Community Spring

Join us for "Occupy My Streetz: Bringing Unity Back to the Community"! 🤝✨

This Juneteenth, we are honoring Gun Violence Awareness Month by occupying our streets with purpose, connection, and peace. Bring the whole family out for a 3v3 basketball tournament ($150 top prize + trophy! 🏆), a fitness competition, a live DJ, free food, bounce houses, raffles, and local resources.

📆 Friday, June 19th
🕚 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
📍Unity Park (1700 Northeast 31st Ave, Gainesville, FL)

🎙️ Exciting news! Last Tuesday, Julius Irving and Kelly Lynch sat down with Ilene Silverman to chat about the impactful work we’re doing here at Community Spring.

We had a wonderful time sharing our mission, and we can't wait for you to hear it! Stay tuned. Our episode of The Ilene Silverman Show airs in just a couple of weeks! 🗓️✨

Earlier this week, our fellow Chris Perry led a vital Storytelling Workshop focused on a heavy but necessary topic: facing trauma.

As Chris beautifully put it, facing trauma isn’t just about "dealing with something hard." It’s about confronting an experience that shook your foundational sense of safety so deeply that your mind and body are still carrying the imprint.

Poverty and mass incarceration are deeply intertwined with systemic trauma, yet so many of us are never taught how to confront or process it. During our discussion, our community shared what trauma feels like to them. Many described it as an energy absorbed and trapped within the body, while others noted how it permanently alters the filter through which you view the world.

That is why this work matters. Storytelling is how trauma loses its grip; it is the space where people reclaim their voices. By facing our trauma, we become better equipped to create stories that drive real change.

Storytelling is how trauma loses its grip and the community finds its voice.

Join us for our Facing Trauma Storytelling Workshop with Chris Perry where we'll learn about trauma, speaking truth to power, and growing stronger together.

📆 Tuesday, May 26 & Wednesday, May 27
⏰ 9:30 - 11:30 AM each day
📍Community Spring Office
218 NW 2nd Ave, Gainesville, FL

😋 Get free refreshments for joining

✨ Donor Spotlight ✨

As we reflect on our growth at Community Spring, we’re honored to spotlight two people who make it possible: Fred and Anna Zeller.

The Zellers joined our Gainesville community six years ago. What began as a one-time donation in 2022 quickly became a recurring commitment to our sustainability. Fred says it best:

"I can’t imagine a better way out of the increasingly crippling economic divide we're experiencing than the model Community Spring has created."

Thank you, Fred and Anna, for your unwavering support!

We are proud to have received grant support from Spring Point Partners for another year!

We are so grateful for this grant. Spring Point Partners continued investment in our work allows us to invest directly in impacted people to dismantle structural poverty.

Commissary prices in Florida jails and prisons don’t just strain incarcerated people, it strains their families and loved ones, often already living under the poverty line.

When commissary prices go unchecked, incarcerated people and their families become a captive marketplace for exploitation. Commissary markups perpetuate cycles of poverty, debt and instability.

Through his fellowship at Community Spring, Chris Perry is digging into real solutions to this issue here in Alachua county. Discover what this work could mean for our communities in his new blog.

🔗 csgnv.org/blog/captive-marketplace

This Thursday, Kelly and Chris will be joining The River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding virtually to discuss the cycle of exclusion. Reserve your free spot today to hear from them.

Operations Manager, Kelly Lynch and fellow Chris Perry from Community Spring will speak about the Cycle of Exclusion which is the systemic way our society denies people in poverty the resources they need to survive, how that creates crime, and then structurally excludes them from the legal resources necessary to navigate the criminal justice system.

We'll explore how Community Spring addresses this cycle of poverty and incarceration through income, power, and community.

Join us by reserving your free spot now: https://bit.ly/VPCCommunitySpring