Autumn is a light-hearted and humanitarian student. Today thanks to Autumn’s voice, we are reaching out because we need your help.  Each one of you good people could help make a tremendous impact by sending support to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines due to the recent eruption of the volcano, La Soufrière. Find more info on how you can help at the end of this article.

Since the first day Autumn joined the FabNewport community three years ago, we have had the opportunity to see her progress, how she is now emerging and making her life due to our programs since she joined. She expressed, “I can’t imagine not doing FabNewport. I’m more confident bike riding and talking to people thanks to FabNewport.”

Imagine yourself back in middle school, having the opportunity to expand your connections with your community, with other students from different backgrounds, and exploring your city while learning and experiencing Place Based Education (PBE)? That’s no less but Autumn Walker’s case and the reason why we choose to share her story with you.

Autumn is a 14-year-old BIPOC. She was born in the USA but has Caribbean roots as her family came from St. Vincent and the Grenadines back in the ’80s. She came to FabNewport at the beginning of our NEX (Newport Experience) program back in 2018, where we take students all over the city to explore and connect with the community using different ways of transportation, including Bikes, Ferries, Hikes, Sailing, to name a few, and applying Place Based Education (PBE) to our practice. We connected with Autumn through Newport Public Schools when she used to attend there. She is now attending the J.H. Gaudet Middle School in Middletown, RI.

When Autumn came to us, you could see no more than a timid but creative kid ready to take the world with her hands. In many cases, as we know, students like Autumn end up wasting their life because of the lack of opportunities students can reach. Fortunately enough, Autumn has been a courageous and agile student eager to not only learn about her life and community but to transfer that knowledge learned through FabNewport to her community and other peers. 

Autumn has participated with us through programs like the Newport Experience (NEX) summer camp and Computer Science Discoveries with Director of Instruction Josie Michaud. 

Autumn also currently plays the role of the graphic designer lead for our Entrepreneurship incubator program, where she has the opportunity to collaborate with other peers to design and create products for the industry. 

She has expressed a passion and great ability for visual arts. She is now waiting to get all her graphic design supplies for the home, including another vinyl cutter and heat presser to create and apply designs on different products like t-shirts, stickers, mugs.

We are excited to see how Autumn’s wings are rapidly wide-spreading as she continues to get more empowered. If you want to know more or even ask Autumn a question, we’ll be happy to be the channel of communication with her. You can drop us a line at daniel@fabnewport.org.

  • You also might want to watch this video of Autumn sharing her experience with FabNewport last year.

Help us help St Vincent

By Autumn

You may have heard of a volcanic eruption that recently happened on a tiny island in the South Caribbean last week.  Well, that tiny island happened to be my parent’s home island of St. Vincent & The Grenadines.

Currently, the airports are closed, and disaster relief is slowly trickling in.  My family in St. Vincent is helping out shelters outside of the main city, but they are struggling right now to acquire basic necessities and medical supplies for displaced residents.  Soon, the island will run out of food and supplies. In the States, we are scrambling to figure out ways to get them what they need. 

If you all could share this story on your social media and consider donating, I’d greatly appreciate it.  I have provided the links below to share:

Here is the GoFundMe link.

And if you can drop supplies off please do at the following address: 14 Massachusetts Ave 

Some of the supplies that can help are:

  • Coloring books and art supplies for the children in the shelters
  • Non-perishables items like canned foods and bottled water/ juice
  • Hygiene  products such as toilet paper, toothpaste, baby diapers, soap, feminine hygiene products, deodorant, shampoos
  • Manual can openers, bucks, masks
  • First-aid kits, mosquito repellent, hand sanitizers and  antibiotic ointments
  • Blankets, sleeping mats 

Anything you can do to help and bring light to this humanitarian crisis would be really appreciated.

Thanks so much for listening.