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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It helps that I always have something new to show them. I am happiest when very busy, and I am very dedicated to my projects, so I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment whenever I do well on one. It helps, too, that I work in nonprofits, and my projects directly translate to others’ well-being. I’m also much more people-oriented, both with my personality and with the specific work I do, so I can see that every day, I am directly improving the lives of individuals, rather than abstract groups who I never see. I have been spoiled on visible results that appear without significant delay.

This has a lot of pressure, sometimes. By definition, I’m working to improve other people’s lives, and if I do a bad job, either their needs won’t be met or they’ll be in worse shape than they were before I interfered. And, like everyone, I have “off” days. It’s very easy, when I’m not doing as well as I’m used to, to panic. This, of course, usually makes the problem worse, either because I can’t focus or because others think I’m mad at them.

It’s usually then that I take a moment to relax. I am beautiful, smart, funny, and caring, and I’m doing the world objective good. Even when I have doubts, myself, I can pick up my phone and call any of my mentors or close friends, and they will tell me the same- and I respect them and trust their judgment. And I will get absolutely nowhere by panicking or doubting myself. So, even when I’ve lost faith, I can run on their faith in me and my own dedication long enough for the confidence to return.

It’s very important to me, then, to make sure to pass on the good, patient, empowering mentoring I’ve experienced to others. I love identifying people who, with encouragement, could reach phenomenal heights, overcome unbelievable obstacles to do real, meaningful, and good things- and then I give them the encouragement and resources they need in order to do so. I’ve seen the difference it made for me, and love watching what it does for others. It’s much easier to get over discouragement at someone else’s problems, because I’m so driven to be helpful- I don’t see failures, I see things yet to be achieved. There’s a layer of disconnect allowing me to look at others’ problems lucidly and logically. And I am generally empowered to overcome my own obstacles by helping others overcome theirs.

I am hopeful that I have passed on the same encouragement and empowerment to my own mentors.

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.