Looking to try a farm-to-table restaurant, find a nature activity or volunteer at a soup kitchen in your community? Such information is often inaccessible to communities of color. The VT PoCket Guide aims to help their members find and navigate options.
Released this summer by the Vermont Professionals of Color Network, the web-based digital guide aims to support and empower Vermont’s marginalized communities by connecting new residents and visitors to essential resources, businesses and events.
While it can be used by anyone, the web-based guide is targeted at Vermont’s growing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) population — members of which often feel siloed — to foster a sense of belonging, according to Tinotenda Rutanhira, co-executive director of VTPoC.
An immigrant from Zimbabwe, Rutanhira said he remembers what it was like nearly 25 years ago when he was a new resident in unfamiliar surroundings in a largely white state.
“When I think about the BIPOC community, we don’t interact a lot with the outdoors. So Vermont can be a very lonely place if you don’t have things to do,” he said. “If I had a tool like this, it would have helped me to get connected a little bit more, meet people that I would not otherwise have met.”
So far the user-friendly guide has 10 categories, including arts and culture, community engagement, parks and rec, and health and wellness. It allows people to explore options in four regions — greater Burlington, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury and Brattleboro — with plans to expand to Rutland and other areas.
The guide curates options for users according to their interests and includes an optional short quiz to narrow down options.
“The things that make white Vermonters want to stick around is, they know the secrets of where to go outdoors, where to go to eat, where to get recreation, which grocery store sells a specific thing. We want to create that sense of belonging and inclusiveness by building a tool that allows people to explore Vermont and know what’s out there, know what’s available,” Rutanhira said. “This tool sort of democratizes access to information and resources curated particularly for the BIPOC community and from a BIPOC perspective.”
Organizations and businesses owned by BIPOC people are marked with a red heart.
Developed with the help of GameTheory, a local female-run collective, and money from the Northfield Savings Bank Foundation, the project is in its infancy but has received positive feedback, according to Rutanhira. The organization also plans to add a shopping cart for users to store the things they’d like to see, do or explore next.
“So if you’re thinking of going to Burlington in three weeks, I might go there, make a list of all the things that I want to check out. Then you’re not having to try to memorize it and you’ll have a, sort of, a favorites list that it will have created,” he said.
Nicole Carignan, chair of the Northfield Savings Bank Foundation board of directors, said in a press release about the guide that her organization seeks to fund projects that are “an investment in a brighter future.”
“We love working with teams who have powerful expertise that can result in tangible impact on a community,” Marguerite Dibble, CEO of GameTheory, said in the release. “We love collaborating with those teams to take all that knowledge and translate it into an easy to access, enjoyable experience that brings all that impact to life. This project is such a great example of that and we can’t wait to see how it continues to evolve out there in the world.”
The project could lead to a standalone app if funding becomes available.
For now, the project fits with the organization’s mission to create access and opportunities, said Rutanhira, and “to tear down the walls that have existed between the haves and the have nots, the Vermonters and the non-Vermonters, the new Vermonters and old Vermonters, the white people and the people of color.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Organization launches guide for BIPOC Vermonters to explore, connect and overcome barriers.