NeighborScapes

The eleventh hour has come. One of our site supervisors, frustrated at the level of resources we were working with and the dynamics of camp interaction, has left us. Our communications system in the office is routinely down, frustrating parents who need to be in contact with someone at the home office. Our line of credit is nearly spent, and we’re relying on donations to make payroll for our Civic Leadership Corps, rather than buy something enduring for the organization, a sure sign that we’re facing troubled times. Our CLCs are telling us that they need more substantive work- and I’m empathizing with them. I don’t know what it’s like to be hungry the way they do, but I know what it’s like to constantly worry about making rent, and to put in my tank only as much gas as I need to, to not fill it up when I can’t afford to.

I’ve seen businesses fold and I’ve seen friends go homeless.

But that will not happen to us.

Our 501(c)3 letter came in the mail today. This is an enormous step in the growth of the organization. While donations to NeighborScapes have previously been tax-deductible by virtue of our relationship to GoodCity, the presence of our own 501(c)3 is like the presence of our own driver’s license. We’re sixteen and not adults yet, but damn, it feels good to drive.

Monday, we will be bolstered by four highly educated, highly skilled volunteers, interns, and mission-driven people working for us for little to no pay. One of them is a microfinance guru with experience leveraging minimal dollars to prompt maximum growth. One of them is a master at personal outreach, excellent at talking to people and communicating the NeighborScapes mission and goals. One of them is a veteran of Snell-Hitchcock’s Scav Hunt team, undefeated in four years at leveraging unusual items or skills from invested communities; she, specifically, is charged with ensuring full compliance with a List of items to be obtained, while assisting in liasoning with staff. And one is a serene, sweet girl who believes in the NeighborScapes mission and wants to help out. They are joined by two other, younger volunteers, who are familiar with the Wacker Park and Rich Central area and want to assist in growing the organization.

The Youth and Summer Jobs Bill has made it to Congress, but it hasn’t passed yet. I’m a bit superstitious about naming the baby before it’s born, but if you could call your Congresspeople and ask them to support the Closing Tax Loopholes Bill, we’d really appreciate it. Doesn’t matter where in the contiguous US you are, call them. (If you’re not in the contiguous US, but any of your contacts are, tell them to call THEIR Congresspeople.)

We’ve passed out a lot of fliers. We’ve measured a lot of windows. We’ve scrubbed toilets, we’ve filed things and licked envelopes and built furniture and kept a schitzophrenic internet line going.

We’ve talked to Mayors. We’ve talked to Legislators. We’ve talked to the heads of nonprofits, major for-profit corporate social responsibility representatives, principals, superintendants.

We are exhausted, and we are now delirious with hunger. But I’m starting to smell bread.

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.

There are times, over the course of my NeighborScapes work, that I wish I could claim a Horatio Alger story. I can’t, though, not any more than any 23-year-old young adult without a trust fund can. That was my parents’ generation, who paid their own way through college from blue-collar  backgrounds. My mom was the one who grew up one of seven children in a family raised on the income of a welder from Ford motor company; my dad was the one who grew up the son of a POW, living on the second floor above an ethnic grocery. It is by virtue of their struggle and their financial decisions that I attended one of the most expensive colleges in the nation.

And it kills me to see them burn through their equity line of credit, to make sure that I launch into adulthood successfully. Not when it took them 25 years to build it, not when I have a brilliant, expensive sister in college right now, who will also need to become an adult very, very soon. I’ve put the brakes on that, and they’ll get another influx of money as soon as they sell the house, but I’m sick with worry for them in the meantime. Equity lines of credit are intended to be a last resort, a response to emergencies only.

Our camps are having mixed success. One is almost self-sustaining, and will become fully self-sustaining with the help of our fundraising, if we have just a few more kids (your donations are greatly appreciated). The other is a money sinkhole, with more counselors than kids. There’s talk that we’ll have to close that one down, and cut our budget in half. This means either laying off half the staff or cutting everyone’s hours in half.

It means either Amy or her brother Brian, both brilliant counselors, will have to go. Or it means that Maureen, who has the most heartwrenching story of a NeighborScapes Civic Leadership Corps member I’ve ever heard, will have to stay in dangerous circumstances a while longer, or take a job at Quiznos and try to work her way out.

What I must make absolutely clear about a 50% budget is that it necessarily means that one out of every two people supported by that budget has to go. Amy or Brian. Or it means half for everybody- that Maureen only gets to half-escape, half-rescue herself, which is hardly a rescue at all. It means that either Chris or sibling gets to transition to independence, and the other one doesn’t. The age of excessive shopping, of buying plasma TVs and I-Pads because they exist, is over. If you start cutting at this point, you’re cutting people.

Meanwhile, there’s rumor going around the back offices of many nonprofits that the state of IL will pass a six-month budget, and not call it that and hope to get by. On a statewide level, it’s Amy or Brian. Either Harvey or Posen gets to have a clinic for low-income populations, either Alsip or Matteson gets to have a major nonprofit to promote behavioral health. And that means that camp staffers, free clinics, and major nonprofits whose resources have already been both thinned and stretched past capacity to meet the current climate, will see their work per hour doubled or their pay halved. They’re already running on equity lines of credit as it is to pay their staff and keep their doors open. Asking more of them will kill them.

This is a crippling situation. And, as arrogant as I can be about the solutions I identify to big problems, this time I’m at a loss. I’m too busy asking myself, Amy or Brian? Harvey or Posen? Or do we see NeighborScapes, the state of IL, my family, go bankrupt trying to take care of both?

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.

Summer2010EnrollmentForm

Summer is almost here. The teenagers are out of high school, the college students are back in town, the children are about to leave grade school and junior high. If all was right in the world, the teenagers would have summer jobs, the grade school students would have had somewhere to learn and play for the summer, and the junior high students would be transitioning between, testing out their fledgling feathers in loving, supportive environments.

This is not what is happening.

Summer is almost here. The jobs bill has not even made it to Congress yet, let alone passed. The commercial industry cannot support the hordes of teenagers about to enter the job market for the summer, let alone its artificially glutted state produced by the recession and so-called “jobless recovery.” Parents of small children cannot afford to send their children to day camp, even for $20-$25/day like NeighborScapes (the industry standard is $38/day). Teenagers and children are staying home for the summer, or gathering in social groups to watch television, hang out, and otherwise vegetate. They will go back to school in August without the enriching, positive experiences of a structured social environment in which teenagers are taught to be adults and children are guided in educational, interactive, healthy play. Summer will not mean swimming, or science, or structured social dynamics. Summer will mean Spongebob.

This is not what is happening. Nobody here will let that happen.

Summer is almost here, and one of the few resources that is left in abundance is time. I have spoken with countless teenagers who are eager to volunteer, as long as they are doing something of substance with their time. So even though I have bills to pay and am always worried about money, and I am a volunteer for NeighborScapes myself this summer, I am taking time away from my paying job to organize troops of volunteers to drive up summer camp enrollment. If you have a car, please call me at (877) 214 6630 and we’ll organize carpools to Chicago Heights, Matteson, Olympia Fields, and Park Forest and let people know about our camp, its sliding scale to families of hardship and its locations right in the heart of two staple communities in the South suburbs of Chicago. We need campers if we are going to keep the camps open, and if we are going to be able to pay our counselors minimum wage. Meanwhile, the team back at the office will keep fundraising like crazypeople and try to make this work on an infrastructure level.

Our Rich Central campus was secured two days before camp was to start. I am a pragmatist, but I do have room in my philosophy for miracles. It’s just, summer is almost here.

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.