Sociedad Latina, a youth-oriented organization, will host a documentary screening and community discussion on the future of Mission Hill next week.
The documentary, “We Built It Together,” filmed by Sociedad mostly last winter, focuses on what it’s like to live in Mission Hill as a young person, as part of a family, and as a senior citizen. State Rep. Jeffrey Sánchez and City Councilor Mike Ross and representatives from Northeastern University and Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) are expected to attend.
The documentary is meant to spark conversations between residents, institutional neighbors and elected officials as to how Mission Hill is doing as a neighborhood and how it can do better.
This should include shared goals between Mission Hill and its neighbors and electeds, Jennifer Reyes, community organizing manager at Sociedad Latina told the Gazette.
“We want to talk about the things that are happening [currently] and how we can get action going [on things we’d like to see],” she said. “We designed it so everyone could sit at a table and be able to have this ongoing conversation.”
“It should hopefully kick off some action planning, not just a sound-off” of people talking, Reyes said.
Reyes also said she expects NU’s Institutional Master Plan (IMP) and its community benefits package to come up for discussion.
“Not all community members feel like they have the space to voice their concerns at [NU community] task force meetings. We want to see how our [community] feedback is being implemented,” Reyes said.
The crux of the issue, Reyes said, was figuring out how the community and its institutional neighbors can “both benefit from living next to each other.”
Other expected topics of discussion are workforce development for institutions in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area (LMA), “not just for youths, but for all community members,” Reyes explained.
While other Mission Hill-based organizations like the Community Alliance of Mission Hill and Mission Main Task Force will participate in the discussion, Sociedad is the sole host of the event.
“We Built It Together” will be screened on Mon., June 17, 6 p.m., in the Mission Main Community Room at 43 Smith St.