THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED IN OUR VIRTUAL FUNDRAISER!

PLEASE SEE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE TO CHECK OUT OR REVISIT THE RECORDINGS AND LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK.

What are you able to contribute towards a vastly different future where everyone’s needs are met?

We are at a pivotal moment in our nation's history in which there is a mass movement and consciousness to envision and create a world without the police and other punitive institutions. We are living in a time ripe for radical imagination and action as we actively build alternative practices and processes to disrupt cycles of violence and meet peoples' needs. While this moment may feel unprecedented for many of us, others have been dedicated for generations to both the teachings and the unlearnings necessary for their communities and the collective to move towards a more expansive concept of justice.

Unity Circles engages and trains youth to be active participants in healing and transforming their communities. We practice transformative and restorative justice and community accountability processes to do this work. Unity Circles started in 2012 with a vision of thriving communities where cycles of violence are replaced by cycles of intergenerational leadership grounded in holistic healing, resilience, and transformation.

Transformative Justice (TJ) is a political framework and set of practices for responding to interpersonal and structural violence that relies on community relationships to protect the safety and needs of survivors, while building systems of support and accountability for those who have caused and enabled harm.

Unity Circles Transformative Justice Practitioner Program (TJPP) is a 6 month intensive, collaborative experience for young adults, 18-25, in the Boston area. Through deep learning, led by local practitioners, the cohort builds intentional community, and develops the inner capacity, political consciousness, and skill sets to respond to harm outside of punitive systems/institutions and to share this work with others. This program explores many practices including circle process, community accountability, community organizing, institutional accountability, penal abolition, harm reduction, safety planning, and crisis response. Together we work to create a world free of carceral systems.

Unity Circles is dedicated not only to supporting and developing a community of skilled and passionate young people, but also to building an organization which mirrors a vision of the larger society we are invested in co-creating.

Unity Circles seeks to provide sustaining wages for:

Skilled young community leaders which, in the spirit of reparations, provides them with vastly different opportunities for their futures and begins a cycle of BIPOC generational wealth
Employees such that the wisdom and genius of Unity Circle’s BIPOC leadership can be fully honored and supported and they can do this critical, visionary work without compromising their energy for the sake of economic security

This radical vision of reparations and abundance requires us to think big and ask big. We want to make sure we can sustainably continue to make generous programming offers for years to come. Our community came out and supported us with so much love and generosity for our CommUNITY Fundraiser, where we were gifted over $35,000. (Please visit links to video recordings of this event at the bottom of this page.)

Our larger vision requires that we raise $400,000 this school year in order to give the space for BIPOC led, community grounded, visionary leadership to show us all what is possible. We ask for your support in manifesting a contribution in this collective effort to create transformative community-based alternatives.

What are you able to contribute towards a vastly different future where everyone’s needs are met?

Can we, instead of thinking of giving as ‘charity’, redistribute our resources, as described by Sonya Renee Taylor, to “right an institutional wrong born out of injustice. Born out of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy?”

Please contribute here and check back to see our upcoming community connection and learning opportunities.

Our strategy to manifest the support we need involves providing programming that educates and connects people across the Unity Circles community, grants that do not place onerous demands which take away from our liberatory work, and large donations from people with wealth or class privilege who see supporting Unity Circles as a form of reparations and wealth distribution.

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PART I: Honoring Our Roots - Storytelling with Keynote Speakers Harold & Phil Gatensby

PART II: Uplifting Our Work - TJPP Youth Panel

PART III: Brightening Our Future - Radical Visioning & Awards Ceremony

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Second Annual CommUNITY Abundance Gathering

Unity Circles engages and trains youth to be active participants ﻿in healing and transforming their communities.﻿ ﻿

Team Members

Unity Circles engages and trains youth to be active participants in healing and transforming their communities.