For decades, the predominantly Black East End neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia has suffered from crime, neglect, and a lack of economic opportunity. Two nearby coal terminals also have led to high rates of asthma and other respiratory issues. Yugonda Sample-Jones, a lifelong East End resident and local activist, realized that an array of government or nonprofit social programs could help make residents’ lives a little easier — but many local people either didn’t know about them or needed help navigating them. That led Sample-Jones to create EmPower All in 2019, which works to connect people with needed services, fight for environmental justice, reduce violence and crime rates, encourage civic participation, and more. One EmPower All program helps provide residents with Legal Aid attorneys, while the group’s Coal Dust Kills campaign pushes for measures to address the neighborhood’s chronic air pollution problem. As a “community consulting firm,” EmPower All offers a hub for East End residents to better their lives and uplift their community.
EmPower All volunteers go door to door in the East End of Newport News, Virginia, to inform residents about a new federal grant available for the neighborhood, Spring 2016. (Photo credit: Kiyah Boogs)
Sample-Jones is EmPower All’s only full-time staff member, but the group has a network of volunteers and interns. Its focus is squarely on serving the mostly Black and low-income residents of the East End – a historically marginalized community that has often been the target of systemic racism. To reach local people, EmPower All creates colorful flyers, listing resources and how to take advantage of them, which it tapes to residents’ doors. In addition, the group partners with over 70 other organizations, including one partnership with the University of Virginia to install air monitors in residents’ homes — part of a push for stronger government efforts to address air pollution. But for Sample-Jones, smaller-scale wins also resonate. She said a former intern recently told her EmPower All had helped her get a college degree. “When I actually see the fruits of my labor and the connections that we have made, and people that come back and say we have helped them, that’s how I measure success.”