Meet the 5 Bostonians awarded WBUR's Community Honors

WBUR has chosen five local leaders to receive its first Community Honors Awards. These individuals represent a powerful narrative of community service in Greater Boston — past, present and future.

Hubie Jones, Kate Gilbert, Yi-Chin Chen, Connor Schoen and Eneida Roman all spoke to WBUR's Morning Edition about the social problem they're focused on solving and where, they feel, the urgency lies in this moment.

A long-time community leader and activist, Hubie Jones has been involved with many Boston organizations through the years including Higher Ground, which he founded, and City Year.

Since coming to Boston in 1955, he and his wife, Katherine, have helped to change education in the city for the better.

His work at the Roxbury Multi-Service Center led to first-in-the-nation laws on special and bi-lingual education. Later, Jones would become the dean of Boston University’s School of Social Work; he was the first African American to hold the job.

“ Many things have happened that I never thought would happen,” Jones said. “I never thought I'd live long enough to see an Asian mayor in Boston. I thought I would by this time see a black mayor in Boston … I've just seen tremendous change. Obviously we have a great deal more to do, but we've come a great distance.”

Art can play a big role in building community. Just ask Kate Gilbert, founder of the nonprofit Now + There. Now called the Boston Public Art Triennial, the group recently launched its first "triennial," displaying art installations across eight of the city's neighborhoods.

”We are as a society on our phones and over-scheduled and looking down and we just need those moments of wonder and excitement,” Gilbert said. “And I believe they need to be in our public spaces so that we can engage with contemporary art, we can engage with the issues … we're not gonna solve [these issues] through a couple of sound bites and conversations, it's gonna take us coming together again in public space.”

Gilbert said art doesn’t need a purpose. But she does feel artists in the current political climate have a responsibility to organize the chaos.

”We're in such a moment of — I was just talking with someone and she called it chaos,” Gilbert said. “Artists have such beautiful ways of helping us reorganize that chaos into ways that can help us understand the world.”

Once upon a time, when she was young, someone told Yi-Chin Chen she was more than her circumstances. After growing up in a home "that had a ton of neglect and violence," Chen said, that realization changed her life.

Today she's the executive director of Friends of the Children–Boston. The nonprofit matches kids and young adults with long-term mentors, promising guidance "from kindergarten to high school graduation, no matter what."

All of the mentors are full time, salaried professionals and they commit to at least three years with the organization when they're hired.

"We're consistent. We just keep showing up," she said. "And by doing all of that, the kid can have a safe space that is protecting their hope."

The pandemic derailed Connor Schoen's idea to give young people living in shelters a chance to find work. Five years later, plans are back on track, and bigger than ever.

Schoen and Tony Shu were Harvard undergraduates when they decided to open Breaktime, a café that would provide jobs for young adults experiencing homelessness.

The pandemic hit, and the idea of a new retail space was no longer viable. So Schoen re-tooled Breaktime as an organization that places young people in jobs in various industries across Greater Boston.

In 2024, he cut a splashy real estate deal to create what he calls a "hub" for Breaktime's services. Taking advantage of a downturn in Boston’s commercial real estate market, the nonprofit snapped up a five-story building downtown for just $6.3 million.

Once renovations are complete, Breaktime plans to operate out of the building's upper floors, and lease the other levels to other groups that provide services for homeless young people.

“Ever since Breaktime’s inception, our focus has been job training and financial security. We are excellent at that, and we want to remain excellent at that specific niche,” he said. “The building allows us to create a one-stop shop for young adults, without trying to be the master of everything.”

To state the obvious: Massachusetts' economic competitiveness depends on its future workforce. And data show that workforce is largely Latino. In fact, Hispanic/Latino workers made up 60% of new jobs in Massachusetts between 2014 and 2023, according to an April report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Eneida Roman is the president and CEO of the nonprofit We Are ALX, which is focused on economically and politically advancing Hispanics/Latinos in the Commonwealth.

" We are amplifying Latino excellence because we know that talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not," she said.

A big part of her mission is helping Latino-owned businesses grow. The trouble for these entrepreneurs is not starting up, said Roman. The rate for new Hispanic/Latino businesses have far outpaced that of the general population in Massachusetts. The big issue is scaling up. Many Latino entrepreneurs have a harder time securing the necessary loans and connections to expand.

Roman's sense of urgency is matched by her practicality. She argues that closing the staggering 38-to-1 wealth gap between Hispanic/Latino residents with white residents in the Commonwealth is about improving the overall economic health of the state.

"Latino prosperity is Massachusetts prosperity is American prosperity," she said.