From the First Seed Grant to Today: Alison on Emerge’s Journey

Twenty years ago, a $200 seed grant for beads from MIT’s Priscilla King Gray Center for Public Service helped spark the beginning of Emerge. Alison, who helped approve that first grant, has been part of our journey ever since. We asked her what first moved her to invest — and what has kept her connected as a supporter and champion through the years.

From Alison, Emerge Supporter Since Day 1:

“The first investment wasn’t exactly what I had planned for!

Alison Hynd wearing her very first piece of Emerge jewellery

I’ve had the pleasure to know Alia and Emerge throughout Emerge’s 20-year history - Alia’s first visit to Sri Lanka was as a Public Service Fellow through the Priscilla King Gray Center for Public Service (PKG Center) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I work. As a rising sophomore, she travelled to Sri Lanka with three other MIT Public Service Fellows to work with communities that had been affected by the December 2004 tsunami. The planned work didn’t develop as we had hoped, so Alia took the initiative to reach out and to ask if she could spend some of her time working with girls in a group home for young mothers who had been sexually assaulted. Alia had a jewelry making business and had taken her materials to Sri Lanka, and wanted to run some jewelry-making workshops with the girls.

These first workshops lit a creative spark for the girls that inspired Alia to keep working with them. Alia received 3 or 4 additional Fellowships from the PKG Center to explore the longer-term potential of creative workshops to help the girls build life skills and financial savings. At the same time, she worked to understand the legal, familial, and institutional systems that shaped the girls’ lives. Emerge blossomed from these beginnings.

I remember Alia sharing many joys, sorrows, and frustrations during those early years. And her commitment to the girls of Emerge was fierce and compelling. She organized staff and students at MIT to run sales of the jewelry the girls made and kept baskets of necklaces under people’s work desks and in dorm rooms. Each necklace came with a card explaining Emerge’s mission, and these drew in more supporters.

Over those 20 years I’ve seen Emerge grow into an organization that continues to provide programs for children in institutionalized care but also helps survivors to reintegrate into society and thrive as independent adults, and advocates for systems change. Alia’s own journey took her to England and California, building her skills and additional organizations for vulnerable children. And now, 20 years after that first workshop, back to her beloved Sri Lanka and working at the heart of Emerge again. To me, heart is central to Emerge’s work and is why I have stayed connected to the organization and am excited for its future.”

-Alison Hynd, Assistant Dean, MIT Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center