The Hub Hosts Inaugural Community Appreciation Reception and Open House
On Saturday, August 1, 2026, we welcomed our friends, donors, and community partners at our inaugural community appreciation reception and open house for our Colfax Cultural Center location. Thank you to everyone who helped make this next stage for the Hub possible!
You can you read our ED’s full remarks below:
Hello everyone and welcome to our very first community appreciation reception and open house to welcome you all into our new offices here at the Colfax Cultural Center. My name is Dalila and I am honored to serve as the inaugural executive director of the Restorative Justice Collaborative Hub.
Being here to inaugurate this new space with you all is something that was completely unimaginable for so long. The Hub had existed only in our hearts and dreams until our community made it possible to bring it to life.
Back in 2020, a small group of RJ trainers in South Bend gathered virtually over Zoom to explore what more we could be doing to address harm in our communities. Susan Sharpe, Stuart Greene, Darryl Heller, Kathe Streeter, and myself gathered to read books together, worked in small committees, consulted with other organizations in the US and Canada, envisioned our theory of change, and eventually incorporated the Restorative Justice Collaborative Hub in May of 2022. We spent the following couple of years immersed in professional development, strategic planning, and community consultations to develop an organization that truly responded to our community needs. Thanks to generous support from you all and some initial funding from the Pokagon Fund and United Way, we were able to launch our direct services in 2024. And in the fall of 2025, we were awarded our $130,000 Accelerator Initiative grant through the Division of Mental Health and Addictions to help us build our capacity and strengthen our operations to ensure long term sustainability.
Building a new nonprofit is a difficult, slow, and trying process. For six years we have worked diligently—and mostly on a volunteer basis—to build something from the ground up with integrity. And we are immensely grateful that when we approached you with our initial sketch of a dream, you dared to support the tiniest seed of an idea.
We often use a gardening metaphor to describe the work it takes to implement restorative justice. We talk about cultivating justice, because justice is not something that blooms overnight. If you ever gardened before, you know that you can’t simply plant a seed and expect it to fruit. You need to understand your environment and the plants that could thrive in those conditions. You need to prepare, heal, and nurture the soil. You have to monitor the plant's growth and its changing needs, provide supportive structures, amend its soil, treat potential diseases, and sometimes you have to start all over again. You have to know where to plant your seed, and which plants might be beneficial companions.
Taking shortcuts could provide immediate results, but they could also harm the long-term health of your soil or could damage the broader ecosystem. Every choice you make has to keep in mind not only the health of your individual plant, but the overall health of its surroundings.
This Hub began as a tiny seed we nurtured for many years until it was ready to plant in carefully prepared soil. And to watch it grow and begin to bud thanks to your support has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. Whether you have provided financial support or moral support for our emergent dream, you responded before we had any tangible proof of impact. You placed your trust in us to carry this through.
As I continue to do this work, I am often reminded of one of my favorite quotes by Václav Havel: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” And it is precisely that definition of hope that fuels our mission.
We have poured ourselves into this Hub—and its many iterations beforehand—because we know that this is not only worth doing, but that it is our moral obligation to do so.
Today, the Hub you see before you focuses on supporting survivors, helping people take responsibility, and transforming harm. Our direct services provide targeted support for people impacted by serious crime and violence: homicides, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, armed robbery, etc. The survivors who turn to us have often expended all other options. They’re in search of an approach that centers their needs and healing journey above anything else. We provide unconditional victim advocacy and accompaniment to anyone whose safety, dignity, and sense of belonging have been violated through severe harm. We address the needs resulting from the harm they experienced and provide a path toward meaningful accountability and amends through facilitated dialogues, peer support, art-integrated workshops, and individual support and coaching. It is this act of unwavering solidarity with those most vulnerable and most impacted by harm that deep, lingering harms can truly be repaired.
There’s a common misperception that restorative justice or repair mean that we are restoring things to the way they were. This is simply not true. For anyone who has endured deep trauma and severe harms, we know that we can never go back to the way things were. We cannot bring back a life. We cannot return to the past. But we can learn to re-exist when we cultivate relational ways of being. We can learn to re-exist when meaningful amends address our deepest justice needs. We can learn to re-exist when we are reassured that we can prevent the harm from happening again. We can learn to re-exist when we see living proof that we are no longer alone. Through the Hub’s work, we can restore dignity. We can restore safety. We can restore what it means to be living, human beings in good relation with one another.
This work requires a community-wide effort. And every day I walk into this building, I am reminded of how our interconnectedness here in South Bend made this dream possible. So much of our space exists thanks to our community: office furniture from La Casa de Amistad, the Family Justice Center, and St. Vincent de Paul; a massive conference table from St. Margaret's House that traveled up and down many flights of stairs to its final resting place; gifts from friends like Laura Haigwood, Stuart Greene, and Mary Fran and Jay Brandenberger to help keep us organized and well caffeinated; beautiful artwork showcasing local talent from Ramiro Rodriguez, Laurie Rousseau, and many beautiful artists at Motels4Now; and an astounding amount of items from my local East Bank Buy Nothing Group (bookshelves, office tools, art supplies, and more). Everything you see around here is a visible reminder of our relationships, and of the tapestry of support we have woven here at home.
It is also a reminder that we already have what we need to do this work here in our own community. In her most recent book, The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us of the power of cultivating a culture of abundance where receiving gifts is coupled to a responsibility of sharing, respect, reciprocity, and gratitude.
Yes, we need funds to continue to operate. Our Accelerator grant will run out at the end of the year, and we will need to find a way to sustain this growth. But we truly do believe in Kimmerer’s reminder that this world is constantly providing everything we need—not only to survive but to thrive—and that we can live in abundance when we step into the obligation we have to one another.
You have already demonstrated that support can take many different forms. Today we’ll share this handout with you on additional ways you can continue to show up with your time, talent, or treasure. And whether you decide to support the Hub in these ways, or choose to support our broader ecosystem through our partner organizations, or choose to use your time and expertise to tackle the root causes of violence elsewhere, we hope you will find a way to step into our collective obligation to one another. Please find your sphere of influence, and find your role in our garden of justice.
In the meantime, we welcome you to learn more about what you have helped us accomplish. On this floor, through this small hallway, you’ll find our victim service office, where Angela Blake, one of our victim advocates, will share more about our approach and will offer an opportunity for you to share your knowledge and add to our resource map.
Downstairs, you’ll get a chance to explore our small art studio, where our volunteers Micah and Emelia will guide you through a short art activity to help us build a collaborative wall hanging. (You do not need any art experience to participate, so don’t be scared.) Our evaluation specialist, Duda, and one of our Advisory group members, Mary Fran, will also be down in the basement throughout the day to share more information about our arts-integration approach.
Upstairs in our admin office, Nia Merriweather, our community relations ambassador, will share opportunities to get involved and ways to support the Hub, including sharing our new sponsorship opportunity brochure. If you know of businesses or companies that are aligned with our values, please take and share our brochures with them.
I will also be upstairs to share more about our approach and theory of change. You'll have a chance to contribute to a memorial art piece in honor of our beloved Susan Sharpe, and you can take selfies at our photo wall upstairs (please tag us on social media!). Please be sure to stop by upstairs in the lobby to pick up a complimentary book, bookmark, and sticker as a small token of our appreciation as well.
Throughout the day, Cush, one of board members, and Jenny and Tim, two of our advisory group members, will be stationed throughout the building to help with directions and answer any questions. You’re welcome to continue enjoying our refreshments, catered by MamaRoux catering, throughout the event.
And before we break out into the spaces, I just want to thank our incredible team who made this event possible. Thank you to Angela, Nia, Duda, Cush, Mary Fran, Tim, Jenny, Emelia, and the rest of our team, board, and advisory members who could not be here today. It is truly an honor to be able to do this work with you and to create a space where your talent and passion can find a home. Thank you to South Bend Heritage for providing the Hub's first home, Eco Owl Press and the Frame Shop for their printing and framing support, Rachel Berryman for the delicious and thoughtful food, and to the Accelerator Initiative for helping us reach this next stage. I also need to give a very special thank you to my family: Micah, who in many ways grew up alongside this dream for the Hub, and who can now add professional mover and painter to his resume. Thank you for being a constant support, for being able to read my mind, and for always being the light of my life. Thank you to my parents who volunteered countless hours to clean, paint, and prepare this space for us to enjoy, and who, most importantly, instilled in me a deep love and dedication to my community. And to my beloved spouse, George. There are too many things to thank you for as we’ve built this life together in South Bend for over a decade now, but I think above anything else, thank you for seeing me and thank you for loving my heart.
And of course, thank you, to each and every one of you. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for providing us immense support throughout the past 6 years. Thank you for daring to live restoratively. As Howard Zinn said, “To live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” Thank you!
