Communities That Care Coalition
Promoting health, well-being, and equity among young people in Franklin County and the North Quabbin
Dr. Alieu Kamara is the first and only neurosurgeon in Sierra Leone. After starting his practice at the beginning of January 2025, Kamara carries the neurosurgical disease burden — traumatic injuries, spinal paralyses, seizures, brain tumors — of an entire country of eight million people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Fletcher
Viola Fletcher (née Ford; born May 10, 1914), also known as Mother Fletcher, is an American woman who is the oldest known living survivor of the Tulsa race massacre and a supercentenarian. One hundred years after the massacre, she testified before Congress about the need for reparations.
https://www.toniscott.com/about1
Toni Scott’s exhibitions and installations weave together artistically powerful stories presented through installations, multi-media, photography, painting, sculpture and digital ingenuity, often referencing fraught histories. “Learning of my multicultural family heritage has inspired me to give life to the lost images and stories of history.” Scott’s “Bloodlines” series is a testament to her goals to inspire, educate, heal, engage, stimulate dialog, and bring together diverse cultures. “In every work, I create resides a commitment to themes that build and enrich humanity.” Scott’s work has been awarded and celebrated internationally. In 2012, she created a solo mixed media installation, Bloodlines, for the California African American Museum.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/18/g-s1-81562/nduduzo-makhathini-tiny-desk-concert
Whether through his recordings, live in concert or at the Tiny Desk, South African pianist and Zulu healer Nduduzo Makhathini has the ability to transfix an audience with his deeply meditative and engaging music. His work is lush with ancestral invocation, meditations on Blackness and spiritual exploration.
Here, Makhathini presents a cross-section of his works that he has dubbed for the Tiny Desk as the Ntu Sonicities Devotion Suite in Five Movements. His notes on the suite shared with the Tiny Desk team illuminate a thoughtful intentionality that is a hallmark of Makhathini’s work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nduduzo_Makhathini
Nduduzo Makhathini (born 24 September 1982) is a South African jazz musician from Umgungundlovu, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Coming from a musical family, his love for music began at an early age.[1] Makhathini has performed with Zim Ngqawana, Simphiwe Dana, Feya Faku, and McCoy Mrubata. Nduduzo completed his Diploma in Jazz Piano at the Durban University of Technology in 2005,[2][3] and obtained a PhD in music from the University of Stellenbosch in 2023.[4][5]
https://house.texas.gov/members/95
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/19/nicole-collier-texas-house-dps-escort-redistricting-quorum
A Texas House Democrat was confined in the Capitol overnight after she refused a police escort that Republican leaders imposed on lawmakers who participated in a two-week walkout over a GOP mid-decade redistricting plan.
Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, declined on Monday afternoon to sign a slip giving her permission from Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, to leave the House floor with a state law enforcement officer shadowing her.
In a church in Hartford’s North End, you can find Pastor AJ Johnson on any given Sunday preaching the gospel, leading the congregation his father built.
“He believed the church should be so much more than just singing and dancing on a Sunday. It should change the community where it is.”
At the corner of Westland and Barbour streets in Hartford, Urban Hope Refuge Church became a haven for the neighborhood, especially after the riots of the 1960s set the city on a new course.
LANSING, Mich. — Five suitcases are scattered around Samuel Kangethe’s living room in his home in West Lansing, a neighborhood lined with tall trees and big front yards in Michigan’s capital. Clothes mixed with finance and accounting books, and somewhere in the chaos are his Air Jordan sneakers.
“I just want to take the clothes that I need,” Kangethe says. “I don’t know, it’s just too much.”
Too much trying to pack 16 years of his life into a handful of suitcases,and deciding what to pack, and what to leave behind.
Kangethe is leaving the U.S., the country where he earned graduate degrees through a student visa, where he worked as an accountant for a beer distribution company and for the State of Michigan, where he fell in love with his wife Latavia and where he became a dad of three: 13-year-old Dwight, 11-year-old Hailey, and 5-year-old Ella.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Townsend
Taylor Townsend (born April 16, 1996) is an American professional tennis player. She is the current WTA world No. 1 in doubles, achieved on 28 July 2025.[1][2] Townsend won two major doubles titles, at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships and the 2025 Australian Open, both with Kateřina Siniaková.[3] In addition, she has won eight WTA Tour titles and also reached two other major finals, the 2022 US Open (with Caty McNally) and the 2023 French Open (with Leylah Fernandez). Townsend has a career-high singles ranking of No. 46, achieved on 19 August 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_(musician)
Michael Jordan Bonema (born October 13, 1998), known professionally as Mike (stylized in all caps), is an American rapper, songwriter and record producer based in New York City. Bonema’s atypical upbringing, having experienced life in New Jersey, England, Philadelphia and New York City, has had an audible influence on his diverse and experimental music style.[1]
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/g-s1-80267/mike-tiny-desk-concert
MIKE loves and uplifts those he cares about. During his 71-date Artists of the Century tour, every chance he got, his heart would pour over with gratitude for his fans, his family and his collaborators onstage. His Tiny Desk performance isn’t so different.
https://senate.texas.gov/member.php?d=23
Royce West is a lawyer and public servant who was first elected to the Texas Senate in 1992, where he has represented the 23rd Senatorial District. During his tenure, he has been named by Texas Monthly as one of the 25 most powerful people in Texas politics, and he has been selected for the magazine’s biennial “Ten Best Legislators in Texas” list twice, as well as receiving mention on the Associated Press’ “Movers and Shakers” list and the Texas Insider’s “Best Legislators” list. Senator West is Vice Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and is a member of Senate committees: Education K-16, Finance, Local Government, and Redistricting, Special.