CLEVELAND — Neighbors lending a helping hand is the mission behind Rally CLE and those like Yomarie Gonzalez who are involved.
“I had a dream that I would like to see my community come to this,” said Yomarie Gonzalez.
Organizers from Building Hope in the City started this initiative about five years ago to bring neighbors like Yomarie Gonzalez and her husband, Luis Luna together as one.
“Uniting neighbors is important. Getting them together, getting them to know each other. It kind of blurs out what people see as negative,” said Stockyard resident Luis Luna.
The couple tells News 5 they’ve been living in the Stockyard Neighborhood for more than 20 years and have been working to highlight more positivity in their community.
With the help of Rally CLE, Gonzalez says they are able to achieve this.
“What we do is that we’re trying to unite the neighbors to come together as one and just have a good time and make something positive together,” said Gonzalez.
This collaboration takes a lot of time and hundreds of volunteers.
But, Dr. Vatreisha Nyemba says it’s worth the work to help make a difference.
“This is an amazing event. I mean just the fact that folks take up their time to come out and basically meet with the vision of strangers, which are residents in this community that say they want to be a part of the solution and not any problems, and so it’s just exciting,” said Nyemba, who’s a Community Leader.
Nyemba and community leaders like Aminah Vargas say what makes this event even more special are the service projects. One project, in particular, focuses on painting through the pain and giving people an emotional release.
“We wanted to have an opportunity to connect with the community in a deep way. As I was saying, healing is often approached individually, and we wanted to have the opportunity to connect with the community in that journey of healing,” said Vargas.
While Building Hope in the City has a deep commitment to the Clark–Fulton and Stockyard community, they welcome leaders from other parts of Cleveland to reach out to them if you want to make a difference in your area too.
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