NeighborScapes

I’ve made no secret that I’m a huge fan of Bremen Youth Services.

I first discovered BYS while at the United Way, where they are the Youth Services programming darlings of the South and Southwest suburbs of Chicago. Natively of the Southland (”Bremen” represents Bremen Township, from Harlem Ave. to the West to Western Ave. to the East, and from 135th to the North to 183rd to the South), BYS delivers youth services in a way that is loving, familial, and encourages independence, excellence, confidence, and drive in its graduates. What’s more, the BYS model encourages graduates of each level of programming to be mentors for younger participants and find mentors among the older graduates.

What I like most about BYS is that it has a strong feeling of family. With “parents” as counselors and case managers, and “siblings” among other participants, as well as “grandparents” among the various senior services that cohabitate the BYS properties, BYS provides a stable, engaging environment and cultivates a sense of home, perhaps moreso than the participants can find in their own homes.

NeighborScapes is trying to do the same thing, and, consequently, is partnering closely with BYS. Our mission is to create a “cradle through college covenant of care”. This means that, for the child who comes to our camp, there is a fun, loving environment in which they can grow and thrive. For the older child, there is a stable, whimsical place for them to gradually earn independence and responsibility. For the tween, there are mentors and guides in venturing into adulthood. For the teenage counselor or Civic Leadership Corps member, there is someone, usually me but also Esther Massie, Darlene Kaboose, or Jay Readey, who will teach them what they will need to know as they seek college experience or full-time jobs. For the older Civic Leadership Corps, there is guidance in finding housing, jobs, cars, what they will need to become independent. I look to Jay for training in becoming the kind of community organizer I’m itching to be, and opportunities to grow according to my own skill but driven by my own ambition; I look to Esther and other NeighborScapes leadership for life advice about juggling both a personal life and a work life, when the two continually threaten to merge. And while I’m not as familiar with the mentorship relationships and networks above my head, they are leaving strong evidence of their existence.

NeighborScapes, like Bremen Youth Services, is a youth services organization that is trying to be family-like. However, we need to be stronger than family-like. We have promised a “cradle through college covenant of care”. We will be a family who will support you in difficult times. We will be a family with whom you can grow and prosper. We will offer you opportunities you cannot find anywhere else. We will leave no opportunity unexplored, no chance not taken, to bring you resources and provide for you. And we will always, always love you.

I’m going to switch up the usual “end every blog post begging for money or volunteers or something” pattern I’m falling into. Bremen Youth Services badly needs donations- they have built a new facility 2/3 of the way before running out of money, and unless they finish construction, they will have a 2/3-built facility sitting behind their run-down one as a Roxaboxen village rather than a real home. Go visit their website. Go leave a donation. And attach a note to it, addressed to Don, telling him to keep up the good work.

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.

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.

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