SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLVIII, ISSUE 22
Friday, March 17, 2023
UNIVERSITY NEWS
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Project highlights Black health care workers ‘The Black Frontline’ documents Black health care workers’ pandemic experiences
Startups split $50,000 at Venture Prize Pitch Night Competition awarded three prizes, $25,000 top prize awarded to Elythea startup
BY CAMPBELL LOI STAFF WRITER “The Black Frontline,” an oral history project chronicling the experiences of Black health care workers from around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, launched Wednesday in an event hosted by the Department of Africana Studies. The project — co-founded and directed by Associate Professor of Africana Studies Kim Gallon and Ester Armah, CEO of the Armah Institute of Emotional Justice — is “the largest oral history project” to document the “stories of sacrifice, survival, community, loss (and) humanity” from Black doctors and nurses during the pandemic, according to the project launch’s description. Gallon is also the founder and executive director of COVID Black, an organization “at the intersection of health data, information, the human-
BY OWEN DAHLKAMP SENIOR STAFF WRITER
COURTESY OF CATHERINE VAN AMBURGH
In August, co-founders Esther Armah and Kim Gallon will travel to the U.K. and Ghana for the international launch of “The Black Frontline.” ities, race and social justice,” according to its website. The two assembled a team working between the United States, the United Kingdom and Ghana, which collected 300 stories from Black doctors and nurses working on the front lines in these three countries during the pandemic. Each of the recorded narratives, posted on the project’s website, highlights a Black health care professional and their unique experience during the pandemic. Armah and Gallon were originally
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collaborating on a separate project, but the pair had to halt their work due to COVID-19 restrictions. After witnessing the distress Black health care workers faced due to the pandemic, they began collaborating on The Black Frontline. “(We) were both caught up with the amount of loss and grief and trauma that was happening,” Gallon told The Herald. “We wanted to be able to tell the story of what Black people and spe-
SEE FRONTLINE PAGE 5
Three University student startups — Elythea, Notable Narratives and Marian — were collectively awarded $50,000 in seed money at the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship’s sixth annual Brown Venture Prize pitch competition Thursday. A panel of seven judges — ranging from CEOs to investors — selected the three winners following a four-minute pitch and four-minute question-and-answer session for each organization. The judges also reviewed the startups’ initial applications prior to the event, according to Jonas Clark, associate director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. Elythea, a “platform that ob-
stetricians use in any setting to predict risk for complications of pregnancy,” according to co-founder Reetam Ganguli ’23, took home first place and a $25,000 check, the largest prize offered. Ganguli co-founded Elythea with Rishik Lad, a student at Dartmouth College and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Clinician Educator Stephen Wagner. With maternal mortality on the rise in the United States — especially among people of color — the founders of Elythea hope that their platform will use “point-of-care variables” to improve maternal outcomes both inside and outside of the U.S., Ganguli said. In their preliminary testing, the startup has a 90% predictive accuracy rate in comparison to the 40% accuracy of their competitors, Ganguli added. Notable Narratives took home the second-place prize of $15,000. The non-profit organization “connects first-generation low-income
SEE VENTURE PAGE 5
ARTS & CULTURE
Local non-profit empowers Black storytellers
14-bill package aims to address housing crisis House Speaker hopes legislation will streamline affordable housing development
processes for each municipality, he
BY YAEL SARIG SENIOR STAFF WRITER In an effort to address Rhode Island’s housing crisis, Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi (D-Warwick) announced a 14-bill package that includes legislation to eliminate rental application fees, amend previous legislation related to accessory dwelling units and streamline the permitting process for low- and moderate-income housing. The package, introduced in early March, seeks to “streamline” the process of proposing, applying for and building housing, especially affordable housing, Shekarchi said in an interview with The Herald. Nine of the bills were heard in committee in the state House of Representatives last week. One key tool the package uses to simplify the process is creating a single permitting process statewide rather than the current 39 separate
said — in addition to eliminating one of the three current steps required for permitting in Rhode Island. Speeding up the appeals process on decisions made by local review boards is another central priority of Shekarchi’s legislation, eliminating the State Housing Appeals Board and sending all complaints immediately to a county’s superior court. “Time is one of the biggest enemies in a project,” he said, citing the failure of the Fane Tower development plan as an example of a project that did not come to fruition due to a lengthy permitting and judicial process. Building the fewest new houses per capita in the United States in 2021, Rhode Island has struggled to provide affordable housing for its residents. The legislative package, Shekarchi said, seeks to change that “unacceptable” statistic. Currently, Rhode Island lacks low-income housing, housing for people experiencing homelessness, market-rate housing and more, Shekarchi added. Brenda Clement, director of Hous-
SEE HOUSING PAGE 4
Rhode Island Black Storytellers members discuss mission, collaborations, impact BY MIKAYLA KENNEDY STAFF WRITER Since its founding in 1998, the Providence-based non-profit Rhode Island Black Storytellers has worked to share “the stories and heritage of people of African descent,” according to Ramona Bass-Kolobe ’72 MA’83, a founding member of RIBS. Throughout the year, RIBS hosts various performances in collaboration with local community organizations such as churches and schools. It also offers community workshops in storytelling and writing in an effort to aid the “development of the next generation of storytellers,” according to the RIBS website. Valerie Tutson ’87 AM’90, another RIBS founding member, said that she was inspired to start the organization by the “national Black storytelling festivals” that she attended for several years. Tutson felt encouraged by the “energy and the family and cultural feel” of the festivals and wanted to expand access
Arts & Culture
Podcast
Commentary
“Outer Banks” delivers unoriginal plot, lots of running in third season Page 4
The Bruno Brief examines Brown’s liberal reputation Page 5
Wellisch ’26: Brown needs more integrated pre-professional advising Page 7
COURTESY OF THOMAS WALSH
Sylvia Ann Soares ’95 intends to provide education and promote justice through storytelling through the Rhode Island Black Storytellers. to similar storytelling experiences in Providence. Backed partially by funding from the Rhode Island Foundation, Tutson, Bass-Kalobe and fellow collaborators founded RIBS with the mission of bringing “some of the best Black storytellers from (around) the country … (and) the diaspora to our community so that people could see the diversity of styles and just the wonderful artistry that is all over,” Tutson explained.
SEE STORYTELLERS PAGE 8
TODAY
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Funda Fest: A global storytelling celebration Every January, RIBS invites local organizations to participate in seven public performances across Rhode Island in its annual Funda Fest, which is attended by audiences from all across the world. The Funda Fest is named after the Funda Arts Center, which Tutson visited while in Soweto, South Africa. “Funda means ‘to learn’ in Zulu,” she explained.
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TOMORROW
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TIFFANY TRAN ’26 DESIGNER JANE ZHOU ’25 DESIGNER NEIL MEHTA ’25 DESIGN CHIEF