Help Our Neighbors - and the Country
Since retiring, I’ve been volunteering with Youth for a Better Future, which works almost exclusively with children who live at the Marshall Field Garden Apartments, a more than 600+ unit complex in the 1300-1400 blocks of N Sedgwick Ave.
Let me tell you a story.
Three kids who regularly attend YBF programs, ages 16, 11, and 10, lost their mother to cancer at the end of July.
Unfortunately, apartment management served the family with a notice of eviction the day their mom died. The kids had to move to their grandmother’s one bedroom apartment in a senior building on the South Side, taking the older child from Noble Charter high school and the younger ones from Newberry Academy.
Fortunately, I was able to contact the building’s owner, and over the next three weeks, the grandmother worked with management and the US Dept of Housing and Urban Development to bring her and the kids back into the building with a lease.
This kind of issue comes up frequently for the families that have kids in YBF. Employment instability, low wages, and educational barriers plague this neighborhood just across North Avenue from where we live. Loving moms, grandmas, and dads try their best.
YBF has given these three kids the hope, stability, skills and confidence they need to power their own lives and build a future for themselves. They are thrilled to be back.
SUMMER at YBF
This summer, YBF ran summer programs for high schoolers in fashion design and music production, as a partner to After School Matters. Youth aged 14-15 explored fashion design for six weeks. They learned sewing basics, then designed and created their own clothing items.
Other students created unique music including composing, recording, arranging and editing with sophisticated software.
At the end of the summer, both groups of students showcased their accomplishments before friends and family with a fashion show, hosted by Old Town favorite Orso’s Italian Restaurant. The fashion design students modeled their creations, strutting down the runway to the beats of the music production students. Much pride!
YBF will continue this partnership this academic year.
YBF also hosted a summer sports camp program for basketball and flag football.
How Can We Help Our Community?
Now that the school year has started, YBF is offering after-school care and homework help two days a week. They’d like to do much more.
Can you help us raise $15,000 now to help expand YBF’s work to five days a week, and buy 15 IPads for use in the program? Please support an organization that will help African-American children a block away from our Ward succeed. Donate here. Any size donation is welcome.
Learn more at: www.youthforabetterfuture.org https://www.facebook.com/Youthforabetterfuture and https://www.instagram.com/youthforabetterfuture/.
Thanks so much.
Help Our Country
I’ll keep this short - I’m supporting Kamala Harris. Like so many of you, I’m writing post cards and making some calls. Now that my knee is better (long story), it’s time to go door-to-door.
Want to join in? We are going to Wisconsin THIS SATURDAY, September 14. Sign up here. Just fill in your info on the form.
Can’t go this Saturday? Here are more dates in Wisconsin.
I’m also signed up for Oct. 6 in Michigan. Here are other dates in Michigan. Canvassing is fun!
Can’t canvas? Phone or text! Here are dates.
Onward,
