Community/Neighborhood Improvement

Thrive in 5's mission is to get every one of Boston's 39,000 children under age 5 ready to succeed in school and in life and to prevent the readiness gap currently evident at school entry. For the Fields Corner Children Thrive, please click here.

Thrive in 5 is a public-private partnership sponsored by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, with additional funding partners. Also see a breakdown of Thrive programs and goals. Contact information for various program branches is available here.

Boston Children Thrive in 5 is currently being implemented in 5 neighborhoods. In each neighborhood a "hub agency" leads and coordinates the effort. Each hub agency works in collaboration with many community partners.

Neighborhood : Hub Agency

• Allston-Brighton : Family Nurturing Center
• Roxbury/North Dorchester : Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
• South End/Lower Roxbury : United South End Settlements
• East Boston : East Boston Community Partnerships for Children Neighborhood Cluster
• Field's Corner : Dorchester House Multi-Service Center

To provide tailored and negotiable dog care services. Typical service includes three times daily house visits, with one half-hour in the morning, around noon, and in the evening. But the business is flexible: if an owner feels as though their dog just needs a quick ten-minute walk once a day, RTH will work out an arrangement. Sabrina and Jen focus on individual care: in order to gain clients’ trust, they always schedule an initial appointment to get to know the owners and dogs.

The Bobby Mendes Peace Legacy is an anti-violence initiative co-directed by Dorchester peace activist Isaura Mendes and Shannon Flattery of Touchable Stories. It is named in honor of Isaura's oldest son Bobby who was murdered in 1995. It is rededicated to her youngest son Matthew who was murdered in 2006.

The program began in 1999 to help stem the tide of growing homicides in the Dorchester/Roxbury neighborhoods. Programs include public speaking in schools and prisons, grief counseling for families and friends who have lost loved ones, roundtable dinners with community members and their elected officials, holiday celebrations for local children and The Annual Parent's & Children's Walk for Peace.

Boston Community Capital (BCC) is a community development financial institution whose mission is to build healthy communities where low-income people live and work. We accomplish this mission by investing in projects that provide affordable housing, good jobs, and new opportunities in low-income communities, connecting these neighborhoods to the mainstream economy.

Since 1985, BCC has invested more than $550 million to support organizations and businesses that benefit underserved communities. Our loans and investments have helped:

Build or preserve affordable homes for over 10,000 families and individuals

Support child care facilities serving over 7,000 children

Finance schools and youth programs serving over 2,000 low-income students

Renovate over 750,000 square feet of commercial real estate in distressed inner-city communities

Create more than 1,400 jobs in low-income communities

Generate over 1.4 million kilowatt hours of solar capacity annually on affordable housing serving over 1,100 families and individuals,

Provide fixed-rate mortgages that have allowed over 80 families facing foreclosure to remain in their homes.

96 billion pounds of food are wasted each year. Fair Foods Inc is an evolution in the fight against hunger and poverty. Since 1988, we have transported daily truckloads of usable surplus goods from industry to low-income communities in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. We recycle massive amounts of grocery-quality fresh food and high-grade building materials and bring them directly to the people who need it most. We rely on a commonsense ethic, a core staff of food distributors, and over 200 networked volunteers to get the job done, seven days a week. We focus on being cost-effective, resourceful, and thorough. Our business is to bring tangible change into the lives of thousands of families.

For the low cost of two dollars at the sites listed above Fair Foods will provide you with a very generous amount (about 15 lbs) of vegetables, fruits and possibly more. Food items provided vary each week.