November Project Boston started almost exactly 9 years ago. It was nothing more than a system of accountability for friends to stick to the physical activity and purposeful fitness that they wished felt easier during the early mornings of winter months in New England. At its core, it is about fitness. It’s about how being physically active, consistently, helps you to feel healthier, stronger, more fit, and more capable—not only physically, but often also in other ways in life in general. And it’s about how that fitness is way more fun, easier to be consistent with, and therefore more positively impactful on your health, mental well-being, and potential as a human being when you do it in a collective. Fitness is good, together is better.
And if that fitness was free and could include everyone who wanted to be a part of it—no restrictions about age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, religion, or political beliefs, no prerequisites for fitness accomplishments or athletic skill, no barriers that keep some out and others in—well, that would be a movement that could not only make fitness a bigger part of more people’s lives, but could affect positive social change everywhere.
November Project Boston still believes in, and is deeply rooted in being a community for free fitness that influences positive change.
For many members, this belief can be demonstrated by NP offering consistent workouts, no matter what, all year round, in whatever weather, even through a pandemic. And that the positive change is what comes from individuals in their own efforts in life, which are spurred on by what they get from NP. It helps them to feel connected, empowered, inspired, and motivated.
The last several months have been incredibly challenging for the world, due to COVID-19, but also because of the bursting open of the wound that is systemic racism, which is deeply painful and needs to be healed. And the challenge for every single individual, as well as company and organization and collective of people, is to decide how to engage in the healing of that wound. It is no longer enough to just accept how things have always been, and the process of exploring how each individual, company, organization, and collective decides to educate and to purposefully act is unique and needs to be authentic to them.
What has become abundantly clear to us at November Project Boston is that we can still be focused on providing free fitness, for all the right reasons, but that for many members and participants, both past and present, the quality of the experience with NP, through workouts, social events, and on all forms of social media goes far beyond just whether you got a good sweat that you can feel satisfied with. Feeling like you belong, that you are welcome, that you are wanted and not just tolerated, those are essential. Being a part of community that is for you is something that everyone deserves. Experiencing connection and value because you are seen and heard—and really listened to—those are also essential for a community like November Project, whose mission and intention is to help better people’s lives through consistent, free, positive, community-based fitness. It is this kind of inclusivity that we believe we can improve.
November Project co-leaders and founders worked together in 2019 to establish Community Agreements, which are very important guiding principles for how NP functions—read them here—but we believe that in order to truly live all of these Community Agreements fully and authentically, we can’t just state them, we need to assess how we’re doing. For example, one community agreement is “come as you are,” which is all about stating our intention to be inclusive to everyone. You come, we’ll respect you. But there have been many observations that November Project is White. So white. Too white. And if NP is so White, likely not everyone feels they can or want to come as they are. And maybe for reasons in addition to race, you feel like NP has not welcomed you, seen you, or created space for you to come and be as you are. While the obvious goal might be to be “less white” and therefore, to be more diverse, we do not believe that diversity is a goal that can be achieved with out inclusivity. Therefore, our big goal is about how we do things–to create a culture of inclusivity– because if we are ever to be more diverse, it will be the natural outcome of an inclusive environment, not because we tried to force it.
We want, and we need, your help as a community to help November Project Boston to maintain the best of what it has been for the last 9 years, while also evolving to become better. Our fellow co-leader Maggie Huang, of NP Brooklyn, recently wrote a blog that is worth reading to better understand her experience with November Project (in her local community and with the leadership of NP). Maggie and many others within NP, including in Boston, have been experiencing incredible pain, inequity, and implicit and explicit marginalization because of how NP has been doing things. These marginalized voices have not been heard and listened to, and in order to be part of the solution, rather than continue to be part of the problem, we want to better understand your experiences in Boston. So it’s time to listen and we need your help.
As the co-leaders of NP Boston, Chris Capozzi and I (Emily Saul), give much of our time and energy to hosting workouts and doing all of the “behind the scenes” work to build community, write blogs, take/process photos, maintain social media, connect with and support NP Boston members in various ways, and many other things. We meet regularly each week, on Tuesday mornings, to discuss NP Boston. We talk about workouts, of course, but we talk far more about the future and direction of NP, we talk about inclusivity and guiding values, we talk about our hopes for NP and also about our frustrations with it. We discuss our weaknesses and areas for growth as co-leaders, and as a city. We regularly discuss the possibility and process for bringing on a third co-leader as well as the reality of our own transition out of leadership roles at some point. We do our best to support each other in doing and being our best.
And in order to do better—to do our best for all of you and for NP Boston, we need to better understand what we don’t see, hear, feel, and experience about NP, that you do. Of course, it might be easy for you to share moments of gratitude, joy, or excitement of successes—which you do, and which we love and appreciate. Because we don’t get paid in these roles, we have always called these moments that you all share with us “paydays.”
But there are other days too, other moments that many of you have had that end up feeling more like undue withdrawals. Where showing up that day or having that interaction, or reading that post/blog/comment/etc. actually cost you. And those days, unfortunately, means that NP is not offering you all that we hope and intend.
So, while we know there are big, very important topics and issues to be figured out (in the world!) and at the founder/leadership level of November Project, we want to start right here in Boston, and ask you to help us learn, so we can all be better for it. Here is our plan:
- NP Boston Community Survey: our intention is to gain more visibility into issues that have been and continue to happen within our community. We want to know what is working and what is not working, in order to both maintain support for the elements of NP that people want and are getting, while also to allocate important focus and effort on the elements of NP that need to be changed for the health, wellness, and safety (physically, emotionally, socially) of our community going forward. (2 week time frame to collect responses from as many people who have attended NP Boston workouts or considered themselves participants with NP Boston in any way, at any time)
- Review Survey responses
- Host a NP Boston Town Hall (or multiple) to be able to share summarized & anonymous results of the survey and get community response & participation in discussion of “what’s next?”
- Establish working groups/committees of NP Boston members who are able to help contribute to and inform the next steps for growth, change, and development of NP Boston.
- Identify measurable goals for change and a timeline for achieving them.
- Create ongoing opportunities for NP Boston members to communicate with and be informed by co-leaders & committees (ie. Town halls, office hours, etc.)
Please fill out the feedback survey HERE. And please share this with everyone you’ve ever known who has attended NP Boston. Long time members or single time members and everything in between. The more people we hear from, the more we can learn.
Thank you for helping to make this community better,
Emily & Chris, NP Boston co-leaders
Share via socials:
I’ve been to a couple of the morning exercise sessions so far and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m a relative newcomer to fitness stuff in general so they’ve been really challenging for me, but of course the endorphin rush at the end makes it worth it! I think the only thing that can get a little confusing is when an exercise begins and I don’t really know what to do. Most of the time y’all are good about doing a quick little example of what we’re doing but sometimes that gets left out. Luckily I usually work out with a friend who gives me a quick demo of what we’re doing but having that from the leaders would be helpful!
Hi Colby, thanks so much for your response and feedback. You’re right that over Zoom it’s less easy and clear to explain & demonstrate movements, so we will do better about making sure we demo and also ask if there are any questions. Please also feel free to ask if there’s anything that is unclear–we welcome questions and don’t always have the ability that we would in person to notice a confused face or the other non-verbal cues that indicate we need to offer more. If asking verbally isn’t your preference, you can always use the chat too! Again, thanks!