“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” says Renee Taylor, Director of Community Programs at Somerville Community Corporation (SCC). “Once they know how much you care, and you’ve helped them in that situation, one, they usually come back, but two, they will talk about you [and say] ‘You need to go to SCC.'”
Word of mouth travels far when an organization truly impacts a community, and Somerville Community Corporation is no exception. Empowering residents to sustain a diverse and affordable Somerville, SCC aids community members from our region on a regular basis through several initiatives. The organization develops and preserves affordable rental and ownership units and commercial space in Somerville to maintain and strengthen the socioeconomic diversity of the city, offers programs and services focused on helping people find good local jobs and achieve financial stability, and helps diversify housing options and organize the community around affordable housing policy.
“It’s not a housing crisis. It’s an affordable housing crisis. And just that one word changes the whole conversation,” says Taylor. “I think it’s just not only speaking about it, but teaching others how to also speak up for themselves. Once you know the key components to advocating for yourself, you can advocate for anything. When people are empowered, amazing things happen.”
Thank you to Renee Taylor for sitting down with us to share more about SCC, explaining how the organization approaches barriers in helping people enter or re-enter the workforce, how they collaborate with local partners and organizations to better connect workforce development initiatives in Somerville, the role that this work plays in the broader conversation around housing and equity in Massachusetts and the U.S., and much more. To hear the full conversation, stream the episode of our Connecting Communities: Workforce Development Stories podcast here: