Photo: Jeffrey P. Roberts

People Taking Care of Places
Speaker: Ché Madyun
File size: 359k
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Roxbury, Massachusetts
"We had the opportunity to sit together, and dream together, and come up with a shared vision of how we wanted to see this neighborhood develop and what we wanted it to look like. . . We've been able to keep that vision in the front of our minds and not let other little things deter us from that shared vision." - Ché Madyun

Photo: Jeffrey P. Roberts

Ché Madyun lives in the Dudley Street community, an area of about one-and-a-half square miles along the Roxbury/Dorchester line in greater Boston. Ché served as the first board president of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a community-based nonprofit organization working with Dudley residents to create a vibrant, diverse, and high-quality neighborhood. Projects include reclaiming environmentally damaged sites and revitalizing business and cultural life.

With the initiative, Ché and her neighbors are building an "urban village," realizing a vision for the future based on local empowerment, cooperation, and hard work. Progress is visible throughout the community: 300 new units of affordable housing on formerly vacant lots, a town common serving as a gateway to the neighborhood, a mural celebrating the neighborhood's rich ethnic diversity, and community gardens.