“CLLCTIVGive is rooted in a Black tradition of collective care and calls all of Greater Baltimore to invest in our shared future,” writes Jamye Wooten, founder of Baltimore-rooted social change organization CLLCTIVLY.

Across generations, Black communities have pooled what we had to build churches, schools, businesses, freedom movements, and systems of care. We formed burial societies and building funds, mutual aid networks and susus. When institutions would not hold resources for us, we held them for one another.

We gave because our survival often depended on one another. We gave because our dreams did, too.

These traditions cannot be reduced to responses to scarcity and exclusion. They also grew from a deeper understanding: our lives are connected, and what we have comes with a responsibility to one another.

Communal care is not charity. It is a way of being, a form of infrastructure, and an economy built around our responsibility to one another.

It is how we have fed one another, raised children across households, cared for elders, protected our neighbors, built institutions, and imagined a future together. Giving was a practice of reciprocity, shared responsibility, and belonging.

CLLCTIVGive is grounded in this Black tradition of collective care, and it is a call to everyone who believes Baltimore’s future is a shared responsibility.

Read the full article in the Baltimore Beat: https://baltimorebeat.com/op-ed-care-is-our-economy-baltimore-must-invest-in-it/