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Project News | November 4, 2021

Latino Outdoors

Latino Outdoors (LO) began as a blog authored by its founder, Jose Gonzales. Today, LO continues using its Yo Cuento (meaning “I count”, “I matter”, and “I tell a story”) blog to encourage the diverse community of outdoor enthusiasts to enrich and expand the narrative of outdoor engagement, conservation, and environmental education. The most recent post, “Meandering Ways: Leaning Into My Leadership” by Ruby Rodriguez, explores the importance of venturing out of one’s comfort zone in order to heal and grow.

Read the blog here.


Harps of Comfort

Harps of Comfort has two upcoming events scheduled in addition to their ongoing work providing remote music to isolated patients, those with COVID-19 and other serious illness, patients nearing the end of life, as well as loved ones and caregivers.

Project Director Jennifer Hollis will be presenting at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music Colloquium, “Healing at the Threshold, Music-Thanatology, Grief and Accompaniment,” on November 10, 2021. Catharine Delong (pictured) will be presenting at the Expressive Therapies Summit, “Music as Medicine at the End of Life,” on November 21, 2021.


Immigrants Rising

On October 18, Immigrants Rising held a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary of AB 540, a law under which certain nonresident students are exempt from paying nonresident supplemental tuition. The conference gathered  educators, administrators, students, young professionals, activists, and legislators from across the state to celebrate the milestone and call for the equitable implementation of AB 540 statewide.

Access recordings from the conference here.


Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement

Lou Woodley, Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) Director, was featured in the National Microbiome Data Collaborative’s (NMDC) fall 2021 newsletter. CSCCE has developed and led training sessions focusing on leading effective and engaging events tailored for NMDC Ambassadors.

NMDC shared CSCCE’s recently published guidebook that focuses on “the CHAMPION mode, in which emerging leaders within a community act in either informal or formal capacity to MAINTAIN, GROW, or EVOLVE the community.”

Woodley will be joining NMDC at their Community Conversation, “Developing Data Science Resources in Partnership with Scientific Communities,” on December 1. The Carpentries, another Community Initiatives fiscally sponsored project, will also be a part of that conversation!

Learn more and register for NMDC’s Community Conversation.


Get to Know Community Initiatives’ Senior Leadership!

Carl Taibl

Carl brings over a decade of nonprofit finance experience with him to Community Initiatives.

Prior to pursuing finance, Carl played keyboard for a rock band in high school and college. Lucky for us, Carl decided the rock star life wasn’t for him, so he went and got his MBA at Northwestern University instead.

While living in his hometown of Chicago, Carl met his wife, Pat, at Poochie’s hot dog stand. Their son (also named Carl) attends Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

Carl and Pat are huge Cubs fans and attended spring training for a dozen years. Carl also enjoys football and plays tennis.

Carl adores his German Shepherd, Maya. Prior to Maya, Carl and Pat had several cats (including their 15-year-old cat named Twinkle Toes) and two other German Shepherds.

You can find out more about Carl on the Meet Us page of our website.


Let us know what’s going on with your project and we’ll do our best to get it into the next Project News and share on social media.

Email Stephanie at communications@communityinitiatives.org.

If you would like to learn more about our projects, please visit our projects page.

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