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The Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team collects donations twice a week at Stoplight Gelato.
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The Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team recently began meeting at the Gilpin Urban Garden.
“This is mutual aid distribution, it’s not charity,” says Richmond Peace Team Program Coordinator Christina Leoni-Osion. "It’s just getting people what they need."
Working directly with those living in Gilpin Court — one of the largest and oldest subsidized housing projects in Virginia — the Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team operates under the umbrella of the nonprofit Richmond Peace Team, a community collective focused on black youth and their families.
“We talk about mental health and talk about systematic racism and empower [youth] with all the tools they may need,” says Leoni-Osion.
With members mostly teenage boys between 10 and 12 years old, the Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team implements "circle practice," meeting weekly to discuss problem solving, conflict resolution and ways to process their feelings.
“The whole point of our programming is, if suddenly we [facilitators] disappeared off the face of the earth, we want them to have gained these skills,” says Leoni-Osion.
Although guided by adults, all the gatherings are youth-led, and the space is considered their own.
Other specialists working with the team, helping them build self-advocacy, self-love and independence, include Community 50/50 founder and CEO Zenobia Bey; Keisha Cummings, founder of the effort 2Love, who recently spoke on a panel about policing; and President of B Lovee Speaks and spoken word artist Brandon "B Lovee" Holoman.
All four previously worked for the Richmond Peace Education Center before it paused its programming and laid off staff at the end of March. In a day, they pivoted and began to operate as the Richmond Peace Team under Bey's Community 50/50 in order to ensure the already established Jackson Ward Peace Team continued and that they could expand and grow the effort.
“We all bring different things to the collective. We’re four different people and four different backgrounds; I think that’s what makes this so unorthodox, coming together with different skill sets,” says Bey, operations manager of the team and a Virginia State University graduate.
The foundation of the Peace Team is trust, represented by faces the youth know and see regularly in their community. “They are facing prejudice and stereotypes; representation absolutely matters,” Bey says.
Last summer the group spent time exploring black-owned businesses in the Jackson Ward area including Soul Taco and Big Herm’s Kitchen. Leoni-Osion says it was a chance to share a meal together and to dive into the deep-rooted black history of the area that can be under-emphasized.
“I love that some restaurants have stepped in [to get involved with our program], because restaurants do inevitably bring gentrification, which can negatively impact communities like Gilpin Court,” says Leioni-Osion, adding that restaurants can help by training and hiring people from nearby neighborhoods.
Since the pandemic the Peace Team has had to switch gears and recently began meeting at Gilpin Urban Garden, where they can practice social distancing and are learning about healthy foods and urban gardening. Twice a month, Holoman leads a virtual "Trap and Read" session with the youth. Bey says it was vital the peace team didn’t let its work falter during this time of isolation.
“We just know there’s a need, and the youth need to continue to see us and be visible,” explains Bey.
Facilitating access to food for families and youth in the Gilpin Court community is also an important part of the Peace Team’s work. Biweekly at Jackson Ward's Stoplight Gelato, the group collects nonperishable food and household necessities, such as toilet paper that cannot be purchased with food stamps, for their contactless meal train. The gelato shop offers a pint of ice cream to every person who donates.
Bey says the community has been supportive, and businesses including Idle Hands Bread Company, Sub Rosa Bakery, Can Can Brasserie, Long Meadow Farms and Intergalactic Tacos have all contributed food and/or funds.
“We’ve built a connection. They say they need bleach or trash bags or food, because we’ve opened that door, and they feel comfortable to ask,” Bey says. “We [at the Peace Team] are a collective that live, work and are from these communities.”
Launched just weeks before the pandemic descended, the meal train began as a way to build support in the community and provide healthy, high-protein meals to their youth, many of whom are student-athletes. Then COVID-19 struck.
“We started realizing schools are closing, how are kids that normally get two or up to three meals from school going to eat? How is that going to work?” says Bey, a South Side native.
In just a couple months, the Peace Team has raised over $14,000 to purchase food and recently launched a website to collect donations. They are currently working to extend efforts to other areas in the city, recently partnering with Six Points Innovation Center to assess the need in the Highland Park area.
As recent protests have spurred communities to ask what's next in the social justice movement, Bey says, “We want to continue to build and grow and serve the community more and collaborate with partners that align with our values and missions. There’s always been a need for everything were doing, from mental health to addressing issues of policing in low-income areas; this has just exposed it.”
Leoni-Osion agrees. "We see the roadblocks [our youth are] forced to hurdle or maneuver around, and because I’m a white woman and all of our kids we work with are black, my collective members are black, I understand I didn’t have that hurdle," she says. "We all are in this together. How do we take care of each other better? … I hope we really investigate that question as a city.”
The Richmond Peace Team accepts donations every Monday and Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m. at Stoplight Gelato, 405 Brook Road in Jackson Ward.
