Eastern Bank Foundation Honors Boston Ujima Project With Community Advocacy Award
June 22 2022 - 12:31PM
Business Wire
Organization works to create an ecosystem of innovative economic
strategies to help finance small businesses, create jobs and
transform neighborhoods
Eastern Bank Foundation is pleased to announce Boston Ujima
Project (“Ujima”) as a 2022 Community Advocacy Award honoree for
its innovative approaches to financing small businesses, growing
wealth and creating a more equitable economy.
“We understand that a range of issues, including unemployment,
gentrification, poverty and homelessness, are all interconnected to
the opportunity for people and small businesses to thrive. Boston
Ujima Project provides an opportunity for the community to take
responsibility for our communities, to see our neighbor’s problems
as our own, and to build collective power to solve them together,”
said Nia Evans, Executive Director of Boston Ujima Project.
With an ecosystem approach—where every Voting Member has an
equal vote on the business, real estate and infrastructural
projects receiving investment—Ujima challenges traditional notions
of local economies and what it means to do good business.
Recognizing that locally owned businesses play an essential role in
creating wealth, jobs and spaces to gather in neighborhoods, Ujima
fills in the gaps in financing for small businesses by bringing
together finances and organizing disciplines with many solutions
including cooperatives, community funds, buy local campaigns,
alternative currencies, and anchor institution strategies that
demonstrate better ways communities can relate to, and do business
with, each other. Ujima also complements these approaches by
providing technical assistance, advocating for fair wage salaries
and encouraging large institutions to contract with local
businesses.
“Boston Ujima Project is reimagining and paving the way for a
new Boston, one in which people work together to take care of each
other, and communities have the final say over the development that
impacts their streets and families,” said Nancy Huntington Stager,
President and CEO of the Eastern Bank Foundation.
The celebration of Eastern’s Community Advocacy Award coincides
with the Eastern Bank Foundation’s commitment to economic inclusion
and mobility through its philanthropy, volunteerism and advocacy,
including to advance equity in the small business ecosystem.
Recognizing that entrepreneurs and business owners are building
blocks for the local economy, the Foundation seeks to fund
organizations that build ecosystems of support for business owners
in historically disadvantaged communities, including Black, Latinx,
Asian, women, LGBTQ+, Veterans and people with disabilities.
Read more about all of the 2022 Community Advocacy Award
honorees at:
https://www.easternbank.com/communityadvocacyawards
About Eastern Bank Foundation
Created in 1994, the Eastern Bank Foundation is the
philanthropic arm of Boston-based Eastern Bank. Through
philanthropy, employee volunteerism, advocacy and collaborations
with other businesses and community partners, Eastern Bank
Foundation responds to community needs and supports sustainable
solutions to our communities’ most vexing challenges across eastern
Massachusetts, southern and coastal New Hampshire, and Rhode
Island. To learn more, visit easternbank.com/foundation.
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Media contact: Andrea Goodman Eastern Bank Foundation
a.goodman@easternbank.com 781-598-7847
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