Social Equity Access Fund: A Declaration of Worth, An Antidote to Despair
By Brandon Little
I first started working with the Social Equity Access Fund in my role as Policy Director for the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Recovery Services (ORS). From 2016-2021, I was part of an amazing team tasked with addressing substance use and addiction in Boston. And while then-Mayor Walsh heavily supported and invested in ORS, an office that he created as mayor, there were always gaps in services that needed to be addressed. At the City, we would reach out to philanthropy when we needed to shore up these kinds of gaps. The Social Equity Access Fund was one of the best partners to utilize for this purpose because of their innovation, compassion, and real-world experience.
In Boston, we are lucky to live in a resource-rich city and state that invests in healthcare and social services for our most vulnerable people. However, much of the connective infrastructure of our social policies, mainly related to social determinants of health, has critical weaknesses that can upend well-meaning, and well-funded plans. For people who are struggling, small economic barriers can rapidly become major liabilities for service delivery, and ultimately for a person’s well-being. And when we’re talking about substance use disorder, sometimes it can literally mean the difference between life and death. `
I know about these challenges because I lived them. I experienced poverty, addiction, and homelessness as a teen and young adult. As a young man in early recovery, a small financial hiccup would often set me back. I regularly felt embarrassed, ashamed, and scared that I would never be able to have what I needed to thrive. If I didn’t have loving friends to let me sleep on their couches, buy me food, or lend me money to advance myself, I don’t know where I’d be.
The Social Equity Access Fund is so exceptional because it is run by a team of amazing women well-versed in traditional, large-scale philanthropy, yet pragmatic enough to know that some of the most life-changing grants are small, direct, and needed quickly. The team at Social Equity Access Fund also know that achieving equity means supporting those that are often overlooked in our society. When I was at ORS, we reached out to Elsa to support people who didn’t have enough money to bury their family members who died of drug overdose, a mother urgently leaving a domestic violence situation, and a man in long-term recovery who needed legal help to address a non-violent crime he committed years before while in active addiction. The letters and calls we received from the people who received critical grants from Social Equity Access Fund were full of gratitude, love, and hope.
Elsa and Luisa have their ears to the street and are not far from the people they support. Their innovation and compassion are rooted in their lived experiences and their extensive knowledge of philanthropy. I have seen the Social Equity Access Fund help people at a crossroad, on the cusp of big change, right when they’re at their most vulnerable and afraid. All they needed was a small declaration of their worth, and a token of faith. Elsa and Luisa are doing more than dispersing life-changing funds, they’re dispersing hope to people whose hope has been damaged by inequity, injustice, and hardship. The immense compassion inherent in the Social Equity Access Fund is the antidote to the despair threatening the most vulnerable in our society.
