We hope to see you this year for Horizons’ Annual Breakfast!

Thursday, October 10, 2024
8:00 – 9:30 a.m.

Boston Marriott Copley Place
110 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02116
 

We are excited to announce this year’s speakers will be Andrea Elliot and Dasani Coates. 

Andrea Elliot is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who has documented the lives of people on the margins of power. Elliot is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and the author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

Elliot will be joined by Dasani Coates whose story is shared by Elliot’s book, Invisible Child. Elliot and Coates will speak jointly about their journey together in writing the book and the importance and relevance of Dasani’s story. 

About Dasani Coates and  Invisible Child:

Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch” between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, this book vividly illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.

2024 Horizons' Breakfast Committee

Mickey Ahearn
Egan Cammack
Barbara Elia
Jason Goins
Michelle Hicks
Molly Lawrence
Colleen Morzano
Amy Morse
Erika Murphy
Sue O’Connell
Shanna O’Reilly
Daniele Serafini
Janice Sturchio
Victoria Sullivan
Caitlin Vorlicek
Karen Walsh
Allison Zacharek

Planning for the breakfast is underway! Interested in joining the planning committee? Reach out to Tara Spalding at tspalding@horizonschildren.org.