By Sarah Ceponis | 2011-2012 BSVM Alumni | University of Notre Dame
A little shy of a decade after finishing my Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry year, I moved back to Baltimore, and found myself at a crossroads. It was summer 2020, with Covid just starting to radically reshape our lives, as well as a collective national reckoning around racism and inequity following the murder of George Floyd. I felt like I was returning home to Baltimore, but at the same time, so much about the city and my own positionality within it felt like it was shifting. I had, for many years, considered starting a nonprofit consulting business, and in this moment of change all around, felt more inspired than ever by a quote that has stayed with me since my BSVM year: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner).
My work (following my BSVM year at the Family Support Center) spanned education, community development, and housing/homelessness, and included a public health degree focused on social determinants of health and especially mobilizing marginalized youth and families from poverty. While so lucky to truly have loved all the programs and organizations I’d been part of in my nonprofit career, I was not sure I’d landed on that
intersection point of deep gladness and deep hunger. I found myself, in any role, wanting to strengthen programs, improve processes, support capacity building and strategic planning, and in short, make programs more effective for people seeking services, and make the incredibly hard work smoother for the staff accompanying them. With all that in mind (and some crossing of fingers), I established Accompaniment Consulting in early 2021, and have been gratefully and gladly supporting Baltimore nonprofits since.
Two projects in particular that resonate with my BSVM values have been establishing a new Business Improvement District (BID) on York Road, and relaunching Youth Empowered Society’s drop-in center for youth ages 14-25 experiencing homelessness.
As a community organizer in the fall of 2023 for an effort that had been years in the making (with Loyola’s Center for Community Service and Justice, and the 4th District Council Office), I built relationships with businesses,
property owners, and neighbors to educate about the benefits of a BID and gain support. York Road is an historical red line in the city and for a long time represented division and segregation; leading the effort to create a BID was an opportunity for me to elevate the Sisters’ charism of healing and liberation for a developing community.
Through a public vote, the BID passed with an 80% approval that puts York Road on its way to a next chapter of more intentional, equitable growth and sustained economic vitality.
More recently, I served as the interim director of Youth Empowered Society (YES), and, after a few years of limited operations, we were excited to reopen our drop-in center last summer. YES was founded in 2012 by a group of youth experiencing homelessness, and has not only always prioritized the youth perspective and lived experience in shaping YES, but has actively worked to redistribute power in the inequitable systems that make up so much of our neighborhoods, city, and beyond. This opportunity has pushed me to grow—in the Sisters’ wording—in radical solidarity, and grapple with what that means as both an ally to youth and leader of an organization.
The past decade has been shaped so significantly by my Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry experience, and I hope the decades to come will continue to offer opportunities to strengthen my work in the nonprofit sector and center compassion, healing, and liberation along the way.