I did some adulting the other night, going over to the Isles Spring Celebration fundraiser.
I even wore a sport jacket and button down shirt (though I did match it with jeans).
Anyway, Isles: You’ve heard of them. I’ve heard of them. We all kinda-sorta know them.
But to be honest, I thought they were the typical non-profit, charitable organizaion. You know, handouts and such.
But they don’t do handouts. They do hand outs. As in, they stick their hand out in an effort to pull people and families along to a better quality of life.
This is one awesome organization.
Look, Isles has been doing solid work in Trenton for a long time now, plain and simple. While flashier organizations have come and gone, these folks just keep grinding away at improving the city over the last 40+ years.
The Isles Youth Institute helps people get their high school diplomas while teaching them life skills and offering job training.
They help first time homebuyers, they have a Financial Opportunity Center which helps people with financial coaching, employment coaching, and housing counseling.
They offer free household lead assessments, are leaders in urban agriculture, and — this is kind of nutshell-y — are big in the area of community planning and development.
But again, and to me, this is the big deal part — they’re not out there offering handouts, putting Band-Aids on proverbial bullet wounds. They are out there with their hands out, offering to teach and mentor and bring the best out of people, not only for today and tomorrow, but also for far into the future.
They also throw a heck of a party at the Social Profit Center — a building they bought and rehabbed almost 20 years ago — which supports an additional 35 organizations and artists.
The fundraiser last weekend honored Stacy Denton, the Youth College Director at Mercer County Community College, as well as Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. (And the food, from Occasions by Cintron, was outstanding.)
And, as stated earlier, it gave me a chance to cosplay as an adult, something I rarely do.
But more than that, it opened my eyes to an organization that does tremendous work.
During the evening, Sean Jackson, the CEO of Isles, highlighted some of their work accomplished just in the past year. To wit:
They helped 26 families purchase their first home; over 200 families participated in the Isles Garden Network and donated over 700 pounds of produce and distributed over 10,000 vegetable seeds; funded new signage for 13 downtown business; 17 students became high school graduates, bringing the number to over 1,000 since their program started; helped train nearly 200 workers in lead, weatherization, and safety training.
The list, undoubtedly, goes on.
I have a feeling Isles is one of those operations that have touched and helped more people than they even know.
No flash, no fanfare – just Isles putting one foot in front of the other, doing the nitty-gritty work of affordable housing, job training, urban agriculture. You may not hear about them making big splashy announcements, but they’re out there putting in the labor year after year. Gotta respect an organization that rolls up its sleeves like that for the long haul.
Well done. And I’ll be back at your next fundraiser. I might even buy new jeans.
