NeighborScapes

I’ve spent the last two months talking to NeighborScapes hopefuls. I’ve bonded over hearing their stories, and looked forward to the kind of work we could do together.

And it breaks my heart that we can invite absolutely no new teens this summer, and only one in three teens who worked with us last year.

As a previous United Way employee, I’ve seen too many applications for funds to “get kids off the streets.” A recent New Yorker mourns this generation’s failure to launch into adulthood. But Andrew, Allie and Yessica don’t need to get off the streets. Andrew is a modern-day Horatio Alger, working himself from a family with an annual income of $9,000 to feed six people, to be three years through an education degree- but he needs a summer job, to be able to afford to graduate in June. Allie is an intelligent, sweet, earnest girl who takes care of her mother and is active in her church- her income is needed to feed her family. Yessica is a determined, fierce young lady who has made life mistakes but is trying to atone for them any way she can. Andrew, Allie and Yessica are clawing their way desperately from the streets, seeking any opportunity to escape that they can.

Their odds don’t look good. Only 26% of teens currently on the job market will find work this summer- that’s on par with the levels it was at in World War II, and down from 45.2% in 2000. If Andrew finds work, it certainly won’t be in education, which he’ll need if he actually wants to be a teacher. Allie probably won’t find work at all, as a teen. And Yessica might never find meaningful work at all.

We cannot, cannot decry this generation’s need to stop loafing, get off the streets, find a job, do something meaningful with their lives in the face of this reality. I have seen alums from top-tier schools bag my groceries or brew my coffee after college, for lack of a job in their field. But if the market is glutted with shiny, designer menial workers, a Horatio Alger doesn’t stand a chance, let alone a Horatio Alger with a gun wound.

Except NeighborScapes.

It is NeighborScapes’ mission to provide meaningful, relevant work experience and professional development to people who don’t have the designer label. Our teens come to us with battle wounds- they are teen parents, they have mental health issues, they have petty criminal records (trespassing, loitering, etc) or are just desperately poor. We set them up to find jobs in their chosen fields, with paychecks that can sustain them and a plan- and ongoing support- to get their lives in order. Of the eight Civic Leadership Corps members who worked for us last summer, five are employed in meaningful jobs paying above minimal wage, two have been accepted in college and one is pursuing a career in the arts.

But, in the absence of State funds, we’ve been forced to cut our capacity down to ten teens, from previous operating levels of thirty- and with ninety interested candidates. None of the staff are paid, and board members are offering space and supplies pro bono, but we can’t hold out at this rate.

We need your help.

For $40, you can sponsor Andrew at a day-long workshop in job hunting. For $240, you can pay Allie minimum wage for a week, allowing her to continue volunteering at local nonprofits while still helping to keep food on her family’s table. Even $5 pays for a pack of pencils to help Yessica and twenty-three others take GED practice tests, even $10 admits Yessica or one of her peers to the testing session.

In the absence of funding from the state of IL, which is writing its budget with much political upheaval, we need to do this on our own. None of these three, or the eighty-seven others, can wait. They may never get this chance again.

Please, go to http://www.neighborscapes.org/support-our-work/ and donate what you can. I’ll continue writing about what I see at [link], and keep you posted about the program at http://www.neighborscapes.org/blog. Feel free to contact me at cfuruya@neighborscapes.com if you can help me find help for these kids somewhere else, secure an in-kind donation, or advocate with me for a responsible state budget.

If this generation fails, it is not wholly their part. It is also partially because we, as a society, have failed them. I am doing everything I can, to save those that I can- but there are ninety people dangling from a helicopter that must take off, and we need to either call for more helicopters, give ours more power, or choose who we’re going to save, and abandon eighty others.

Chris Furuya is the program coordinator for NeighborScapes, a volunteering, community organizing, and civic leadership nonprofit located in the South suburbs of Chicago. Her twitter handle is earthangelNS.

I just got off the phone with my sixtieth teenager at NeighborScapes.

As Program Coordinator at NeighborScapes, I am Executive Director Esther Massie’s right hand when hiring, training, placing, and maintaining the placement of our Civic Leadership Corps. I’m adapting what I learned at one of the best liberal arts institutions of higher learning in the country, to make it applicable for the lives of low-income or at-risk young people. Knowing the value of your time, being able to read a text to determine what’s in it rather than what it says, and learning to play to your strengths while eliminating your weaknesses, as well as a culture of higher learning and social responsibility, are necessary to every socioeconomic level, and it’s criminal that the books that talk about it are relegated to “academia” or “management” and first jobs are generally about learning how to get in line, fill out a time card, enter data, and priorities homogeny over excellence. NeighborScapes is not that kind of job, and I am delighted to cultivate leaders, rather than pander to ones self-selected by circumstance.

The problem is that, if all of the NeighborScapes Civic Leadership Corps from last year come back, and the sixty that have expressed interest this year maintain interest, we’re going to have to place ninety teenagers. Add a board president, an executive director, a program coordinator, a finance chair, an administrative assistant, four site supervisors, and two bus drivers, and we’re talking about a staff of a hundred. This is humbling, that we can grow so much, when this is only our third summer in operation- but tragic, because chances are very great that we won’t be able to hire all sixty of these new potential-CLCs, while also bringing back all thirty of last year’s. We’re waiting for the State to release its money for youth and summer jobs, and chances are very great that the leadership above me have something up their sleeves, but so far I haven’t heard anything.

I really do not want to set up a wait list. Most of the people who want to be CLCs have been wait listed out of most aspects of their lives. NeighborScapes is supposed to be the dream maker, that develops skills and captures opportunities to energize stagnant lives or refuel tanks running on fumes.

I and everyone at NeighborScapes are waiting for the government to come refill our station. But, in the meantime, you can sponsor a CLC for $500 (or sponsor for a month for $150, or for a week for $40…).

Thanks so much.

Chris Furuya is the program coordinator for NeighborScapes, a volunteering, community organizing, and civic leadership nonprofit located in the South suburbs of Chicago. Her twitter handle is earthangelNS.

I grew up with one foot squarely in the middle class, in a one-floor, three bedroom house in a nice subdivision, and the other in a more run-down, lower middle class, with blood memories of last generation’s seven siblings and two parents living in three bedrooms and an attic. My parents were both the first siblings of the first generation of their families to go to college, and because they paid for it themselves, they have immense pride in this achievement. They’ve set me up to do the same- to work my way up to a progressively higher class, better level of college, greater things.

They are unhappy that I spend my Tuesdays and Thursdays in a neighborhood that a NeighborScapes intern from a top-tier college describes as “like the more run-down parts of India,” teaching basic reading, math and science to high school drop outs.

Four years ago, I would have agreed with them. I didn’t have the patience to teach a sixteen-year-old how to do her multiplication tables, starting with twos, and grilling her on twos until she gets them right 100% of the time, before progressing to threes. Not with my AP Calculus BC scores and my moonlighting at the University of Chicago’s academic lectures, listening to and understanding the basics of some more complicated theorems. I didn’t have the patience to review low-level spelling and grammar, with a degree, with Honors, in English at such a good school. I want to go chase my American Dream.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the school system, the after-school curricula, and society in general are failing our kids. There was a way, that a sixteen year old could get to sophomore year of high school, without knowing basic multiplication, or an eighteen year old could almost graduate high school without knowing that the moon rotates as it revolves around the earth, which in turn rotates as it revolves around the sun. It’s alien to me, since I grew up with the Magic School Bus, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and an appetite for books- it seems like a human right that our youth should get a rudimentary education, and a social responsibility that they do this before we release them to the work force.

I’m tutoring these kids, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m spending time with them and getting invested in their well-being. And I’m promising them, twice a week, that when summer work comes along, I’ll let them know. But I haven’t heard back from the state of IL about youth and summer jobs, and I’m starting to worry. Whatever factors failed these kids up until now, will still be happening, and there’s only so much that two hours of volunteering a week can do for them. They need sustained, respectful, engaging programming. And while I’m a rockstar, I can’t do that for them alone.

This is where I need your help.

I need you to volunteer, to help tutor more kids or do so more regularly. Call (877) 214-6630 *2 to schedule with me. And I need to you to give, whatever you can, at http://www.neighborscapes.org/support-our-work/. Every seven dollars you spend, keeps an at-risk teenager in a positive, affirming, constructive program for another hour, gaining valuable work experience and catching up on the education they’ll need as adults.

My parents taught me to use my mind and my determination to build a better world for myself. This is how I’m doing it- and I hope you’ll join me.

Thank you.

Chris Furuya is the program coordinator for NeighborScapes, a volunteering, community organizing, and civic leadership nonprofit located in the South suburbs of Chicago. Her twitter handle is earthangelNS.

I just signed a long-term lease on my first adult apartment. It’s modest- a living room, a bedroom, kitchen, and tiny office space- but it’s close to my social base, and a short walk from a cute little organic greengrocer and park, a slightly longer walk to the seasonal farmer’s market. It’s bus and train accessible to most of the city and the suburbs where I work, and with which I’m gradually falling in love, only now, even though I grew up in them.

And, for the first time, my parents aren’t on the lease or paying my charge card, meals and gas. They can’t. I have a younger sister they have to pay for, and heck, I’m 23 and have my college degree and three jobs. It’s time.

The landlord was skeptical when I described my prospects. I’ve got great credit, thanks to two CPA parents and an absolutely puritanical internal need to start off right. But my AmeriCorps term is ending and funding for NeighborScapes is uncertain until we get that grant, and until then, I’m working hourly on whatever projects I can take from my consulting job. I’ve got too much of a high on saving the world and commitment to doing this work right to take the time for any other part-time jobs, and no time to do them anyway. It’s a leap of faith, saying I can afford this apartment in the first place, and shouldn’t keep moving every three to six months and taking subleases for a few hundred dollars less- or move back in with my parents, leave the Chicago metro completely and take a full-time job somewhere I won’t have to pay rent. It’s not what I want to do with myself or what will make me happy, but I’ve heard everywhere that adulthood is about making concessions, not doing what you’re happy because you have to do what you need to in order to survive.

I know, though, that this is what I need- somewhere stable, somewhere home, so I don’t have to worry about the basics while I’m off catalyzing meaningful change. That’s why I’m in start-ups in the first place. I love being an entrepreneur for the same reasons I love baking and knitting- I bring together all the right materials, put hours of work into doing it right, and then wait for the bread to rise, the stitches to bloom, the grant to come in and the nonprofit to grow. I’ve put the work into this lease. Now I need to trust that it will work out.

NeighborScapes is in a very similar place. I tell people, at least a few times a day, that Congress has the money for youth and summer jobs, but they’re far backlogged and haven’t allocated it yet. We haven’t written the grant to hire people- including the operations staff- because it isn’t out yet. I explain it to parents who need their kids to work, to give them something productive to do during their summers- and to potential Civic Leadership Corps, who need the money to support themselves in the same way I need money to support myself. The message across the board is to keep the faith, keep working, everything will come through because the formula is there, and the NeighborScapes leadership team are darn good chefs.

I’m doing everything I can to help the Executive Director and the Board President to fundraise, build partnerships, get NeighborScapes out there. So far, I’ve just got water, yeast, salt, milk and flour sitting in a hot pan, and I promised people bread and am hungry myself, so it’s getting very, very difficult not to worry, especially when the oven has to stay closed.

Keep the faith.

Chris Furuya is the program coordinator for NeighborScapes, a volunteering, community organizing, and civic leadership nonprofit located in the South suburbs of Chicago. Her twitter handle is earthangelNS.