Thank you, SSP 2012!

Thank you to all the participants in SSP 2012 for an inspiring summer. It has been a privilege to watch you learn and grow, and contribute to your communities in so many ways. The lessons I learned from you this summer were on team work, leadership, and the importance of building social relationships to promote healthier neighborhoods.

Team Woodlawn—it was great hanging out with you in the Museum of Science and Industry for the Community Fitness program.  In your team project, you squarely faced issues of dysfunctional social  connections, focusing on the anti-bullying poster campaign and workshops.  Great job with the posters! Each one showed so much creativity.  Sharing your favorite Woodlawn resources with other members of the community builds social connections within the community.

Team South Chicago—it was always a pleasure to see you in the Chicago Family Health Center lunchroom., as you planned new ways to combat teen pregnancy. Your “preventing pregnancy” brochure is high quality and teen friendly (wat is dis?), and the choose your own adventure sex ed story is super well done.  I’m looking forward to reading the next version!

Team Greater Grand Crossing—what? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you☺ It was awesome to see all of you at the mic at the STEP walk event—making your voices heard in a very literal way.  You addressed building neighborhood relations—in your audia documentary, and in organizing STEP walk.  Great job!

The South Side is lucky to have so much talent and intelligence applied to figuring out new ways to create healthier urban communities, now and in the future.

Best,
Dr. Jones

Back to School Jam

Benjamin Trnka

This Saturday, David and I volunteered at one of the largest community events that Greater Grand Crossing organizes every year – The Back to School Jam. At this 9th annual event, largely funded and supported by Revere CARE (a community organization focused on restoring the community from various angles), we spoke with characters that we had met throughout our GGC experience and interacted with seemingly thousands of community kids. Our booth was also a great hit, set up to advertise our STEP (Strength Through Exercise Program) Community Walk and promote healthy behaviors by giving out UHI goodies in return for completing exercise challenges.

The event was focused on preparing kids for school, arming them with both tangible materials (school supplies) and motivation from family and peers. But the event had another meaning in the community as well: it was one day in the year where there was no community violence and instead just a fun and safe environment for community members of all ages support its future generations.

This isn’t to say that the sanctity of the park space wasn’t broken, however. Some teenagers came to the event and smoked pot in the corner of the playground, and even threatened Youth Center employees. As one of the Youth Center employees pointed out, it was plain sad that such teens would come to a community event like this, spurting mean words and spreading their deleterious behaviors. These are not the examples that we should set out for the young children there.

Aside from the couple disconcerting incidents like that, which served to remind me that the community was far from perfect, we saw a lot of beautiful things at the event. Firstly, it was exciting to see all the community members that we had been collaborating with throughout the summer in one place. The employees from the Youth Center, Revere CARE members, a Pastor whom we had interviewed, the ‘Major’ of Pocket Town, and even a local photographer were all there, supporting the community. The amount of love and time they had put into making the event a success was truly beautiful and inspirational, and provided such a welcome atmosphere to a community that needs much more of that energy.

I hope that we’re able to bring that same positive energy to the community when we do our culminating community walk this upcoming Thursday. It’s been a huge push to create such an event, but we’re all truly optimistic about how the event will turn out, and hope that it’s something that the community and Youth Center hold onto for a long time. Every community deserves that sense of comfort and collective love, and I hope that our project further catalyzes the creation of that environment.

Op-Ed: Beyond First Impressions

Tom Couri

In 0.25 seconds a Google News Search of “Woodlawn Chicago” generates the following hits near the top of the page: “Man Critically Hurt In Woodlawn Drive-By”; Cops: Gunman kills 1, fires on police, no officers hurt”; Teen shot in gang-related attack in Woodlawn neighborhood”. There are about 1,100 results but I don’t bother to sift through them. How often do we look beyond the first few hits in an online search? What we first see is usually what sticks with us, and for Woodlawn, what sticks isn’t anything positive. Violence, murders, drive-bys. But this summer I saw with my own eyes many of the assets and great things going on in Woodlawn that are all too often glossed over or ignored in the media.

I worked with a fellow medical student, an undergraduate, and three high school students from Woodlawn this summer in the Summer Service Partnership, a program dedicated to community engagement, volunteering, and community health in different South Side neighborhoods. We explored Woodlawn, focusing on the assets of the community, not the negatives and downsides we hear about incessantly.

I remember vividly the first day I spent with the high school students. I asked them what their impressions of Woodlawn were. They said things like violence, murders, drive-bys. I don’t recall any positive things said, any mention of neighborhood assets that made them proud to call Woodlawn home. Honestly, their descriptions matched what I had in mind. In the entire academic year I had just completed at the University of Chicago, I had visited Woodlawn once. Woodlawn borders my neighborhood, Hyde Park, and a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment takes me to Woodlawn. Yet the Google searches, rumors, and news stories scared me enough to barely set foot in Woodlawn.

This summer changed my mistaken notions. Exploring and volunteering in Woodlawn exposed us all to the vibrant community that is Woodlawn. We met with Joyce and Rudy Nimocks, two longtime Woodlawn residents who are passionately committed to the future of Woodlawn and are modeling Woodlawn after the Harlem Children’s Zone. We met and took a cooking class with Gabrielle Darvassy, the tireless owner of the restaurant B’Gabs Goodies. She offers free healthy cooking classes to children in the community and working to end Woodlawn’s status as a food desert. We volunteered at 1^st Presbyterian Church in the soup kitchen and food pantry. The church partners with a community garden across the street to give free, locally-grown produce to those visiting the food pantry. The list of great people and places we learned about is endless. One of the best moments of the summer was hearing the high school students say, “We didn’t know about all of these resources in Woodlawn.” I thought the same thing.

Woodlawn does have serious issues with violence. But we can’t let violence overshadow all of the wonderful people and places in this great community.

Center on Halsted

On Wednesday, we went and toured the Center on Halsted, a wonderful building full of community resources located in Boystown. For more information about the center, its website can be found here: http://www.centeronhalsted.org/

Final Presentations

Esther Schoenfeld

The highlight of this week was, of course, the presentations. It was incredible to see all the hard work everyone has done. Some highlights for me were hearing Team Greater Grand Crossing’s awesome audio documentary, and seeing the pictures of Tiara, Marissa, and Diamond going door to door to recruit seniors for STEP. Team South Chicago’s sexual health pamphlet was both chock full of important information, and (due to its hilarious use of chat speak) teen-friendly. It was a real pleasure to see the high school students speaking with such confidence, pride, and enthusiasm about their accomplishments. Last but not least, my own team’s high school students did a fantastic job and I’m so proud of them. The highlight of the night was when Mr. Kemp (from the Woodlawn Charter School) came with his wife. We had met with him earlier that week and discovered, to our great relief, that he was completely on board with our project. When we talked at the presentation, he gave us even better news. Not only will our curriculum definitely be used, but he is planning to implement a month long anti-bullying campaign at the high school! I’ve mentioned that I have had my doubts about our project, but I now feel like it couldn’t have gone any better.

At this point in the program, I want to experience first-hand the accomplishments of SSP. On Friday, Team Woodlawn went out to Hoops in the Hood to support our colleagues. We watched thrilling basketball games, ate Betty Jo Nichols’ delicious banana pudding, and, most excitingly, saw youth with embarrassed faces take the pamphlets and free condoms. I hope to attend Team Greater Grand Crossing’s STEP event this Thursday! (Sadly, I will be out of the country during Team Woodlawn’s Health Fair.)

Of course, Friday was also sad for us, because it was Rebecca’s last day of the program. We decided that we didn’t really have to say good bye because we are going to get together again as soon as everyone’s back. Maybe we’ll shave another “W” into Tom’s face…

Goodbye, First Presbyterian

Tom Couri

We volunteered for the last time at the First Presbyterian Church last week. After volunteering at several different sites in Woodlawn, from a homeless shelter to a children’s day camp, what was constant was the soup kitchen and food pantry at First Presbyterian. Two aspects of our experience there made First Presbyterian the ideal choice for service learning: how our help was really needed and the great people with whom we worked. The soup kitchen is held weekly, on Tuesdays, but we came on every other Tuesday, when no other church group would send volunteers. Because of this lack of personnel, we were busy and felt useful to the church. From making the food, preparing the plates, passing out the dishes, and cleaning up, we participated in all facets of the soup kitchen experience.

Leaving last Tuesday and saying good bye to our fellow soup kitchen volunteers reminded me of how great First Presbyterian really is. I got to know one volunteer in particular. He’s a member of a different church in Woodlawn, one with many more members and a higher profile, but he decided to come to First Presbyterian and help out because he admired how they reached out to the community and, with limited resources, made a difference through programs like the soup kitchen, food pantry, and senior exercise. We were both equally sad to see our time ending at First Presbyterian. We exchanged contact information and said we would see each other again. Will we? I hope so. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the everyday of school, classes, and studying once fall starts. But First Presbyterian’s mission of service really resonated with me. Either on my own or with a group such as a Day of Service from the medical school, I’ll be back.

           

My Favorite Memory

Carl Mangrum


My favorite memory of SSP so far was actually my first day. I met Wujun and she was awesome. I also met my team leaders along with team Woodlawn. That day was super fun. We went to a event that they held on campus and they were just giving out free food so we went and ate until we were full. After we finished eating, we played in a moon bounce but it was more like a race course to see who could get out the other side first and I was the undefeated champion. Once after we finished that, we began to head downtown to the cultural center. It was amazing and so many different things stood out to me, like the historical homes in the city. I mean I know people just walk pass them everyday and don’t even realize that it is historical. Overall I enjoyed myself, and this day stood out to me the most so that’s why it’s my favorite day.