PolicyLink Announces M.O.V.E. Gulf Coast CDC’s President/CEO Vickii Howell As A Fellow in Its New Spatial Futures Initiative
Eleven Community Leaders Across the Country Chosen to Be Part of Inaugural Class
(Mobile, AL, January 11, 2024) — PolicyLink, one of the nation’s premier social justice organizations that advances economic and social equity policies for low-income communities and communities of color, recently announced M.O.V.E. Gulf Coast CDC President/CEO Vickii Howell as a member of its Spatial Futures Fellowship.
Howell is one of 11 fellows in its first cohort, chosen from among hundreds of community leaders across the country who applied for PolicyLink’s new Spatial Futures Initiative.
“The Spatial Futures Fellowship aims to support leaders that are visioning these futures — where all Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have a secure place to call home, the opportunity to repair their relationships with the land and gain restitution for centuries of racist policies that have denied them the ability to thrive for generations,” PolicyLink wrote on its web page. “In 2024, the Spatial Futures Fellowship will bring together 11 leaders from across the country who are working to advance reparative spatial justice in their communities.”
Howell was both surprised and humbled by her selection. But she also recognized the significant support the fellowship would bring to M.O.V.E.’s signature project, The Africatown Blueprint Initiative.
After five years of planning and tireless work, M.O.V.E. (Making Opportunities Viable for Everyone) Gulf Coast Community Development Corporation — with urban planning and civic design firm studio|rotan — successfully completed the first phase of its initiative, The Africatown International Design Idea Competition.
In 2018, Howell envisioned a community development strategy to help Africatown take full economic advantage of the spectacular 2018/19 discovery of Clotilda, the last known slave ship to America and the only one ever found intact. The attention it brought to Africatown and to those descended from the Africans it illegally shipped to Mobile provided the “critical mass” needed to power the Competition as a planning and an advocacy tool.
The Competition challenged architectural teams to design world-class, Afrocentric monuments, memorials and amenities, to “Re-Imagine Africatown” as a global heritage site for tourists and regenerated neighborhoods for residents. Winning architectural concepts from designers around the world were unveiled during its Juneteenth (June 19th) 2023 awards ceremony. M.O.V.E. awarded the winners cash prizes totaling $100,000.
“This fellowship connects our initiative to a national network of influential policymakers and advisors. Their much-needed technical support and guidance can help us take our efforts to the next level in 2024,” Howell said.
She said that her selection means PolicyLink sees the work of M.O.V.E. CDC — and that of other groups in Africatown — as part of a growing national movement for spatial justice. And the organization now supports their collective work to revitalize the unique and historic under-served community.
“On behalf of Africatown and the communities that M.O.V.E. serves, we are grateful,” Howell said.
The Spatial Futures Fellowship is rooted in PolicyLink’s latest report, Grounding Justice: Toward Reparative Spatial Futures in Land and Housing.
In it, PolicyLink President and CEO Dr. Michael McAfee said he sees the Spatial Futures Fellows as “answering their ancestors’ prayers by being bold in their truth-telling and ambitious in their world-building. They are setting about the real task of deciding what our collective futures will look like . . we simply cannot get to equity without repair, and we cannot get to repair without love. That much is beyond debate. This is soul work, and it will require all of us.”
Learn more at Vickii Howell’s Blog on Medium.