Care Force Chronicle- Chicago, IL

By Georgia Lawrence

Who: T-Mobile and Gad's Hill Community CenterVolunteers: 100
Where: Chicago, Illinois
When: September 13- 16, 2010
TCF: Georgia Lawrence, Florence Capinding
City Year Chicago: Dan Ready, Katie Halloran, Amos Holmes, Andre Spencer, Julian Castro, Kristen Strobbe, Royale Simms, Jeremy Bleier

For this project, Flo, Hugh and I were joined by the eight members of the City Year Chicago Civic Engagement Team. We met bright and early Monday, September 13th, at the Gad’s Hill Community Center in the Pilsen neighborhood in West Chicago. The Gad's Hill Center has been a staple in Pilsen since 1898 when it was started as a settlement house to help recent immigrants adjust to their new country, find housing, and learn English. The Gad’s Hill Center has evolved over the years and now works to increase student achievement in the surrounding neighborhood. One third of the local high school students in Pilsen drop out of high school each year and Gad’s Hill seeks to reverse this statistic by providing after school programs for students starting in kindergarten through to their sophomore year in college.



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After



We had a challenging yet rewarding week of prep during which we laid down tape and tarp, transplanted trees to make room for a new outdoor classroom, cut lumber, and sketched wall murals. One hundred T-Mobile volunteers arrived on Thursday, September 16th pumped up and ready to serve! We received a warm welcome from District Alderman Danny Solis, who attended Gad’s Hill as a child. T-Mobile worked on projects throughout the entire building, from the basement to the games room on the fourth floor and outside in the playground area. Their work revitalized Gad’s Hill, adding a lot of bright, colorful murals, planter beds, and an outdoor classroom. In addition, T-Mobile’s signature project, the Huddle Up Zone, created a new space for the Gad’s Hill kids, complete with new laptops, desks, bookcases, couches and television with a Nintendo Wii system.

T-Mobile Volunteers and City Year
Team Huddle Up for a Group Photo

At closing ceremony, Barbara De La Casa, the Director of Youth Services, extended her heartfelt appreciation to the T-Mobile volunteers for all their hard work and contributions to Gad’s Hill. She explained how the transformative work completed that day will continue to inspire the staff and children for years to come. As the day came to an end, we were able to watch the children arrive from school and check out all the new murals, bookshelves, benches, and supplies inside!

Care Force Chronicles- Denver, CO

By Dan Nemiroff

Who: ARAMARK and the Southwest Improvement Council
Volunteers: 100
Where: Denver, Colorado
When: August 27- 31, 2010
TCF: Emily Kean, Dan Nemiroff, Phillip St. Clair, Aundrea Dean, Dylan Morrill, Steadman Graves

Team Care Force arrived in Denver on the evening of August 27th, amped and ready for a great week of service. We ate an awesome meal (which included a 7 pound burrito challenge!), checked into our hotel, and rested up for the service week ahead.

The next morning, we took a tour of the Southwest Improvement Council where we worked the rest of the week. Beth, the program director at SWIC, gave us some great information about the center’s history and the array of services it provides the Denver community. She explained the foreclosure assistance program that helps hundreds of families facing the threat of losing their homes. She also told us about the SWIC community garden, food distribution program, and afterschool and summer school youth programs. SWIC is a great community center that empowers so many Denverites, and was a welcoming partner for Team Care Force and ARAMARK.

We had three prep days to get the five projects ready for the ARAMARK volunteers. Our days were full of taping and tarping, priming walls, building scaffolding, measuring and cutting wood and organizing tools. Throughout the week, everyone at SWIC was helpful and supportive of us.

On Tuesday morning, the ARAMARK volunteers arrived at SWIC ready to serve! We started with some PT, a welcome address from some of the SWIC staff members, and received all of the information needed for a successful day. Once the teams got to work, the day flew by. At the end of the day the 100 volunteers had built 4 shelving units for the food pantry, installed ceiling tiles in a programming room, repainted the gym, painted wall murals throughout the center, built 8 picnic tables, replaced the front gate of the community garden, built 2 planter benches, and painted 14 painted panel murals to go around the center! Once the work was completed and cleaned, we all came together in the gym to celebrate our accomplishments, and reflect on the day. The day was capped off with a heartfelt appreciation from a woman who has been going to SWIC for many years. Her kind words served as a powerful ending to a great day of hard work!

In all, the Denver trip was fantastic. Working with a partner as welcoming as SWIC, and meeting the awesome ARAMARK volunteers was a great experience for the TCFers that made the trek out west. Denver’s beautiful skyline, fun restaurants, abundant trees and parks, and great weather provided an awesome landscape for an inspiring, fun, and successful Care Force Trip! Gracias Denver!

Team Care Force- Dan Nemiroff

Team Care Force
Senior Corps Member,
Dan Nemiroff

Each week we will post a new "Care Force Chronicle" detailing one of our service events that Care Force will lead this year, written by a member of the senior corps. We will also be posting a short personal bio so you can read a little more about each of the senior corps members. This week's bio covers Daniel Nemiroff, as he has written the Care Force Chronicle covering the Aramark event in Denver, Colorado.

Daniel Nemiroff

My name is Dan Nemiroff. I am 23 years old and am proud to serve with Team Care Force this year. I was born and raised in San Francisco, California and attended San Francisco public schools from elementary through high school. My elementary school was a Spanish immersion school, and I started learning Spanish at the age of 6. I continued to speak Spanish throughout my educational career, and still consider myself bilingual. I have played sports for as long as I can remember, and played baseball for the Lowell High team, where I grew close to my best friends in the world. I also have a passion for music, and played trumpet in a couple of different bands in high school. I graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2009 with a degree in International Relations. While in college, I had the amazing opportunity to study abroad for a semester in Santiago, Chile, where I studied politics and had an internship at a micro-finance organization.

After graduating college, I decided to apply to City Year, and had the pleasure of serving as a Senior Corps Member with City Year Miami as part of the 09-10 corps. In Miami, I served as part of the Young Heroes team, working with middle school students from all over Miami Dade County. Running the Young Heroes program was a huge challenge for our team last year. We found it to be really difficult to convince middle schoolers, who had no clue who we were to commit their Saturdays to doing community service. Despite these challenges, our team worked tirelessly to achieve our goals, and lead an amazing program for the incredible students who came out to serve with us. There is no chance that our team could have succeeded in running the Heroes program without working together. Though there were times when we disagreed or found it difficult to work together, we learned to respect each other and work through our differences. Eventually, we grew close, and used each other’s strengths to grow as individuals. Teamwork played a huge factor to my first year with City Year. In Miami, I also learned the importance of remaining positive and making an effort to enjoy the work that I was doing. As a team, we discovered that making the long hours in the office enjoyable and fun made our work easier. Our team’s positive attitude resonated to all aspects of our work, and made our program fun and upbeat for everyone involved.

I am incredibly excited to be a part of Team Care Force and continue serving with City Year, an organization that is full of great people who want to make some positive change in our society. Working on service projects throughout the country will allow me to develop on a personal and professional level. I hope to improve my ability to think in a precise, detailed way, and to be able to think of all possible outcomes of a project ahead of time. I also hope to gain a new set of skills regarding physical service. Knowing how to use certain tools, and when to use them is a skill that I am looking forward to developing. Furthermore, serving with Team Care Force gives me the amazing chance to travel the country and see and meet new people and communities. Traveling is one of my passions, and this opportunity is one I cannot wait to take advantage of!

Care Force Chronicle- St. Louis, MO

Gateway to the West
By Georgia Lawrence

Who: Aramark and Grace Hill Settlement House
Volunteers: 90
What: Peace Park
Where: St. Louis, MO
When: August 15th – 20th
TCF: Florence Capinding, Emily Kean, Aundrea Dean, Georgia Lawrence, Dylan Morrill and Phillip St. Clair

We arrived in St. Louis on Sunday, August 15th and traveled to the College Hill Neighborhood, in the north section of the city, first thing Monday morning. The area has a high incidence of violent crimes and many vacant properties. In the midst of this, however, sits Peace Park, a refuge for residents seeking a safe place to gather within the community. The Grace Hill Settlement House, an organization started in 1903 to assist recent immigrants in their economic and social transition into America, is overseeing the revitalization of the park as part of a larger effort to renew the community. Grace Hill Settlement House works throughout St. Louis in two capacities: The Grace Hill Settlement House and the Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Centers. Grace Hill is an economic engine in St. Louis, collectively raising an excess of 50 million dollars, providing valuable services to the community, and employing over 540 people. In addition to their work at Peace Park, Grace Hill has also recently opened a brand new health center in the College Hill Neighborhood.

In order to preserve Peace Park as a beacon of hope for the community, Team Care Force and the 90 volunteers from Aramark were responsible for kicking off Phase 1of a three phase revitalization project. The projects included: building twelve planter beds to be used for flowers, fruits and vegetables; constructing fourteen benches placed around the park; landscaping a large section of the park by clearing underbrush and laying mulch around existing trees; staining the new giving structure where donations can be dropped off, and laying a tile mosaic down the center of a 30ft long cement table.

We had a great three days of prep work, mostly involving measuring and cutting wood and cleaning and cutting tiles. On Tuesday night, we had a delicious dinner out with the folks from Grace Hill, which included a celebrity sighting! Shaquille O’Neal came over to our table and thanked us for the great work that we were doing in St. Louis. Okay, just kidding, he didn’t talk to us, but we DID see him sitting at a nearby table at the restaurant.

On the day of the event, Aramark and Team Care Force worked very hard despite the excessive heat to finish every project and make the day a great success! Our closing ceremony included the unveiling of a brand new sign at the corner of the park that included a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that reads “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.” It is a great reminder to all of us and the surrounding community that bringing people together through service can bring about transformational change and can generate love and peace in the face of adversity.

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After

Team Care Force- Georgia Lawrence

Team Care Force
Senior Corps Member,
Georgia Lawrence

Each week we will post a new "Care Force Chronicle" detailing one of our service events that Care Force will lead this year, written by a member of the senior corps. We will also be posting a short personal bio so you can read a little more about each of the senior corps members. This week's bio covers Georgia Lawrence, as she has written the Care Force Chronicle covering the Aramark event in St. Louis, Missouri.

Georgia Lawrence

My name is Georgia Lawrence and I am 23 years old. I was born in Plymouth, England, and after moving to the US when I was three, I lived in Middletown, Rhode Island. I attended Bryn Mawr College, a small, liberal arts school outside of Philadelphia and graduated in May 2009. During college, I learned the power of community service and developed a passion for social justice. The summer after my freshman year, I worked as the director of the children’s summer program at a women’s shelter in my hometown. I was in charge of providing fun and educational activities each week for the children living with their mothers at the shelter. While I had grown up only a few miles away from the kids I worked with, I quickly realized that they faced challenges and obstacles that I had never experienced. The instability of homelessness impacted every aspect of their lives and I found that providing positive guidance and extracurricular programs could make a real difference to each child. This experience inspired me to continue to work with children living in poverty. While at school, I continued to help low-income students by coordinating mentoring programs at local elementary schools around my university.

When it came time to apply for jobs after college, I remembered City Year and the energetic team of corps members that had worked in my own elementary school. I knew I wanted to continue working with underserved students. Having been on a trip to New Orleans to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, I decided to work with City Year Louisiana. I became a part of a Whole School Whole Child team at an elementary school in Baton Rouge. I spent the school days tutoring kindergarten students and then organized afterschool programs and homework help sessions with my team of fellow corps members.

While I enjoyed my time working in the schools, participating in physical service projects with the City Year corps was the most inspirational part of my year. I loved the work we completed, such as painting houses, building benches, and creating murals. I also enjoyed engaging community volunteers during projects. It was incredibly meaningful to see diverse groups of people come together to physically transform a school or neighborhood. As a member of Team Care Force, I am able to continue to lead volunteers in service projects and I now have the opportunity to travel all over the country! I love to visit and explore new cities and communities. I am learning how to effectively manage service projects and I’m improving my abilities in public speaking. As my year with Care Force continues, I am looking forward to working with corporate partners and learning about how they can positively impact low-income communities.

Care Force Chronicle- Denver, CO

By Florence Capinding

Partner: T-Mobile
Volunteers: 150
Service Partner: Charles M. Schenck (CMS) Community School
When: August 9-12, 2010
TCF: Florence Capinding, Georgia Lawrence, Dylan Morrill and Phillip St. Clair
Care Force Reserves:
Noberto Riveria City Year Los Angeles Civic Engagement Project Manager
Tom Wingert City Year San Jose 07-08; Team Care Force 08-09
Danielle Chiarottino City Year Chicago Alumnus 05-06; 06-07

When the team arrived at the Denver airport, the first thing we were greeted with was the sight of the beautiful purple Rocky Mountains, which range over 3,000 miles. The city of Denver has evolved from being a wild, wild, west town established in the late 1860s to the progressive city we now know. It is full of diversity, culture, and many outdoor active residents. Every where you look you are guaranteed to see at least one person running, cycling, or kayaking.

The Charles M. Schenck (CMS) School is located in southwest Denver. It is a K-5 elementary school that serves approximately 600 students. 95% of the students are on free or reduced priced lunch. Focusing on the neighborhood the school is located in, 44.9% of the community members speak a language other than English at home. The school is committed to nurturing and encouraging Curiosity, Uniqueness, Responsibility, Perseverance, and Self-Reflection. They offer dual language classes and a variety of after school activities.

The school campus was in need of landscaping and painting of the rooms for parent meetings and afterschool activities. For this assignment, we did three days of preparation. On the service day, we led 150 T-mobile volunteers for a powerful day of service and completed a total of eight different projects. We made a skate-park themed T-Mobile Huddle Up Zone, created a parent information room, constructed 2 benches, tidied up 3 community gardens, landscaped numerous planters, and painted 15 wall murals, 10 canvas murals, several playground graphics, and a 287 ft. long retaining wall. It was a great day full of sunshine and the school’s students, faculty, and staff appreciated the outstanding work the T-mobile volunteers had done.



Finally, for those of you who do not know, Denver, CO is called the Mile High City because it is located approximately one mile above sea level. Neat, right? I learned that this week! I also learned that in higher altitudes it is much easier to get dehydrated. What is the importance of this you ask? Simply put: Safety comes first. Always have enough water bottles for your group and for yourself no matter what climate you’re at. Stay tuned for the next TCF trip!

Team Care Force- Florence Capinding

Read this short, personal bio to learn more about one of the senior corps members serving on Team Care Force. This week's bio covers Florence Capinding, as she has written the upcoming Care Force Chronicle covering the T-Mobile event in Denver, Colorado.

Team Care Force
Senior Corp Member,
Florence Capinding

Florence Capinding

My name is Florence Capinding. I am 23 years old and originally from Hemet, CA. In 2009, I graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Throughout college I was always particularly interested in Social Psychology classes because they offered me greater knowledge of pressing social issues happening today in society. And it was my classes that taught me the importance of community involvement. Throughout college I developed my belief in the power of community service, and in my time at City Year, I have gained a great deal of knowledge about putting that belief into action through physical service. I joined Team Care Force because I knew it would be an opportunity to utilize my knowledge, my skills, and my passions.

Last year I served at City Year Rhode Island as a corps member for the Young Heroes Team. Being on a small team consisting of 17-24 year olds and trying to run a program for over 100 youth was a very new and challenging experience. The combination of inexperienced workers, and knowledgeable young professionals resulted in diverse and, often times, complicated working styles. The most challenging part of last year was letting others take the reins. By the end of the year though, my team and I had presented the Young Heroes program to 27 different schools; recruited 120 middle school youth; and had managed to plan and facilitate 17 Saturdays dedicated to teaching youth about social problems and then going into their communities to fix those problems through community service. By the end of my corps year I learned that coffee is essential in any office. I learned that co-workers can bring out the best and the worst in you. And I learned that being a good leader sometimes means being a follower. Most of all, I learned that qualities such as patience, commitment, and dedication, are crucial to idealism.

This year I hope to do two things while on Team Care Force. The first thing I want to do is learn from the people and communities we will be working with. I can not think of any other opportunity that will allow me to meet so many people from so many different parts of the country. I want to learn as much as I can about different cultures, beliefs, and practices. The second thing I want to do this year is to teach others the importance of giving back to their community. I truly believe volunteering is contagious. Without a doubt, I believe a small group of people can be a catalyst for change—whether it is by inspiring middle school students to become civic minded individuals or by transforming a neighborhood into a beloved community.