2025 Impact | A New Home for Healing and Belonging: Solidarity Meeting House
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This year, BRIDGE took a transformative step that will shape our community for generations: we purchased and moved into our new home, the Solidarity Meeting House, in Great Barrington.
This mixed-use building has already become a cornerstone of our culturally specific, trauma-informed public health work and community programming. It has created a place where families and individuals can breathe, gather and receive care without fear or judgment. Inside its walls, community members find temporary housing for those facing crisis or transition; an industrial kitchen and meeting room where meals, food shares, and gatherings are prepared; a clothing swap shop where families access essentials with dignity; the new Fawohodie Center, a culturally specific sanctuary for grounding, healing, and belonging; a seed library and a collection of social justice books and materials for loan; and joyous, welcoming spaces where elders, young people, and families connect, learn and grow together. The building also provides earned income for us, helping BRIDGE become more resilient and able to reach even more people with critical support.
Solidarity Meeting House is community infrastructure: this building is not only home to our staff and programs—it is a living expression of our values. In 2025, we put on our annual Fish Fry; utilized the space for our Happiness Toolbox summer youth programming; hosted visiting Black farmers for a powerful retreat of learning, connection and visioning; celebrated Indigenous Heritage Month with a cooking class and shared a traditional Indigenous meal; honored Trans Day of Remembrance with a Drag Show with the Berkshire Trans Group; held Wellness Days with herbalism classes, reiki and zumba—and so much more. And we’re just getting started!
This mixed-use building has already become a cornerstone of our culturally specific, trauma-informed public health work and community programming. It has created a place where families and individuals can breathe, gather and receive care without fear or judgment. Inside its walls, community members find temporary housing for those facing crisis or transition; an industrial kitchen and meeting room where meals, food shares, and gatherings are prepared; a clothing swap shop where families access essentials with dignity; the new Fawohodie Center, a culturally specific sanctuary for grounding, healing, and belonging; a seed library and a collection of social justice books and materials for loan; and joyous, welcoming spaces where elders, young people, and families connect, learn and grow together. The building also provides earned income for us, helping BRIDGE become more resilient and able to reach even more people with critical support.
Solidarity Meeting House is community infrastructure: this building is not only home to our staff and programs—it is a living expression of our values. In 2025, we put on our annual Fish Fry; utilized the space for our Happiness Toolbox summer youth programming; hosted visiting Black farmers for a powerful retreat of learning, connection and visioning; celebrated Indigenous Heritage Month with a cooking class and shared a traditional Indigenous meal; honored Trans Day of Remembrance with a Drag Show with the Berkshire Trans Group; held Wellness Days with herbalism classes, reiki and zumba—and so much more. And we’re just getting started!