one of our meetings. She's? She's a docent. She's a tour guide. Yeah, but she's, she's, she has so many children, she wants to learn. Well, that she wanted to what? She's good now. She wants to talk to you. She's good now. Yeah. Yeah. She wants to talk to the two of you. Okay. Yeah. And figure out how we might do a special tour of the MFA for Wayland residents that would focus on whose stories get told and whose stories don't get told in the museum. Yeah. It's a very cool thing. I'd really like to see it happen before winter. Um, so if we can get something going, that would be really fantastic. Um, more display, Sophie, I don't know. Do you want to wait till the next meeting when Marianne is with us? Or do you want to share with us what might be happening? I feel like it's kind of better to wait cause it's still a work in progress, but we're just, um, yeah, it's just a work in progress, I guess. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. That's, um, Marianne and Sophie are working on the bulletin board out here in the town building on the story of the HRDESC because we turned five years ago this year. Yeah. We celebrated a little bit earlier this year and they're going to do some kind of visual display. Um, how widely is this building used as opposed to putting in the library, which I would assume would have more foot traffic? Yeah. The library would have more foot traffic. I don't know if they'd be interested, but that's a great question. Uh, which I will make a note of. And, or I'm curious now the, like here compared to the new, um, senior center, you know, senior center or community center, but cause they have those display cases. Yep. Um, I'm curious. Yeah. What the foot traffic is, is like. And if you're looking for an in, I'm on the COA. I don't, I don't even want to ask you to explore it without first checking with Marianne. That's perfectly fine. But I will do that. And then. But I would think that they'd be amenable to make their own money, particularly if they don't have to do any work. Yeah. If they're willing to share their real estate with us. Yeah. I would think they would be. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Those are great ideas. Thank you. Um, let's see. Okay. The next item was just, I put in your packet, uh, the final report to the Lydia Mariah child fund that we, um, they asked us to write a report on the conversations, not a confrontation series. So that's already been submitted and they were grateful because a lot of times they give grants and they don't get reports on how things went. So I think they were appreciative of knowing how it went. And frankly, it was helpful to us to look at this, at the data. So. And the piece you wrote in the Whalen newspaper was very nice. It was informative. It was friendly. You know, they did a good job with summarizing things. Thank you. Yeah. In case people didn't read their Whalen post yet, we had a piece in this week's Whalen post about conversations, not confrontations. And two weeks ago, we had a piece about the conversations for change series at the library. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. We're going to go to that. Um, since we have new members and I'm sorry, Kyle isn't here, but, um, I wanted to review something that we haven't talked about in a number of years on this committee. And some of you weren't even on the committee when we first did this. Uh, and, um, that is over the years in 2021, 2022, and 2024 at three separate times, we put we put together some norms and guidelines for ourselves and I put them together in a single PDF. They don't particularly go together, but it was three separate attempts to give ourselves guidelines. So when we have to make decisions about things, well, how do we, how do we decide? Well, actually the first of that's not true. The first one was how do we interact with each other? The first one was group norms in 2021. When we were brand new, we said, how do we want to, how do we want to get along with each other? So we put that together. The second one was criteria for deciding whether to issue an HR DEI statement when an incident occurs in town. And the third one was guidelines for selecting programs for us to sponsor or co-sponsor. And I'm wondering, do any of these need updating? Do they need to be put together into a single document? Are we okay with three separate ones? I'd be curious what people do. Do any of those issues such as issuing guidelines, making a statement, do you have to run it through the town manager or any other? We haven't. And they've never complained? Not yet. We're pretty careful in how we word things to be as thoughtful as we can be without inflaming situations. Yeah. Did anything jump out at you as like, oh gosh, that sounds so outdated now? Or does it all feel like it still works? If you haven't had legal breathing down your neck in the past couple of years, I would assume that they probably still work. Yes, we have not. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I know we talked about at some point our guidance on whether we issue like monthly statements supporting whatever month it might be. And I put that on the agenda too under number nine because we haven't really resolved it. Resolved it. But I felt like that was also like going with the criteria of when do we issue statements? Yes. Because I know we issued at least two of the last two months. And when I read them, they seem very similar, which is, you know, the messaging is very similar for both of them. But if we just continue to issue statements that are kind of similar, you know, it can get out of hand because every month has certain groups that are recognized. And those that aren't. And those that aren't. And those that aren't. It points out to us, there are those that aren't. Absolutely. But I think even those that are recognized, there's a huge spectrum, whether it's cultural abilities, religious. And so where do we draw the line of like, I have neighbors and they put up a sign that said like it's dyslexic, you know, people with dyslexia awareness month. And so. Absolutely. There are so many. There are so many. So you won't be here. Yeah. That discussion. But I appreciate you raising that. And what's the vehicle of communicating statements? We put them on our website and on our Facebook page. And occasionally they draw attention, but usually not. But could they be in the way of a newspaper? I don't know that a statement is newspaper worthy. That would be, I guess, up to the newspaper. I mean, it's not a story generally unless it. If it's a month. Oh, so we do statements about when incidents happen in town. Right. That's different. And that's different than the cultural holiday statements. Cultural holiday statements I don't imagine would go on a newspaper, but possibly a statement of our incident. Well, but here again, it could be an opportunity to collaborate here from COA because they do. Oh, the monthly newsletter? Yeah. Yeah. And they're looking at the types of things that are in there. And I wouldn't see any problem with, you know, some recognition for, you know, the . Yeah. I wonder, should we move this up on the agenda so we could actually. No, let's, let's, let's do that. Thank you. That's a great idea. Let's, let's combine that with this discussion. So let's combine number nine, agenda item number nine with what we're talking about now. Thank you, Janelle. Great idea. Yeah. So that was a great suggestion to, you know, look into collaborating with the COA and their newsletter. But that kind of brings up something that I think we'd mentioned a couple of meetings ago, which is that, you know, the, I mean, the COA has its own sort of older audience. But the, you know, the intent is that it's both the Council on Aging and a community center. And we don't really have any institutional coordination or leadership for community center activities. Um, and maybe enlarging the newsletter could be kind of a first step, um, to bring the. You're actually touching on a point that was this good. You're actually touching on a point that was discussed at the COA meeting a couple of weeks ago. Um, and funding was, it was very much contingent on this being a community. Um, but that hasn't been coming about a lot of it is about resources and in particular, it's public record or maybe not, but direct department, which is supposed to be doing more family based programming hasn't been, or if they are, they're not doing it in the COA building. You know, so there's a recognized need to get more populations in there. But COA just, you know, sort of busy not doing what they're doing, but their outreach to your families. Yeah. Um, well, rec is certainly doing a lot of family programming, um, but not necessarily at the COA building. It's great space. And as I said, you know, the funding for it was that it would be this and other than like babysitting, um, there isn't much of it and some like yoga classes. There isn't much going on with the parents. Actually, Yao can tell us about the Chinese, the Wayland Chinese American Association is doing stuff there. We, we have the program every other Wednesday or twice a month. It's a real free program. People just coming in to enjoy. Now we have people starting to have people to do some kind of exercise. Yeah. Well, what's the age group you're attracting? What's the age group that's coming? A lot of six, seventies, eighties. The COA side of that. Well, that's the thing. They just, there's some other types of things that are doing, but again, they're pairing, they're attracting my peers and all over. Sure. So, so to Janelle's point, since you're here also representing the Council on Aging, have you all, has the Council on Aging met with the rec department to talk about how they might work together? They've been trying. Okay. There's some politics and budget that I'm too new to be talking about. Okay. Okay. I know it's really difficult at the elementary, middle, or high school level because the rec department has been actually doing really well with at least middle school events. But, you know, each class in the middle school is like 200 plus people. Right. And so when they limit events to a hundred, which is how much the field house or the Wayland Middle School, you know, Council of Aging is just not big enough. And if you start to limit it more and more, families feel like it's exclusive. And when the signup goes up, especially for example, working parents, like I can't be online all day waiting for the signup to go up to. So it's inclusive in the sense that no one is purposefully left out, but we felt like something 80 to a hundred spots for a class of, you know, 200 plus is sort of, so I know at least that the, I'm not sure about the small, small kiddos, but, and the higher grades, that's been a barrier. The other two dynamics just to be aware of, particularly if you want to use their space. Um, they have a part budgeting reasons, they have a hard time custodian. And so they don't have staff assigned for after hours. So who opens the building at night, who opens it on weekends, you know, certainly part of it, and then you get them set up. And then the other thing that I've heard that there's some work on, but evidently the programming software among different entities is a nightmare of, you know, somebody from the town hall wants a whole meeting in the Council of Aging, you know, and who knows what, and there's a lot of those things going on. But they do allow alcohol. Oh, they do? Just FYI. Yes, they do. Yeah. And they had, they had an event there. They had bingo there in early May. Um, which served, well, it was geared towards younger children, younger families. Um, it was very, not the alcohol, the alcohol was to bring the parents. Yes. Um, and it was, I would say successful, but the people and the families who attended were very closely, um, you know, had relationships with the woman who ran it. Are you talking, you're talking about the, the Wayland Post bingo event or some of the Yes. The Wayland Post bingo event. Oh yeah. So it was basically run by Kim Bennett. Who is a third grade, but the children, like all the, the, the, the young families, you know, how many were there? 10. And the vast majority of them were happy hollow third and second, you know, grade students because she has a big community and we all came, you know, that's why I was there. It was to support Kim. She's on the PTO. She does a lot of work for happy hollow. So we just came to support her. It's always a challenge getting. Yeah. It's just really, really challenging. Yeah. Young kids, older kids. It's just, there's no good time. And whatever time you pick people complain. Yes. And, you know, I, I was the president of the PTO and it's just really, really difficult to get. And there's so many, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the statement question, we were talking about, we were talking this, the topic is whether or not we do statements and the monthly statements, which would be great to talk about while you're still here. Yes. And, and I, I, I don't, I don't want to add another agenda topic, but I know we've gotten the email about holidays as well. I don't know if we want to weigh in on that at all. It's not on our agenda. Yeah. It's not on our agenda. Um, my perspective is that, um, while I completely understand why we issue these statements and I completely understand that as Wayland hopefully gets more and more diverse, there will be more and more populations and more and more holidays and more and more things that we want to recognize and participate in and be aware of. It's just, if the statements are very, very similar from month to month, and there's so many of them, and there's a risk of missing someone or leaving someone out that it's just just kind of on the one hand, meaningless and on the other hand, risky for that to be our practice. Um, I feel similar about holidays as Wayland becomes more and more diverse and more and more different groups, uh, celebrate more and more different holidays. I think it's wonderful to recognize all of those. But I also know that for working parents, it continues to be a struggle. And I know not all cities, and I don't know about Lexington, but not all cities even recognize the ones that we have. Um, so it's not just, you know, the Northeast demographic or, you know, different parts of the country maybe have more population celebrating different holidays. Um, and, and even, you know, with camp and, and like I said, for working parents, like there's not a full week of school and all of like September and October in part because of the Jewish holidays. Um, and we had the Chinese new year added, I think last year, the year before that. So it's just back to this talk. Yes. But my opinion is connected to both, but yes. So your, your suggestion is that we've not issued the cultural holiday statement. That is my, my suggestion. I think if there's an incident in town, um, that is definitely within our purview. I think supporting conversations about change and bringing speakers and, and engaging with the community, going to the museum of arts, trying to target different age groups and demographics with events and, and having the festival, you know, the, that we have in October. That is clear. We clearly within our purview. Um, but just kind of a process of, Hey, let's issue. Okay. Now it's this month. Now it's this month. Now it's this month. Where's the list? Which ones do we issue? And it's going to be the same statement month after, you know, month after month, year after year. I don't see a huge value in that. What do others think? Well, I guess I'll offer two different perspectives. On the one hand, if you do it, I think we need to be clear that we're covering everyone that month. Right. So for example, my wife called Nordstrom's ticking plane because I had all these Chinese pride posters, which is perfectly fine, but it was always, it was also Jewish pride month. Right. And so she called and got an apology from scene management and said, why? Right. Happy Hollow recognized the Pacific Islanders. We did not. If you're doing it for one, you gotta make certain to do it for the other. And then the other dynamic is, is that I'm not, I haven't lived in Whalen long enough to know what segments of the community here don't feel welcome. Don't feel that they belong. It's a long list. Yes. It's a long list of the same segments of most communities that don't feel welcome. So then the question becomes, if you're not doing a blanket statement, is there any other way to reach public signs, invite, include those communities? There are more meaningful ways, I think, as you were suggesting, through programming than through statements. Yeah. Would you kind of... I'm just wondering if the statement itself would be modified so that instead of having kind of bullet point language, it has maybe a paragraph that speaks to each of the groups represented in that month. So it would be unique in that regard, and maybe it would be more inclusive. We do do that. It so happens that this particular pair of statements were developed side by side for a reason. Normally we don't do them that way. Normally we do them one at a time. And, you know, but yes, but it can be kind of, yay, rah, rah, you know, this is what we're celebrating without really maybe adding a whole lot of value. Right. Right. It can also sound kind of repetitive, which I think is what you're getting at. Yeah. But I wonder if there's a way we can identify the different groups within a month, and it can be more an educational piece, because part of our charge is around education. And I just don't know if we can say enough in a statement or bring new facts. Like we try to share facts during different months at school so the kids and people are more aware. Is there something that we can do like that short of trying? We certainly aren't going to do a program every single month for all the different things. Is there something more than doing nothing that could help with the educational piece so that as a community we learn about each other? I think, well, I think Yao was speaking. You guys couldn't hear her. Yeah. I think resource is all issue. We do one thing. It's okay, but we cannot do one thing every month unless we collaborate with other community groups like a Jewish community where we collaborate with something for the celebration of the Jewish months. We try to actively engage to do that rather than classically engage Chinese community for the East Pacific Islander months. But not every community will have people here. The small community, it will only have few people. We just couldn't do it. But if we have like the Islamic community, they have church here. They can do something. They can open halls. They can have a talk. And then we'll have the community center. So if we do something we have done to do with us and then we use the community center to attract the people to come to really enjoy it. If we can do that. Yeah. And we've talked about that. The need for more outreach. And what Ken was just saying, we also talked about trying to partner with somebody from that community to help. Which we write it. And that's what we have been doing. We have been doing that. Okay. Jenna wants to speak. Sorry, Jenna. I kind of agree that, you know, the statements may not, they may not have the impact that justifies the effort that goes into crafting these statements. And they do get stale. You know, I mean, we can update every year. But I really like the idea of kind of, you know, looking at it more as part of our education mandate and reaching out to members of the community who represent whatever, you know, the commemoration is that we want to fight and having a, you know, kind of a short and sweet sort of a did you know, that, that focuses more on what's going on here, you know, in our, in our wider community. And, you know, kind of a finger on the pulse. And that could be, it could be, you know, an interesting fact, it could be some new development, it could be something that's going on, it could be an event that we don't know about. I think maybe if we had a, you know, like a little, a little team of, you know, two or three people that could try out a new way of doing it. Actually, we had one at the Senior Center for Chinese New Year. We actually have a small Chinese New Year celebration for seniors, not just Chinese, but for the whole population. We were there in Weyland. It's public, there's 30, 40 people there. And at least half of those are Caucasians. So it's many non-Chinese was there. And then they went through a lot, talking about a lot about, a lot about the whole Chinese New Year stories, what the cards come about, come from, what's the history on the subject. And people really like it. Thank you very much. What was that Sunday night program you and I both went to the other potluck dinner at the Senior Center? That was Weyland. Carol had a, yes, they had an interface, I think it was, potluck. And then as Kyle said in his interview last night, also the students ran a community iftar at the community center that there were, that the whole community was invited to. So people are doing those things. But I was thinking also, you know, like Sarah, I think you were saying, you know, your neighbor has a, you know, it's dyslexia month. You know, if we see things like that, maybe we could respond to them, you know, reach out to that family and ask them, you know, what, you know, what would it be great, you know, for the community to know about dyslexia month, for example. We still a little bit run into the thing of, well, if we do dyslexia month, but we don't do blindness month, right, or we don't do whatever month. It's still kind of the same issue for us. Yeah, but I think we can invite, you know, we can invite the community to make us aware of commemorations that they would like to be, you know, to see brought into the light. And we, you know, I mean, if we miss one, we make a commitment to do it next time around. And all those should be, and pushes happen, but no, it's individual group. They should be the one to put things on. So this way, we are just to drive. So someone come here and say, why don't you do it? Yeah, we do it. Go for it. Go for it. We support. Maybe we help them to get a space for that. And even asking some kind of funding, couple hundred dollars for the events. We're not talking about events. We're talking about statements, but I was thinking, you know, something much briefer than a statement, which could be about an event. Yeah, absolutely. But it could also be, you know, just more educative. And maybe it would be something that we could, you know, put a blurb in the COA newsletter, put a blurb in the town manager's newsletter, send something to the all schools newsletter. We have a did you know on our website. Yeah. Here's what I'm wondering. What if the Wayland Post was willing to have a did you know section? And what if they were willing to reach out to the community and say, let us know, because they have editors. Like, I'm also concerned about us editing when people put stuff in and sort of how do we handle it? We think something isn't said, you know, if it's coming under our imprimatur, we need to feel comfortable with it. But if the Wayland Post puts it out, if they were willing, then that might be a solution. I think I heard in a conversation that could change that the Wayland Post is the main communication tool used by Wayland Residents. It's been growing. Yeah, we didn't have any town newspaper for a long time. And is this their second year already? I think it's their second year of a group of residents who did a bunch of fundraising and then pulling together a newspaper again. That's a neat idea. And there's the Wayland community. A couple of reporters. Yeah. Nobody has control over. Yeah. Sorry, what? Who does the banners? Who does the banners? We did a pride banner. And we did another banner, which was in Wayland We Are Many and Wayland We Are One, which had some beautiful artwork done by one of our students. Those are the only two banners we have. Okay. Jenna, I'm sorry. We interrupted. What were you saying? Just that it would be great to see if the Wayland Post has the capacity to add that. Maybe we could help them with, you know, with a little bit of background research. We can share with them our archive of statements, tell them where to go to find them. And if they got started, then maybe as people saw it, they would say, how come we don't have anything? Or maybe if we hear about it, we can be a facilitator in terms of options. If you want an event, here's a place, please do that. Like we can connect people and go to this person at the Wayland Post. Yeah. We have almost, what, about 14 cultural months. Statements? Yeah. Statements. Yeah. Yeah. So those are in our archive, okay? Yeah, they're in the archive. So every year, say this is the Asian AAPI month. Maybe we just have a very brief lot of knowledge that this is the month, for details. You click here, then we can put that out. So people want to read and they can read. Just click to that point. So that's very simple, very small space. And again, in the meantime, every year, if we have someone, anytime, we have someone to update a particular culture, we can do that. Okay? That way, so we don't have the pressure, you have to do it in May. Okay? If we come, someone really familiar with Filipino or some part of that, if we are associated with that culture, then we have him to help update and make it reach. And then we update it. Not every year, but maybe, occasionally, as we can afford to do it. But we're always, during the month, we always acknowledge it. And then they can click it to read. I believe people really want to read. It's very minimal. But we have it. Do we still have a forum when Sarah leaves? Hi, Sarah. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. So, okay. Can we summarize where we're at with, first of all, since we're still talking about holiday statements, let's talk about that first. Are we in agreement that we don't want to continue issuing these cultural holiday statements? How about summaries? How about summaries? How about summaries? We do issue a new one, whether we make a type of video. Oh, no. We can keep them archived. I mean, they're there on the website. That's just a new page. A banner. So, Marianne has been putting them in the center column. Yeah. Like right now, there's whatever month it is now. She's got it in the center column on the website. Yeah. I don't know who you are, but we don't want the statement to what extent we are talking about. I'm saying, I don't think, are we in agreement that we don't want to write any more statements? We can keep moving out. We can write a new one. Right. That we don't want to. We need to update it. We already have all those. We already have them. We're not going to update it. We're not going to update it. We're not going to put a whole thing on the website. We just have a title, we say. With a link. Well, that's what Marianne's been doing. Yeah. And if anybody wants to update them, that's fine. Then we got to probably vote on the revised statement. So, if anybody here sees a statement that pertains to a community you're very familiar with, and you want to update it, I would say that's great. Update it as resource available. Sure. Yeah. But it's not obligated to do it. But no new statements, correct? But do continue to have what we currently have in there in the middle column, where it says HRDIC celebrates X, with a little blurb and a link to the full statement. Yes. Yeah, because I would hate to say, we're not going to do anything. I would rather have people say, hey, how about us? And we say, oh, great, you know, help us craft something. And we'll be sure to include it, rather than, no, you don't want to do that. No, because we, so that's a worry of mine. That we say to someone, great, go ahead and craft it. And they give us something that doesn't. But we've all, the ones we've been working on, we intentionally, one of our guidelines has been to craft it with somebody from that group. But that's different than someone handing us something. And then we have to be in the awkward position of potentially of saying, you know what, this doesn't actually work for our values or something like that. I don't know. Well, so do we offer to, we haven't had a lot of requests, you know, so I don't think we're going to be overwhelmed. One thing is the official heritage month. What is it? Which number, right? No, there's a million heritage months that we haven't done. No, no, no, officially. There are many that we have not done statements for. I saw a few of them all. Oh, no, we didn't do them all. How many we have? I think it's only 14. No, it depends what we look at. It's not a big number. I did a cultural calendar, like in the beginning of the committee. And I mean, they were probably a hundred. I mean, there, there are so many. Officially designated by all federal government. There are many, there's more than, and we have 14. We have 14 right now. Yeah. But there aren't. There are international ones. There are ones that are done by, you know, other. Well, he's talking about national. He's talking about national, but even that there's more than, way more than one. I saw around 14. There's a reference. Okay. So let's. Let's summarize where we're at. These holiday statements. I think we're agreeing. We're not going to write new ones, but some of you are saying, well, if someone comes to us, we'll work with them to do a new one. I don't know about that. I'm feeling like if we're going to stop doing them, let's stop doing them. Is it a plan to stop doing them and then try to cooperate with them close? That's what I'd like to see if they're interested in doing that. Yeah. Okay. I can't guarantee. I don't know if we are, if there's another plan so that there is, because part of our, part of our work is to help educate. And it's not just to have people feel they are represented, but it's also to help educate people here so that people are aware of the diversity within our community and what some of these, what some of the cultural experiences are like to learn from each other. So I, I hate to see us just totally drop it. Um, we could bring this conversation to the next meeting if we can, since we don't know if the newspaper is. Well, we do. Does anyone have a connection to Dave Watkins or Carol Plum? I can, I can do that. Okay. Yeah. I think we, we officially would name it to the federal government impersonate the 14th of them. We're already doing that, but there's still more. No. There aren't. It depends what you look at. You, you, you ask the chat CBT how many heritage months we have. I, I search. I have, like I have a website that just brings up nine. How many? Diversity resources, heritage months for 2026. And it only brings up nine, but it's not including. Um, like any kind of disability or anything. These are really cultural. Yeah. Heritage months. So I think it depends. What we're looking for here. I'm on the books. I'm going to show you my, my collection. Oh, no, it's not that one. Shoot. Shoot. Um, can't find it right now, but I have a whole list that I've, I've, I've, I've. I've. I've. So, okay. So how about we say for now, um, we don't plan to do new ones. We don't think, uh, we will continue to put them in the middle column of our website, the ones that are existing that are there. And we will agree that we're going to explore other options for educating them, starting with the Whalen post. And if that doesn't work, then we'll bring them back next time and figure out another. I think, I think I see one of the differences like cultural awareness versus awareness months. So awareness months opens it to a whole lot more. Yeah. A bigger list. Appreciation weeks, awareness months, and then the cultural ones. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, there's, um, intergenerational months there. I mean, there are all kinds of, um, commemorations that are appropriate for us to highlight if members of the community are keen on it. But it's sort of like Homework Herds, which is generic. Homework Herds has created an awful lot of holidays. Yeah, true. And then, and then just to repeat a reminder that Mariam has given us, which is, you can go with the national holidays, but remember, they leave out some groups too, just because it's a national holiday doesn't mean it's inclusive, which is also... And these days we need to be particular. And these days... Several every month. Yes. There are several every month. Absolutely. Okay. So we're, we're, we're going to continue to keep them in the middle column, the ones that we do have. We're not going to do new ones for now. Uh, and we're going to contact the Wayland Post to see if there's some alternative way of doing this. All right. I'm good with that. What are the norms and guidelines? Do we think that they're, these are good enough for now? Nobody's suggesting any changes. All right. So we keep what we've got. I will just say it's the, it's the first time they've all been put together in one PDF. So now if I get hit by a bus, all of you have all of these norms and guidelines because they weren't all together in one place. Um, wonderful. Thank you, everybody. Uh, Heather, can we move to agenda item number H? Yes. So an update on, um, some of the work Karen and I've been doing, trying to look at ongoing, um, programming for next year. And we've reached out to Eden Renee, Dr. Eden Renee Hayes and to Jamal, Jamal Adams, who has done both of whom we've done the programming for us in the past year. And we are talking with them about continuing. And, um, Eden Renee was talking about doing potentially a program with, um, caregivers, um, with, uh, I wrote it down. What did you call it? Raising inclusive. Yes. Raising inclusive children, um, and open to all caregivers. Um, so more of an educational kind of conversations. And then, and a series, um, we don't have a number yet, maybe three or four, but a series again. And then with Jamal, we were talking about, um, sort of the ongoing continuing the community conversations. There was a lot of feedback about the, those being the being very helpful and a mix of, do we have them with a theme or can people just come and have a safe space to continue having conversations? So that, that's sort of where we left it. We are waiting to get, um, finalized numbers and in terms of a budget for those. Um, one of the thoughts were also we've talked to them about is how do we reach more people? Um, and that's sort of a goal. Karen and I've talked about this year is how do we reach more people in the community? Um, and one of the things we talked about was doing some of the programming on zoom in particular, the parent one, because for two reasons. One, it's easier for parents often to not have to get a babysitter. Um, also the nature of the conversation is more about, it's about learning versus having conversations where you might not feel as comfortable if you're on a zoom and you don't know who else is there. Um, though Jamal said he also is going to propose doing at least one or two on a zoom. And he would feel comfortable structuring him for us to do that as well. Um, I think the question, one of the questions we wanted to ask about for the ongoing conversations with Jamal. Um, does anybody have suggestions of topics, um, that might be of interest? So some might be open, um, and just come community conversations. Let's, let's create an environment in which we can have hard conversations together. Um, and others might have a specific theme or a cultural group or a tension or anything. And so we just thought we might get some ideas if, if anybody here has suggestions. How often do you think about that? Um, we, we hadn't figured out how often, um, I think we were thinking each one once a month. But, but we don't, we don't have a finalized schedule yet. And we also are trying to coordinate and we'll be trying to continue to work with, um, the, what is that? Community building working group. The community building working group. Because. Do you want to explain? I don't know. Do you want to explain? Who they are? Who that group is? Um, so that, that is the group that, um, came to us, what, maybe close to a year ago, um, about a dialogue process and, uh, had envisioned working with essential partners to facilitate some dialogue around. Can you say, can you say who essential partners is? Um. People won't know who that is. Essential partners is a, uh, it's a consultancy. That, uh, facilitates, um, they do a lot of, uh, uh, intercultural, interfaith, um, conversations. A lot of experience around, you know, like Israel, Palestine, kinds of issues. Um, and we thought that, um, in the wake of the, um, the, the very painful realization about, uh, the, the harm that was kind of cascading from the, um, the hate incidents with the Nazi symbol and the realization of how this was impacting the South Asian community, uh, with the use of the swastika and the appropriation of the swastika word and, you know, how education around that, um, was, there was a lot of tension, um, that, uh, effort of this, you know, small group that started attracting more people saying, yeah, yeah, we need to, you know, we need to have facilitated conversation, difficult conversations. Um, and we also need to train people to be ready when things arise so that the community can respond with more agility. So there was this idea that we'll do some facilitated conversations. People will learn, and then we can do training with essential partners. And then there was this kind of point where the original impetus we had drifted so far from, you know, any specific incident that they started saying, well, let's flip the script and let's just focus on training a core of, uh, facilitators. So we have facilitators in the community who we can draw on, you know, ideally people representing different constituencies. So that whole process, um, has come together. And I think they met with the select board at their last meeting, um, to request funding support to engage this essential partners, um, to get some facilitation training going. And how is this different than, is it, we can, and the freedom team? Right. So we have a lot of different initiatives. Well, I'm trying to sort of figure things out. No, so are we. We're all trying to. So, um, we are working with the, the task, the working group that Janot just described to make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and that we're, that we're all coordinating and not offering too much, you know? But, yeah. For my limited understanding, I thought that we can, it's sort of more of a hot black community building type thing, whereas the other, the freedom team is more about training facilitators? No. The, yes to the first one. Yes. Wayland Penn is still sorting itself out. They're, they're only a, gosh, a couple of years old. They're a non-profit now. And so they too are looking at their, what are their priorities. But yes, they have done potlocks and interfaith work and that kind of thing. And then they brought in a speaker, Dylan, um, Marron, uh, a speaker, a really charismatic speaker this past year. So they've done a, a variety of things. Um, the freedom team. The freedom team. But so they're proactive as opposed to reacting. Yes. The freedom team is there to respond to individuals. Like if you go into a restaurant and you feel like you've been discriminated against, the freedom team is there for, so you have someone to call just to listen. And if there's any legal issues involved, they can help direct you to, to resources, but mainly they're there to listen. And. The freedom team. The freedom team is on the hotline service. Is it what? They're like a hotline service. They provide, you know, individual support. It's a place that, um, people in the community can feel safe and trust to call for, uh, call for help. If there's an incident, would I call the police or would then tell me to call them? Or how would I know about this? Oh, that is something that freedom team needs to do more of is publicize their existence in the community. And there might be, I mean, everybody would sort of, I mean, I don't think they have criteria for when do you call the police or when do you call them? No, but I'm just thinking that. Honestly, the calls all go through the police. Um, and if it is. But so, but do they make referrals too? Yes. Or at least. It's part of the freedom team. Okay. It's about listening, listening referrals and resources. Yes. So there are all these things in the community that we want to make sure. In particular, there's a working group and the HRDIC because we, both the working group and we are going to be requesting funding from the select board to support our efforts. And our efforts in many ways from 30,000 feet look a lot similar, uh, cause they want to have community, community conversations. Um, and so do we, and so we are working closely with them now to try to, you know, really like dovetail our efforts and make sure that we're giving the most value to the community. Is there any organizational restriction between, in, in HR, you know, guidelines mission about co-sponsoring events? Yeah, we can go sponsor. And that was one of our criteria in here is when do we decide to co-sponsor? Yeah. We love co-sponsoring. Okay. Yeah. And we, you know, the, the HRDEI committee doesn't have a budget. So, you know, for, um, you know, people or groups in the community, they don't come to us to ask us for programming because everybody knows we don't have a budget. But what this, you know, kind of citizen initiative, although many of the people in that group, they're members of Wayland can, um, they're members of other town entities who are driving this whole thing. Um, and I think, you know, kind of what our committee is trying to promote is complementarity. And as Karen said, you know, the left hand, knowing what the right hand is doing and delivering the best value we can, you know, uh, to the town when money is requested of the town. Yeah. And the other piece, in addition to not having money is that being a government body, we are not as nimble as. Right. So, cause we have to post, we have the meeting law. We, we can't decide something on our own and go ahead as quickly as some of the other groups can. So how can we work together in a symbiotic relation? And that said, I like to point out that in the past, um, gosh, seven, six, seven, eight months, we produce 10, 10 programs for the, actually 11. If you count, um, uh, human rights day, uh, no. And then the DA's program 12, like when we do our annual report, which is coming up soon, you'll see, we produced a lot of programs. So yes, people say, well, we're not as nimble and all that. And we get a lot done. And, and part of why we get a lot done is through our partnerships with other organizations. It really gives us a lot of leverage and it amplifies our efforts. And we were talking about with both of these potential programs, like, uh, maybe even Renee's program, we would work with the schools and see if we could partner with the schools group because we're trying to reach that population in general. Though she said anybody who is a caregiver is welcome. Um, and Jamil, I think I can't, were we talking about saying maybe the library wanted to partner again? I, so we're always looking to partner and build those connections throughout the community. Yeah. And first parish was a partner. First parish was a partner for everyone at first parish. Conversations, not confrontations. Yeah. Um, for the ongoing conversations, does anybody have thoughts about whether they're kind of. just drop in or whether there are some specific topics or whether we would be trying to reach out to specific groups within the community to draw them into a conversation or I just, does anyone have any thoughts? I think a combination would probably go well to have something that's planned for some events and then some of them would be more free flowing. Maybe two thirds, one third. Which? Two thirds unplanned? Two thirds planned and one third unplanned. I also think, I also think, you know, um, Jamil, um, he's, he's kind of introduced us to, um, like to a community language. Um, he has, you know, he has these memorable, unfortunately, I can't think of one. Maybe somebody else can think of one of the ones he, but he has, and I mean, just using, you know, his, um, his methods as the title of events. Um, they're catchy and they, you know, for people who've already know what it is, it makes you feel kind of included like, Oh yeah, I want to do more of that. And, you know, for people who are just hearing it, learning for the first time, it is sort of self-explanatory. Um, I w I would talk to Jamil about, you know, using his methods as the titles. Um, you mentioned different modalities of sort of in-person and zoom, um, for the community conversation events I went to, there was such a wonderful dynamic, uh, networking afterwards and community building, um, may not have been an explicit goal, but it was certainly a benefit. And you just don't get that concerned. Yeah. You don't. But, and the flip side though, is for some people, they can't come in person. Absolutely. Right. So we're talking about for, you know, for caregivers, you know, critical issue is I just don't have time. Exactly. Or I can't get out of the house for whatever reason I'm caregiving or I'm disabled or whatever it might be. So I'd like to focus on caregivers because I mean, it can be any generation. I mean, it can be, I mean, in our neighborhood, we talk about, you know, we have, it takes a village children in the neighborhood. Yeah. Caregivers. So that's one topic. Right. Oh, I thought you meant for the program that Eden Renee was talking about. Cause she was talking about aunties and grandparents and anybody who's a caregiver. Did you mean for Eden Renee's program or as a topic? Yeah. I just, I'm just celebrating Eden Renee's focus on caregivers and the inclusivity of caregivers, that there are so many different kinds of care. But I think that could also, thank you for that. And I think that could also be a topic. It's not her topic. It's her audience. Caregivers are part of her audience. For Jamil, it could be one of his topics to talk about caregiving and the stresses of caregiving. Like that's huge for any community. I think a conversation series is general, I think. Should be open. Each, all the residents should be, and we still to come. But within that, maybe one week, one month could be a particular topic. Yes. That's the idea. Different topics together. Different topics. Yeah. That's where different people can come different months. Yes. In their interest. Yes, exactly. So if you're talking about caretaker, it's only a few people, only a small portion. That's why we have another group. Another topic. Yes. So what other topics would you like to see, Father? Do you have any suggestions? We don't need to do now. We need to decide whether we want every month or every other month. I think we do that at the community center. Okay. One way, we reach out to all the populations. So we couldn't talk about the HRDIC, any kind of those issues, DEI issues, or whatever. And I think the one-to-one talk like we're having the conversation series seems very active because people seem to be talking very well among each other. Mm-hm. So that's something. I think it's the worst part to become. Especially to have someone to lead you, and that, um, when it's interesting, the more people come to the series. I wonder if, um, uh, one topic could be around lived experiences in the community. Okay. So that we can learn from each other and hear what different people, what, what brought you to this community, or maybe one on values. What keeps you in this community? Mm-hm. Sometimes, like, having a question that people come with, like, can be a, something that pulls people together. Mm-hm. Or what, what, what would you change if you could change something in this community? Yeah, what would you change? Yeah. Why are you considering leaving? I don't know. Or how has your life changed since COVID ended? Mm-hm. There you go. Yeah. Because so many of us, you know, became... Probably would come to the survey if I'm not seeing... We were searching some attendees, see if they had like to see something. Well, we did. Yeah. We'll see that in your packet. That's in your packet. In the report on the living of my child. Oh, I didn't see that. Here. Yeah. Let me do this. Unfortunately, since I've been retired, I don't pay that much attention to it, but I know that there is some best practice work going on at the moment. How to create community with Zoom. Oh, yeah. In Zoom? Yeah. I see that. That's Zoom or that's social media in general? I guess maybe both, but in particular, you know, we were talking about the conversation series and I was commenting on how wonderful it was meeting in the library, but yet, you know, caregivers and a number of other folks who are, you know, limited to why I'm Zoom more, but the challenge is how do you build community from where it's inherently an individual type of experience. Yeah. Hopefully our consultants who we have so much faith in are knowledgeable about that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Jono? I was just saying, yeah, we have a lot of methods we can use in Zoom. Yeah. I like that. How has your life changed since COVID though? I think that's a cool topic that I never would have thought of. And I think it's, everybody has something to report on that topic, right? Well, I just see among my own friends, people who, you know, because of COVID became so, you know, in combining, COVID was a reason a lot of us said, okay, time to retire. And then what did we do? Well, we stayed indoors and this, that, whatever. Well, now that we have the ability, what are we doing? And what did we stop doing that maybe we can resent doing again? Any other topics that people want to suggest? I liked Heather's suggestion about values, um, which reminded me of Jamil's work with the, um, sports team at the high school that, um, he, he got them to synthesize together, sort of, you know, like three key words, three key values, um, and rather than, you know, having a specific value or set of values, be the title, um, work in small groups to synthesize values together. Um, I think is a great part of Jamil's methods. Does anybody, can I ask one more question about this, have ideas for how we can get more of diverse group of people coming to some of these conversations? And, and being, wanting to, and feeling like it's a safe environment to participate. Okay. Do you publicize within the newsletters and there were various, you know, religious institutions around here? No. Well, you know, um, I know a number of them who have weekly or monthly bulletins and venues, um, and, um, now I know that sometimes there's a reluctance to publicize non, like, Temple Muna, we have this wonderful, um, blog, Umuna Helps. Um, and we always get requests to publicize things and we don't publicize non-Synagogue affairs. Yep. But yet, in the newsletter, you know, something's relevant, you know, you can get plugged in there. And I would, you know, so every down in the nation probably has their own vehicles, but it's a different type of audience. Um, I think we, we don't really have, um, a systematic methodology for publicizing, but that would be something that we could work on. Um, I mean, obviously the town website is probably the least productive way to reach out to people, but we do have the, yeah, we do have the post and we do have the newsletter, the town newsletter, the schools. We have the Weyland post, the all schools, the town newsletter, our own listserv. Our Facebook page. Facebook page and our listserv has, gosh, three, four hundred people on, 300 and some people on it now. What is the school system used to communicate with parents? All schools newsletter. Plus each school has its own newsletter, but we can't get our stuff in there. The only thing we can get it in is the all schools. Okay. And then, and then. And then to the library when it's a partnership with the library. Right. Yeah. So whatever organization we're partnering with, they have their own names. As well. It's just, you know, they have huge mailing lists also. Who knows? Are you saying the REC or the department or the COA? Both have large distribution networks. Yeah. True. So maybe I think that one of our goals is to have programming as always, but also how can we reach a more diverse population within the town and just get to more people. Yeah. I don't think we're going to talk about funding now. That's on here too, but I don't think we need it. Do you want to? No, I think we're waiting to get the funding, the proposals set. So we, are we done with eight or do you want to? And we, well, just to go back the funding, we already have voted the committee for 8,000. Or up to 8,000. Up to 8,000. So we are ready if we had to, do we need to take a vote on these if we were to go, if we were able to get before the select board, before our next meeting? The only thing we'd have to take a vote on is if it was more than 8,000. Yeah. And I think if I remember correctly, we voted on up to 8,000. Up to 8,000. The last. Yes. Last. Exactly. We did. We did. Okay. Okay. And also, I don't think we would get in front of the select board. Their meeting, I think, is after hours anyway, in July, I think. So we really talked about agenda item number nine already, because we combined it with another number seven, agenda wise suggestion. Agenda item number 10, which is pretty quick, I would say. I'm kind of looking for volunteers on this one. And now half of us aren't here tonight. But the community resource guide is on our web page under resources. It's a pretty extensive guide to all kinds of resources for physical health, mental health. I don't have all the categories. This is what it looks like in my heart remembers. Yeah. And you just keep scrolling. Would you read some of the categories in the index? Because I forget what it is. Addiction and recovery, disabilities, domestic violence, food, hate incidents, housing, human trafficking, immigrants and refugees, legal, LGBTQ+, mental health, reproductive, safety, unemployment, Wayland Community Services. So it's a pretty long thing and it's available on our website. And every year we really ought to update it. We updated it about a year ago. 21 pages. 21 pages. And what that involves is clicking on all the links and making sure that the links are still good, that the phone numbers match what the websites say, so that we can be presenting the community with a document that's up to date. 21 pages ago e Bridgewater Schoolot W Kids is going to be so good with sending that out and going to all of that one. Are we at the 실제로 buying stuff? Well, last month. But it doesn't matter. Wh resist Sf�� whatever volunteers can do it. It's really, sort of a 2 person job unless you are willing to go and it's a couple of links. So I know what the job involves. Because I'm still going to help. I'm sorry? I'm still going to help. Well, we can also, yes, Jeno, are you volunteering? No, I just have a suggestion. I don't know. I participated in Mei-Ling Ellermann's workshop on coercive control, and she's put together some fabulous materials. We should reach out to her and see if we could add them into the resource guide. Great.
Are you willing to take a stab at it? Not by myself. Not by yourself. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's two people. And again, half our folks are missing. Is anybody else? So the job entails verifying that the links are still active and the phone numbers are the correct numbers? Yeah. Do you need to also add new content to it? Yeah, you can add or subtract if something looks like it's no longer a functioning organization. Sure. But so the question then becomes, is this a web-enabled document or will you download an image from that? There's a link on the town website to our resources. But within the document itself, like if you have an iPhone link, is it a hyperlink? Is that what you mean? Yeah, they're all hyperlinks. Yeah, they're all hyperlinks, but then you do not have that ability. Do you mean, do you have the ability to then edit? I think I have a Word version of it. And if I don't, I'm going to Word again. Because a former member of this committee has continued, thankfully, to do the tech work to keep reproducing it each year. I would think what would make more sense would be, if we could download it into something like Word, and do an edit, and then send our edits to you to look over before it comes on to the website, unless there are landmines we don't know about. That would be amazing. I guess they haven't happened yet. Thank you both so much. Thank you. Yeah. That would be great.
Okay. I will send you, I will dig up the Word version, or I'll ask the lovely person who has helped us recreate it, recreate it each year. Thank you. And I have an interest in particular, if we divide it in half, whatever happens, it's eight.
Well, you two can let that out among yourselves. Um, like I see right now, even food doesn't have, like, the new, um, the separation bank number has moved to right near Longfellow there. So, like, that, I'm just noticing that's missing. I wonder why we don't even have it before. I'll send each of you your email addresses so you can be in touch with each other. Okay. That would be great. Can you get that a refresh? Yeah. If you also can include anything, you know, going in or outdated. I might have a few notes about that. Yeah. So, because occasionally people will email and say, could you update this? I'm not sure if I do from the past year, but I will look. And mailings, maybe mailings, um, contact to add if they're in a new document. So, is mailings material available on a website somewhere? Because I don't, because we can't really include, like, materials that, I mean, these are all organizations. I will, uh. Oh, did you mean materials or organizations? I'll connect you with her, um.
It's, we have a, quite a robust section in that, um, domestic violence. So, um, and then who's, so it'd be more if she had any new resources that we don't have. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And there are new resources.
Wonderful. I don't think we need to take a vote on anything. I think you all volunteered to do it. And what we will vote on in the end is when you, when we have a new document, then we'll vote, like, yes, we accept this and we'll put them on the website. And if you see, it's, it's actually, thank you for doing this. It's wonderful to have fresh eyes because we've all looked at it for so long. Um, if you see something missing, that's, uh, also, or even if it's a whole category that's missing, please speak up or let us know. Fantastic. All right. Um, I don't have any announcements. We're on number 11. Does anybody have any announcements that we haven't talked about yet? Any events coming up? Um, um, I did speak to Scarlett. Um, we were supposed to have a meeting last month on the sports, um, history and diversity and, um, she's been really busy with budgetary stuff with the, the museum and stuff. So she said, she, we are going to have one next month, uh, excuse me, 11, or 12, or 12, so she's going to reach out to the legislative group to find out if that time is available for people. Thank you. And if, um, if you end up having that meeting, let us know if you want us to put it on the agenda because we would have a meeting shortly after that. Okay, so just let us know. Okay. Any other announcements, anybody?
No, there are no other announcements, uh, and no other matters not reasonably anticipated. Uh, I think we're ready to adjourn early. Thank you. Um, would somebody move to adjourn, please? I move that we adjourn at 739, or we adjourn HR, HR, HR, I see, really, uh, 740. 740. Thank you. Is there a second? Okay. Yawu seconded. Okay. I don't know if you could hear that, Sophie, but Yawu seconded. So let us vote.
All right. Um, Cam. Stephen. Sophie. Yes.
Uh, Kevin. Yes. Jenna. Yes. Hernan. Yes. Heather. Yes. Yawu. Yes. And Karen. Yes. We are adjourned. Thank you.