Tenisha Colbert lives in the large grey house that, every year for over 50 years, has been home to eight high-achieving young men selected to be scholars in the National Program for a Better Chance, an organization founded in 1963 to advance the opportunities of young men of color. She and her husband Antoine first … Read more
Growing up in China, Wei Fan – who is known professionally as Fenway Fan – always knew she wanted to be an artist. She remembers drawing on the walls and floors of her home at 3 and 4 years old. Her mother never discouraged her, but suggested that if she drew on paper, they could … Read more
When Caroline Crocker Otis and Elizabeth Mooney moved to Winchester in 2010 and 2021, respectively, they were drawn to the area by the promise of a warm community feel and great schools. When their children enrolled in Lynch Elementary School, both women got involved as volunteers with the Lynch Parents Association. Elizabeth became involved with … Read more
Beth Levin began working in Winchester in 1999 when she accepted a position as Cantor at Temple Shir Tikvah. Embedded within the Jewish value system is a mandate to work toward equity, equality, and freedom for all people and to repair what is broken around us. For Beth, this has taken the form of working … Read more
While other seventh graders were just learning about where to place England on a map, WHS senior Kayla Harrison was interested in the more nitty-gritty facts. She questioned her teacher why families of the past had been so much larger. She asked, “did they not have birth control back then? Didn’t they use animal intestines … Read more
Our honoree this week uses she/they pronouns. As such, we have used them interchangeably throughout this piece. By Grace Bettencourt, NFSJ Intern Luz Palou Garcia, a senior at Winchester High School, has been organizing since 8th grade and has been aware of social issues since she was young. “I was always a heavily opinionated kid … Read more
By Arya Ramachandran, NFSJ Intern Grace Bettencourt, a junior at WHS, got involved with social activism in just 6th grade, after the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. According to Grace, “I couldn’t wrap my head around how the country could choose someone so hateful.” She educated herself on many of the social … Read more
While many of her peers spend time on YouTube watching influencers, a chance interaction with a YouTube video when Lucy Patalano was 13 influenced her life in an unexpected way. She described how a video of the way homeless women lived on their period impacted her. “It seems so straightforward that, obviously, people who can’t … Read more
Seeme Baqai Moreira came to the US at age 19 as a foreign student from Pakistan. Fluent in English, she made friends easily and thrived at her college, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Accounting and speaking at her college’s commencement ceremony. She went on to complete her Master’s degree in Business. She met her husband, Mario … Read more
Jennifer Zhang arrived in the US from China in 1990. At the time, her father was a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard, and Zhang was about to start college herself. Worried about her safety as a student activist, her father brought her to the Boston area to attend Wentworth Institute of Technology. Soon after, … Read more
The Network for Social Justice has spent years fighting for social change in Winchester — from advocating for affordable housing to providing support to individuals who have faced injustices of all kinds. We need your help to continue to advance an inclusive and equitable community.
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