Joy Beat

Arun Rath: Welcome to the Joy Beat. I’m Arun Rath.

We know how oppressive the stream of bad and sad information in your newsfeed can feel. The team that brings you the Joy Beat — we all work in the news. That’s most of our day. And that’s why we’re bringing you the Joy Beat.

These are real stories of real people making the world a better place. The Joy Beat IS news. Our job is to report and bring those stories from our newsroom to your ears.

Today we’re celebrating the joy brought to us by the next generation of changemakers in and around Boston. We’ll start with Miss Isis McFadden.

Most people can only dream of starting a successful business, let alone a business empire. But Isis McFadden was able to do just that with her organization, Little Regalia. What’s even more remarkable is that Isis started this venture at just five years old. With a promising pillow empire under her belt, Isis has a moving story that will inspire generations of kids to come.

We’re lucky to be joined by Isis and her father, Joshua McFadden. Isis, Josh, welcome to the Joy Beat.

Josh McFadden: Thank you for having us.

Isis McFadden: Thank you.

Rath: So, Isis, tell us about Little Regalia. What inspired it?

Isis: My first protest. We made a book called, “My First Protest,” and it’s about, well, my first protest! And then, other characters in “My First Protest,” we made a pillow, and that was the start of the female pillow. And then, we made a male pillow to accompany the female pillow.

Josh: I think the whole premise was for her to strike confidence in herself. She was a little nervous about our first experience at the first protest, which she was five at the time. This was back in 2020. And so when we went home, she said she wanted to create a book to shed light on her experience, but then to also let other kids know the process so that they wouldn't be as nervous.

Originally, the plush pillow had a cape and a crown just to strike more confidence. But we ended up with just, of course, the face, with no facial features so other kids can see themselves in the product.

Rath: I’ve got to say, I was looking at the pictures of them, they’re pretty adorable so that when a kid lays their head down, they’re wearing the crown, right?

Josh: Exactly, exactly. Or, you know, if the pillow is on the wall, they can actually see themselves as regal, as royalty. So it strikes more confidence and just affirms the kid and inspires the kid, as well.

Rath: That’s brilliant. Isis, I’m a bit curious to hear more about what that experience was like because, you know, I have young kids, and I remember what the times were like in 2020. It was an intense period of time. What was it like to go to that first protest?

Isis: It was exciting. But also, I was a little nervous, but I knew that the protest was for the better. Of course, at that time, I was wearing a mask because COVID was big then. But I was happy to know that people were still not afraid to go out there and protest.

Rath: Brilliant. You’ve had this amazing success. Tell us the road to getting there. What was the hardest thing about it?

Isis: The road was bumpy. The hardest thing to get there was probably getting it into other companies. A few companies did not get back to us. But I know after hearing this, they might.

Josh: Hopefully. But no, she hit it right on the head. It takes persistence. We had had success with a couple, so I think that probably was the most challenging part.

Rath: But you just kept at it.

Josh: Exactly. Persistence is key in this. I think is new for the both of us — definitely new for her. It’s her first business. So, again, persistence is key in getting things at the brick-and-mortar stores. But again, we marked these up on our iPad together three years ago. [We] sat on the idea, you know, and we’re now getting it out and bringing it to life.

Rath: There’s also part of this where the idea is to inspire other young creators to pursue this kind of dream. Both of you — talk a little bit about that.

Josh: Yeah. I think, originally, we knew that this is kind of bigger than us. So whatever we do, we know that we kind of want to give back. Whatever experience that we have, we want to make sure we lay the foundation for others to follow if they choose to, or to see what it took for us to navigate this process, but ultimately, to inspire and affirm other young people is the goal with Little Regalia.

Rath: Isis, we talked a little bit ago about the challenges getting to this success. Tell us about what it feels like having this success. What’s been the best part of this for you?

Isis: My favorite part…The best part is probably how we sketched it out on the iPad from 2D to real life. It was exciting! There was a lot of unboxing and a lot of pillows. We had to get big bags.

Rath: Yeah, that’s amazing — seeing your idea go from two dimensions to actually getting it out of the box. That is super cool! So, what do you think is up next?

Isis: I think we’re going to make more books. We’re going to make some more books, and I hope that there’re going to be more types of pillows. We’re thinking of making different skin colors of pillows and making the pillows more diverse. But I think we wanted to do the most, I feel like, underlooked, underrepresented colors first.

Rath: Nice! Well, whatever you do next, whether it’s a book or another pillow, please come on and let’s talk about it some more. It’s been great talking with you. Thank you.

Isis: Nice talking to you. It was great talking to you too.

Josh: Thank you all for having us on, we really, really appreciate this.

Isis: We listen to NPR every morning.

Josh: We do! And every evening when she gets picked up, so it’s very exciting.

Rath: That was Isis McFadden, creator of Little Regalia, joined by her father, Josh.

Next up, we’ll head to Worcester to meet the Francis family. When the world fell into the utter chaos known as the year 2020, most people hunkered down to do, well, nothing. With all of this extra time, many turned to Netflix, sourdough starters and TikTok to fill the time.

But it wasn’t like that for everyone. The pandemic’s strain on food-insecure families weighed heavily on the minds of two Worcester teens, who decided to use their newfound free time to bring food to those who need it.

Camden and Colton Francis were just 16 and 12 years old when they founded Beyond the Crisis, a nonprofit that provides food to several Boston and Worcester-area communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Through their tireless work, they’ve partnered with local food banks, grocery stores and others to help get food into the hands of families who need it. We’re lucky to be joined by Camden to discuss their selfless work. Camden, welcome to the Joy Beat!

Camden Francis: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Rath: And you’re here on behalf of your brother, Colton, who was 12 years old when you both founded Beyond the Crisis.

Francis: So, Colton was 12 when we founded this organization together. Ever since then, it’s been kind of a rollercoaster ride. It’s so great to be doing this with my younger brother, and it’s really brought us closer together.

Rath: Did you have some impulse, for some reason, when the pandemic was going on that this is just so maddening [that] you wanted to do something to help? How did it come together?

Francis: So, we were sitting and watching news reports about what was going on with the pandemic. It was at the height of the pandemic when it was very crazy and disorientating what was going on with the COVID virus.

We knew that we weren’t going to be the ones to kind of make a cure or to find a vaccine. But we knew that we can do something, to take little steps and little initiatives to, over time, really help our community.

So this organization — it was really just kind of a light bulb idea, but with the right hands involved in getting our community around it in the right way, we were able to shape this and really turn it into a transformative organization that has helped numerous families in our area.

Rath: Tell us about the early days. How did you actually get it up and running and balancing that with also going to school in a pandemic?

Francis: Yeah. The early days…It was quite a learning experience. It definitely was a grind in the beginning because there is so much going on, and [when] founding a nonprofit, you need a lot of certifications and credentials.

At first, people really didn’t take us too seriously. It was a little bit frustrating because I was sending emails and they were kind of getting bounced back. I sent in the beginning over a thousand emails, and it was only three or four of them that actually kind of worked out favorably for the organization. But it really taught us how to have perseverance and grit.

There isn’t a guarantee when you found anything that it’s going to work out or be successful, but seeing what this initiative has turned into is very optimistic for my brother and I. Just knowing how we can help and having the ability to help individuals has just really been a great experience.

Rath: That’s brilliant how you kept at it. Was there a point at which you realized, “We can actually do this; we’re going to break through and make a difference?”

Francis: One of the main points was our mentor, Kathleen Walsh, who is the president and CEO of the Metro North YMCA. She helped us and gave us a lot of knowledge and insight and helped us avoid the pitfalls that a lot of smaller organizations do.

Starting and not having a lot of finances to get off the ground, it’s mandatory that you don’t make certain mistakes and fall into certain pitfalls that can be kind of detrimental. But with her help, insight and experience, we definitely expedited our knowledge [of] nonprofits and charities. We really kind of grew at a faster rate.

That really was a turning point in our organization. We saw a positive trajectory for this organization, and it turned from an idea and a lot of research to something that was actually coming together. That’s a very exciting point for a lot of founders and people like that because, in the beginning days, it’s kind of a lot of stress, to put it that way.

Rath: Tell us about some of the other elements that came together to help make this a reality.

Francis: What also helped this take-off is [that] we were on the Drew Barrymore Show. Drew Barrymore allowed us to have a platform to inspire a lot of teenagers our age, and that really helped us to get donations and stuff like that.

Another thing that we do is we spend a lot of time working with colleges. That’s where we get our large volunteer database and a lot of our interns. What we couldn’t stress enough is that we couldn’t have done it without the help of our community; it’s not just Camden and Colton who founded Beyond the Crisis. There were a lot of people involved and a lot of people who dedicated time and resources to helping others, and that’s really why we do it.

Also, we’re part of the Unite Massachusetts network, which has a lot of affiliates, such as organizations and colleges — and even larger organizations, such as United Way. Through them, we kind of pool resources and ideas constantly.

We were recently invited to the White House Conference of Hunger, Nutrition and Health, and through them, we work with governors and congresspeople, such as Jim McGovern, who is our largest donor today.

There are a lot of people involved in our organization, even influencers such as Lady GaGa. She has her own organization, which is called the Born This Way Foundation. Through her organization, she’s featured us in numerous issues in her Channel of Kindness platform. She has allowed us to inspire a lot of other people.

What kind of made Beyond the Crisis operational is: How can we market it as something that other people can get behind? Because if nobody wants to get involved, it’s really hard to start an organization or anything like that.

Rath: Tell us about that growth since you’ve got the foothold.

Francis: So, right now, we’re working with the Catholic Charities of Boston and the Beacon Communities of Worcester, and we’re expanding in our local community to help more housing communities and homeless shelters in Boston and Worcester.

We’re doing a lot of work in different areas, but we’re still kind of expanding organically and really making sure that it’s manageable, as my brother and I. We’re really trying to grow at a manageable rate.

Rath: Brilliant. Camden, it’s been great talking with you. Wishing the best for you and Colton going forward.

Francis: Thank you so much. I loved being here.

Rath: That was Camden Francis. With his brother, Colton, he founded the nonprofit Beyond the Crisis.

Finally, we’ll head across the river to Harvard University, where two then-students, now graduates, made life-saving, overdose-reversing medication available at every Red Line T station.

Nationwide, opioid overdoses have seen a drastic spike, including here in Massachusetts; in 2022, almost 2,400 people died due to an opioid-related overdose, per the Department of Health.

What’s especially devastating is that not only were all those deaths preventable, but almost all were reversible. The drug naloxone, also known as Narcan, was found to be almost 94% effective in reversing opioid overdoses.

Narcan has been made more accessible to the public in recent years. Governor Maura Healey’s administration has supported increasing access to the lifesaving drug, but questions about where to actually get the medication remain unanswered. And, for those who do know where to get it, Narcan isn’t exactly cheap.

A group of Harvard students decided it was time to change that. We’re lucky to be joined by two of the students behind the initiative, Sajeev Kohli and Swathi Srinivasan. Sajeev, Swathi, welcome to the Joy Beat!

Sajeev Kohli: Thank you so much. So glad to be here.

Swathi Srinivasan: Thank you for having us.

Rath: So, Sajeev, let’s start with you. Tell us about how this project began. It started as a pilot study, right?

Kohli: Yeah, absolutely. So, in my first year of college, I was very surprised at the disproportionate number of individuals — even just across campus — who were living in the streets, who, unfortunately, did not have access to stable housing or food security.

I joined a local homeless shelter, hoping to try to help with these unfortunate situations. While there, I witnessed an overdose incident for a guest who was 19 years old. Now, luckily, the shelter was equipped with this intranasal naloxone spray. It was administered, 911 was called and the individual in particular was fine afterwards.

But I think this experience, to me in particular, really emphasized the power of the small, inexpensive, easy-to-use spray that can really, you know, mean the difference between life and death in these kinds of situations. So I think from there, I just grew really interested in trying to ensure that those people who need access to this lifesaving nasal spray have that access and looking towards regions where we could increase accessibility.

I joined the organization and, upon doing research, we saw that the T — in particular, Red Line stations in Cambridge — were overdose hotspots that, unfortunately, are not equipped with public access to naloxone. We decided we’d try to do what we could to start that process.

Rath: Swathi, what drove you to get involved in helping fight the opioid crisis?

Srinivasan: Yeah, I mean, I’m from the state of Ohio and, sadly, the state is no stranger to overdose. I know in my community growing up, we’ve had our fair share of overdoses in my town, which is Cleveland.

I got to Harvard thinking that, okay, well, I’d come to this new location, this new place on the East Coast, and then I was shocked that within the first week, I saw the crisis just outside my dorm. The local bathroom just a few years prior was shut for overdoses.

I realized that there was no place I could go that I would escape the crisis. It is everywhere. It is among every community that I have been a part of and will be a part of. I just got really frustrated that I could see this issue that not a lot of people were talking about. I mean, Harvard is a premier institution, and it works in so many fields, including public health. This is a major public health crisis that is just at the steps of our institution and also within it.

In seeing that, I reached out to a professor who connected me to two other students of his who were starting to try and push for naloxone in Harvard itself so that students, faculty and staff could have access to it as needed. But that process was really, really strenuous. The university said no several times. With those two students, we set out instead to kind of think bigger.

They graduated, but I was like, “You know what? What we need are more students thinking about these issues. More students devoted to fighting for this, whether through policy or through advocacy, activism and mentorship.” Through that, the group HCOPES was born, which was Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students. That group has various arms in policy and community advocacy, and through that organization, a lot of the work that students from different sides who are interested in this were able to convene and pursue. I think that’s, in part, where a product like this can form.

Rath: You mentioned that in earlier efforts to provide Narcan, there was institutional resistance to it. University officials weren’t very enthusiastic this time around, with this project, are you encountering any institutional resistance? How is it going?

Srinivasan: So this product is dealing with different institutions, right? That project was dealing with Harvard Health Services, Harvard Police, you know, various Harvard-based institutions. But this particular project deals with the government — the state government.

With that, we’re seeing, actually, collaboration between the MBTA, the Department of Health and our group with, most notably, Senator John Keenan — and Sajeev, I’m sure you can talk more about that as well — but because we’re dealing with different institutions here, we actually have seen a much smoother process with the state government than we did with the Harvard organization.

Kohli: I think for this project in particular, we’ve been incredibly lucky and, I think, grateful to have so many different institutions and all these different kinds of facets of health, policy and harm reduction in medicine come together and really work towards implementing this.

I think in initial discussions — and these discussions have been going on for almost three years now — I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation with someone, whether it’s someone from Massachusetts General Hospital or from programs, ambulatory services, or a harm reduction organization, I think everybody agrees that this should happen. I think the conversations were really just trying to delineate how to make this happen best.

I think it’s really important to underscore — you know, this isn’t just a couple of students who have been working on this. This is an entire community of individuals across Cambridge, across Massachusetts, and even across other states who have done similar work, putting their heads together and really thinking about how best to make this happen.

I think I was particularly lucky to have one particular student who was in the group with me who really helped me navigate a significant amount of those initial conversations and continues to be involved in this even today, leading it from the Harvard side.

Srinivasan: I think, you know, you see with the Narcan project that our response wasn’t to stop pushing for Narcan. We have to shift approaches, right? Think about, okay, we have to think bigger now — we have to think about other places, people that we can talk to, people we can ask because we’re not going to stand here and take “no” for an answer.

Narcan availability is something that, through science and advocacy, we know to be useful and helpful. You said 94% accuracy rate here, and — like, that’s incredible. That is a life-saving technology, and for a state that has had over 20,000 overdoses since 2011, it is a place where it is a necessity.

When push comes to shove, it wasn’t the end; it was just the beginning for us. I think this is another project where it’s a pilot program we’re hoping to see this be a useful program for those who need it, and this is only the beginning.

Rath: Swathi, it’s been great talking with you. Thank you so much.

Srinivasan: Happy to be here.

And Sajeev, likewise, it was really great talking with you about this work.

Kohli: Thank you so much.

Rath: That was Sajeev Kohli and Swathi Srinivasan, two of the students who helped launch a campaign that brought the overdose-reversing drug Narcan to MBTA Red Line stations.

At a time when the future can seem terrifying, it’s awfully nice to have this group of young people to reassure us that our future is in good hands. That’s why we’re celebrating the next generation on this week’s edition of the Joy Beat.

If you would like to nominate someone or something for the Joy Beat, let us know! Leave us a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT.

This is the Joy Beat. I’m Arun Rath. Thank you so much for joining us.