Shamikka Smith: ‘God is moving in areas where it needs to be built up’

Meet Shamikka. Shamikka Smith purchased a home in Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood in November 2021. Since then, she’s become an active neighbor reaching out to build up community through her connection with her church, Global Outreach, whose parishioners call themselves The Gatherers.

Shamikka feels that God led her to Lindsay Heights, where she found a beautiful home in her price range for her family. Naturally gregarious, Shamikka met other active neighbors after Mr. “Traces” Wright knocked on her door to invite her to the Lindsay Heights neighborhood meetings. Since then, she’s built up relationships and was also inspired by the neighbors.

“They want to see their community rise up. They want to see love in the community. They want to see families out doing positive things. They want to see everything I see,” Shamikka says. “I’m like, well, we connecting! I hear God in you… It’s just coming out. God’s plan is being revealed.”

Maria Beltran: A Warm and Welcoming Neighbor

Meet Maria. Maria Beltran is a proud home-owning resident of Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood. She is active in efforts to improve the community. Maria participates in the health and wellness challenge, is involved in the Neighborhood Improvement District (NID), participates in the city’s lead abatement program, and opens her home to community gatherings.

“I love my house and I don’t want to leave from it. Because it’s a family house. It’s somewhere where everyone gathers, even neighbors.”

“The neighborhood’s always been beautiful. Over the years it took its toll, like decline, but the community—the people are still the same, and it’s beautiful and I love it here.”

Yasmeen Henderson: Multitalented artist channeling personal vulnerability to re-form community

Meet Yaz. Yasmeen Henderson is an artist and musician living in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood commissioned through WaterMarks to create an art project for Lindsay Heights. She has survived family trauma and tragedy in a way that positions her to use art to empathize with young people who face struggles that are difficult to express.

Yaz says she has gotten better recognizing the value she offers as an artist, but also in trusting that she can both contribute to and benefit from existing community partnerships.

“I’m always someone who downplays myself and I’m learning to stop doing that as much,” she says. “This next part of my life is really just finding other people who can help make things happen.”

Dr. Victoria Gillet: A passion for climate change and community health

Meet Victoria. Dr. Victoria Gillet (pronounced Gee-lay) runs a community health clinic at Aurora Sinai Medical Center. She serves as a primary care physician for residents on northwest side of Milwaukee, focusing on the Milwaukee neighborhood of Lindsay Heights.

Victoria calls climate change “probably the greatest threat to human health that’s coming and has started to make impacts on my patients’ lives.”

Since arriving in Milwaukee in 2021, she has built connections with nonprofit organizations including Nearby Nature, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, Sierra Club, Walnut Way, and Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers to find people making a difference in local environmental and community health. She’s also joined the Our Future Milwaukee coalition, which aims to push for the “10 big ideas” articulated by the City-County Task Force on Climate and Economic Equity.

She encourages anyone—young or old—to get connected—to follow your passion to find a group that is doing what you’re passionate about.

Laura Pehmoeller: Blue Skies Landscaper based in Lindsay Heights

Meet Laura. Laura Pehmoeller leads the Blue Skies Landscaping crew as they work throughout Milwaukee to maintain the city’s growing portfolio of green stormwater infrastructure.

Joining Blue Skies, a division of the nonprofit Walnut Way based in Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood, just before the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Laura leads a crew of young men in handling a variety of landscaping projects.

Offering steady employment to young men of color with opportunities for advancement, Walnut Way’s Blue Skies Landscaping program is a major local model in the effort to boostrap “blue/green” jobs for Milwaukeeans—and ultimately to seed the market for more contractors to take on green infrastructure projects that employ folks with transferrable skills. “We’re just trying to build people up into the workforce, and either they stay with us or they move on,” Laura says.

Kimberly Eubanks: Leveraging a love of lifelong learning

Meet Kimberly. Kimberly Eubanks works in human resources at Walnut Way, the resident-led nonprofit organization based out of Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood.

“We are into environmental stewardship, community engagement outreach, and catalytic development,” Kimberly says.

She supports Walnut Way’s Growing Youth Leadership program, which aims to place the city’s young people into environmental career paths.

“Learning never stops,” Kimberly says. “When you’re teaching someone…you have to understand you’re going to have to learn to love to learn. Because it’s never going to stop. That’s what inspires me. So, when I get excited about something, I want somebody else to get just as excited about it as I am.