Action for a Better Community (ABC) held its 2025 Signature Conference in January under the theme Empowering Communities, Inspiring Change. As is customary, the conference kicked off the agency’s social justice work for the year. We are also commemorating ABC’s 60th year of operations, birthed in the aftermath of the 1964 riots in Rochester, and the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) launching the country’s war on poverty. The EOA gave rise to a national network of Community Action agencies which is currently led by the National Community Action Partnership (NCAP), of which ABC is a member. NCAP’s CEO, Denise Harlow, helped open the conference by highlighting core aspects of the network, particularly our mission to address the causes and conditions of poverty and the centrality of equity to our work. We are justice workers committed to addressing critical social issues and fostering positive change in our community.  

Keynote Address

The virtual conference featured a keynote address by Joe Roberts, a/k/a, the Skid Row CEO (www.skidrowceo.com). He urged us to speak to people’s possibilities, as this was the impetus for him to come back from hopelessness and despair. He encouraged us all, but particularly those in the human services sector, to always recall why we do this difficult work. He also emphasized the need for us to take care of ourselves so that we can continue to take care of others. He shared a simple formula for understanding human possibility:

Action + Inspiration – Roadblocks = Possibility

The conference content featured strategy sessions led by subject matter experts on familiar equity-centered topics which included: 

• Health Equity & the Social Determinants of Health
• Racial Trauma and Community Mental Health
• Greenlining: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap
• Violence Prevention & Criminal Justice 
• Community Belonging and Racial Healing 

Health Equity

With respect to Health Equity and the Social Determinants of Health, the panel participants insisted that hospital systems should increase their presence and visibility in communities that need health improvements most to build relationships and trust. Intentional diversification of staff was mentioned several times as a best practice in achieving the trust objective. Patient outcomes are best when caregivers have similar backgrounds to the ones seeking care. Diversifying staff should go much further than race and gender. Investing in language access was mentioned as a key to improving health outcomes. It was noted that providing language access is the law for providers receiving state funding.

Mental Health

Dr. April Aycock, Monroe County’s Director of the Office of Mental Health, informed us that there is a modest improvement in the number of BIPOC individuals seeking mental health treatment. This is because of an anti-stigma awareness campaign. Notwithstanding these efforts, BIPOC individuals continue to be more likely to delay or fail to seek treatment; when they do receive it, that treatment is often substandard due to patients being misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed. To improve outcomes, the panel was unanimous in its recommendation that providers should embrace alternative methods of healing that are culturally centered and relevant; methods that are not typically taught in higher education. 

The Voices of Our Youth

Based on feedback from our 2024 conference, we decided to host a panel of young people to discuss matters of significance selected by them. It should come as little surprise that this panel once again delivered actionable content that we should all pay attention to. The panelists let us know that they are feeling the impacts of poverty. They shared that these impacts are devastating and demoralizing to them and their peers. They are tired of having to practice constant resilience and just want to enjoy their youth. From an actionable point of view, they are seeking guidance and would like some of that guidance to come from role models. They also said that they are not being taught enough about mental health in school or otherwise. These 2 things (role models and mental health education) are items that ABC will be following up on with the youth, mental health practitioners and other community partners. Our young people are looking for more opportunities to speak but also cautioned us (older folks) that we need to be prepared to listen equally to the good and not so good. They embrace tough love and say that they need emotional love as well. Please reach out to the young people around you. They want consistent and dependable adults in their lives. 

Greenlining: Closing the Wealth Gap

Advocacy is an important aspect of ABC’s work to eliminate poverty. Homeownership is the most significant way to build generational wealth. In April of 2023, we convened the Greenlining Coalition – our efforts to close the racial wealth gap by increasing homeownership amongst Monroe County’s BIPOC residents.  That gap has stood at 40% since 1968! As we have for the past 2 conferences, there was a panel discussion on this issue. Like other areas of concern, the panelists stressed the need for representation at every level of the homeownership process as a tactic to help close the gap – financial literacy providers, real estate agents, appraisers, mortgage brokers, banks, etc. It is worth noting that all studies on this topic have the same conclusion: There is discrimination at every socio-economic level. The coalition is committed to using its influence to reduce this discrimination as a key tactic to closing the gap. Relationship building and collective impact are tools that will be used to attack this daunting but achievable task over time. We are encouraged by place-based efforts such as those happening in the EMMA Beechwood neighborhood by Connected Communities. We also encourage other neighborhood organizations to adopt this targeted approach to this longstanding challenge. 

Racial Trauma & Healing

The conference’s coverage of racial trauma and community mental health reinforced the need for all of us to build strong relationships as a healing mechanism. Those relationships should be grounded in the lived experiences of everyone involved for the expected healing to materialize. We should all have a network of care in our personal and professional lives. There was overlap in the messages coming out of the violence prevention panel specifically as it relates to belonging and overall community health. Panelists pointed out that employment is a violence prevention tool, and encouraged a shift in county, city and philanthropic resources towards strength-based preventative youth development initiatives (as opposed to “after the fact” programs). 

Violence Prevention & Criminal Justice

The panel that discussed violence prevention and criminal justice was laden with action items that recommended a holistic approach to public safety. Of the strategies and tactics mentioned the following were the highlights:  

• Using social media to promote peace, emotional intelligence, and to build positive relationships. 
• Increase mental health services and mentorship, especially for young people. 
• Engage in early intervention for children, with adequate support for their parents as part of that intervention. 
• Public safety efforts should prioritize asset-based resources to prevent violence.
• City Hall, the County, RPD, and the Sherrif’s Office should share their plans with the community so that the community is aware and can play a role in those public safety plans. 

The conference concluded with a virtual racial healing/belonging session which was skillfully facilitated by Karen Podsiadly. We took time to acknowledge that several traumatic things had recently occurred in the country and nearby in Rochester – the California fires, the terrorist attack in New Orleans and the murder of Robert Brooks at the Marcy Correctional Facility to name a few. The guided imagery went from traumatizing events to envisioning a future where our community was in a much better space, and everyone felt seen and heard. It was a fitting end to the virtual aspect of the conference and reminded us of the constant need for healing and belonging as we and our numerous partners are working towards making this community better for everyone.   

We are Empowering Communities and Inspiring Change.