Youth Noise: B-Ball on the Block Is Back

Got an email from Cesar Nuñez this morning turning me on to a $500 fundraising challenge for Beyond the Ball, the group that's using basketball and soccer to bring youth onto the streets on Friday evenings in Little Village and North Lawndale.

BBall on the Block has been going for three years now and it's great to see that they're still innovating – adding soccer, for instance – and that they've connected with Youth Noise and Nike on this fundraiser. They need another 32,600 clicks to get that $500, and you can click all you want, so get on over there and help make it happen.

Trina Chiasson, Chicago blogger for Youth Noise Play City, caught some great quotes in that video above. Here's one of them:

"I grew up in this neighborhood, I've seen a lot of violence and poor choices," says Ken Alvarado, soccer director. "And then just getting older, you see that there aren't that many opportunities to escape those places."

BBall on the Block provides that opportunity: "You know you're safe, you know there is nothing to worry about, we have food, you have nice people working here too, so it's just a blessing for the community. And I'm definitely taking it as a blessing for myself as well."

Umoja University Trains School Leaders as Community Change Agents

Twelve years ago, less than 10 percent of graduates from North Lawndale's Manley High School went on to college. Last Friday, the Chicago Tribune reported that "all but a few" of Manley's 142 graduating seniors had been accepted to college.

Much of the credit for this achievement goes to the Umoja Student Development Corporation. Umoja provides pathways for students to learn about college and careers and builds the relationships with them needed to help them move forward after graduation. (I wrote about one of them here back in 2003.) Students working with Umoja not only develop postsecondary plans; they follow through. Umoja contacted 139 of last year's Manley grads and found 68 percent of them had enrolled as college freshmen: 64 percent of that group are going back for a second year.

In the last few years, Umoja has been expanding its efforts beyond Manley, to south and southwest side schools like Gage Park, Carver, Dyett and ACE Tech Charter. This summer, teachers and school leadership teams who want to learn more about how Umoja has "changed the way the school does business" (as the Tribune put it), are invited to sign up for four days of workshops and planning known as Umoja University. The workshops will be held at Dominican University from July 27-31. Interested individual teachers are invited to sign up for one or more morning workshops; school teams are encouraged to sign up for the full five days, and will have dedicated time in the afternoons to develop plans for their own school aided by Umoja facilitators.

Why am I telling you about this on a community development blog? Because one of the best ways to strengthen a community is to increase the education level of its members. According to the Trib article, less than 10 percent of adults in North Lawndale currently hold a bachelor's degree. Umoja has been working diligently to plant the seeds that will increase that number down the road, and I think they have something to share with teachers and principals who share that goal.

Video: Why Kids Enjoy Neighborhood Sports

A lot of community agencies and sports programs have been working flat out preparing for Spring Into Sports, which runs April 4 to 11 at four Chicago high schools (Crane, Little Village Lawndale, Englewood and Orr). Learn more at Neighborhood Sports Chicago, but first, take five minutes to view this video fresh from the smoking-hot computers of Sarahmaria Gomez and Alex Fledderjohn of TuMultimedia.

It will make you feel good, I guarantee it.

(If this video doesn't feed well for you, try the YouTube version.)


Neighborhood Sports Chicago! from Tu Multimedia on Vimeo.

Soggy Tourists in Our Own Town

Last Saturday, 21 of us braved the record-breaking rain for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation's Veggie Bike and Dine event. The event raised money for CBF and for NeighborSpace, which manages land for community gardens across Chicago. The event wound through a number of NCP neighborhoods and got me thinking about the potential for events like this to help neighborhoods snag more tourists in their own town.

We met up in Pilsen, at the Xochiquetzal Peace Garden, created by Whittier School. Signs in English and Spanish pointed out herbs like manzanilla/chamomile. Soy Organic, Pilsen's only organic grocery store, provided a yummy breakfast shake to rev up our metabolisms. We came from Ukrainian Village, West Loop, Oak Park and even the south suburbs, just to name a few.

It wasn't too wet on our way from Pilsen to North Lawndale, by way of Little Village and the Farragut High School parking lot. We arrived in time to watch our snack being made at the Green Youth Farm at 3539 W. Ogden, near the Pink Line Central Park stop. There we had salsa fresh from the garden: red and yellow tomatoes, garlic, cucumber all picked and chopped before our eyes. Teen tour guides from Manley and Collins Academy high schools showed us what they'd been growing all summer in the extensive network of tall raised beds built back in 2005. The salsa was the best I've had all summer, hands down.

Afterwards, we were treated to a special tour of a recently redone community garden nearby. At this point, it was pouring pretty hard and my vision narrowed to the bike in front of me, so I still don't know where in North Lawndale we ended up, but we got to see a newly paved garden featuring pear trees with fruit ready to pick.

Later, we biked through giant puddles in Garfield Park and admired the Conservatory's demonstration gardens. Finally, we visited El Yunque Community Garden in Humboldt Park and Frankie Machine Garden in Ukrainian Village. In the end, we all dried out and enjoyed vegan pizzas at Crust: Eat Real.

All the way along, people on the street cheered and waved at the sight of the soggy cyclists. We had plenty of room for guests at the afterparty, since about half the bikers didn't show, so some of the stalwart community gardeners who turned out to show us their work came and joined us for pizza.

Events like these, whether a 12-mile bike tour or a chamber of commerce restaurant crawl, really help outsiders get the feel of a neighborhood. Here's to sunnier days and more bikers in the group next year!

CNDA report: And the winners are . . .

Carlos Nelson (with his children) won the Norman Bobins Leadership Award.

The best neighborhood development work in Chicago was honored last night at the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards. A reported crowd of 1,400 turned out for the event, which featured a seriously funny show by Second City followed by the awards and the best cocktail party networking event in town, at least for the community development crowd.

And here's who won:

Lawndale Christian Development Corporation received The Chicago Community Trust Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year award.

Center on Halsted, the new home of the Horizons Community Service Center, received The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Outstanding Non-Profit Real Estate Project.

Chicago GreenWorks received the Outstanding For-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project Award for the Rancho Verde industrial park built for Christy Webber Landscapes and other landscaping companies.

The St. Leo's Campus for Veterans in Auburn Gresham earned the Special Recognition Award.

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Architectural Excellence in Community Design went to:

First Place: Landon Bone Baker Architects for La Casa Norte's Solid Ground Supportive Housing Building in Humboldt Park, a residential and service center for 16 homeless teens.

Second Place: Stanley Tigerman for the new home of Pacific Garden Mission, which can provide food and shelter for 1,000 men and women a day.

Third Place: Murphy/Jahn for Mercy Housing Lakefront's Margot and Harold Schiff Residences, which provides energy-efficient housing for low-income residents.

The Driehaus Awards are now 10 years old, and in a fitting tribute, Richard H. Driehaus himself won the Friend of the Neighborhoods Award.

And last but not least, the new Norman Bobins Leadership Award honoring emerging community development leaders went to Carlos Nelson, executive director of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation.