We started this Saturday by welcoming Scott, another facilitator and Fatou, another participant (who had been door knocked and got a health care job through IMPACT!), to the rest of the group. Then we had a discussion of what things we had done differently that week since the retreat. Many people talked about how much fun they had at the retreat; Jean Paul expressed that he had really been affected by the movie, Race: The Power of an Illusion and it had made him think a lot about racism and made him sad. Also, a conversation that Kim and George had at the retreat about community gardening, led to Kim reaching out to Pedro to have him experience working on a farm in Frederick! Claudia also shared how this past week she was offered a part-time job doing childcare!
Then we got into small groups and discussed “10 things that you should know about race” and debriefed about the movie. 
After that, we had a delicious lunch from Antojitos and got back into a circle to talk about the Kernel of Power book. We broke up into groups of 3 to discuss a section of the book and then reported back to the big group what the main point of our section was. Pedro related our section back to He-Man’s quote: “Tengo el poder!” (I have the power!) and JoAnn shared that she found the book very helpful in her search for her kernel-the one innate thing that makes her unique. Also, MK told us that he found the book so powerful that he’s sharing it with all the other board members at the Chinese Culture and Community Service Center.
For the last part of the day, Mary led us in a discussion of our Meyers-Briggs personalities and how our type can affect how we relate to each other, but reminded us that none of the types is better than another and we need all types to make a group function at its best. The language barrier made it a little harder for the non-native English speakers to understand all the technical terms of the test, so a couple of them wanted some more one-on-one time to go over their specific tests, but overall it was an enlightening experience. Lastly we had support action time and Fatou offered to drive Laura and Pedro to the sessions from now on since they live on the same floor of the same building! And Kim asked for support on finding a space to hold her movement classes somewhere closer to where Latinos get together so that she can serve more people. Since at IMPACT, we have a big event planned for Wednesday, we decided to cancel our session and invite everyone to that instead. Until next time..pop some of those powerful popcorn kernels!
Neighborhood Opportunity Network 