Introducing Generocity’s New Managing Editor – Dionicia Roberson

I come to you from pretty nontraditional origins. The past 10 years of my life are the furthest removed I’ve ever been from the circumstances of extreme poverty. As a child of a person experiencing severe mental health issues, my early and young adult life was characterized by regular displacement, food insecurity, and periods of unsheltered homelessness. These days, I have constant access to food, and people invite me into lovely spaces instead of rousting me out of them. There was a time, however, when the world responded to me in a completely different way even though– as far as I know –nothing about me has changed but my purchasing power.
I’d always felt there was a forced distance between myself and the housed and well-fed people around me that had nothing to do with me. People in the world weren’t responding to my eagerness to connect with them or my sweet personality; instead, they were reacting to the narratives that have always existed around poverty in society. Pop culture, news media, and officials of all stripes were constantly delivering the messages that impoverished people are wretched and lost, unsheltered people are dangerous animals, and most suffering people have themselves to blame. We were subject to every harmful narrative in the book (I’ve got nearly 40 years’ experience resisting and reversing the ones that defined my life as valueless…it’s how I survived to be with you today).
Clearly, my neighbors had internalized these narratives as beliefs and treated me and people like me accordingly. How many of the people in the orbit of my world were specially positioned to take an action (any action) that could have changed my life for the better at any given point? How many of those people were utterly disinclined to do so, because the harmful narratives they’d internalized about poverty and people experiencing it were inhibiting their ability to connect or even interpret those folks as human beings?
If that notion is frightening, it should be. That’s the power of narrative to harm, to oppress, to perpetuate, to divide.
On the flip side, I’ve witnessed firsthand the extreme humanizing power of stories. I’ve seen people move mountains for one another when they’ve been able to connect an “issue” to a human experience. I’ve been there to feel the levels of empathy and human stewardship rise when people are allowed to relate to each other. The pure, unadulterated good that comes of those opportunities is often immediately apparent, and immeasurable.
So that’s what’s most important to me: leveraging the power of narrative to connect issues to people, and to help us to see and recognize one another. To be fully informed about what life is like for everyone in our communities, and understand more deeply how to show up for one another. That’s my whole jam.
It’s Generocity’s whole jam, too.
Bridging the distance between Philadelphia communities and the organizations and systems that impact their lives every day is what we do. The substance of life in Philadelphia is captured best by those living that life, and when we can make those stories come alive for social impact leaders in the philanthropy, government, and business sectors, we create better opportunities to understand, connect with, and meet the needs of these communities successfully.
That’s the power of narrative to heal, to humanize, to strengthen, and to equip. We believe in it, because it’s real.
I look forward to helping harness this power to bring social impact leaders and Philadelphia community members to the same table. I am excited to help cultivate a space of deep conversation and engagement that is community-driven and community-focused. Most of all, I’m excited to serve Philadelphia by amplifying the voices of our communities and holding up valuable lived experience as the expertise it is. I’m beyond honored to help steward this work and I couldn’t be more ready.
Here’s to maximum positive impact! Cheers, Philly.
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