Date: Monday, April 8, 2013; 6:00-8:00 pm
The last time I came for this
program, the shirts which we were supposed to be packing, were delivered at a
wrong address. But it had also been a
nice occasion to socialize with people and thus the evening had not been a
total waste. Irina was going to join me
for this one and we decided to go together.
Unfortunately, this involved coordination of where we were going to
meet, a task at which we failed miserably, and so were a bit late in
arriving. But we weren't the only ones
who were late, so was Wilson. We
checked-in with Kelly, our Event Coordinator and looked around to see some
regular One Brick volunteers. One of them was Gary, who is definitely giving Wilson a
run for his money as far as super-volunteers are concerned.
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| The boxes that we had to move |
One of the ‘Girls On The Run’ employees, Christina told us what the task
was. Apparently the offices, that were
supposed to be on the second floor, were also occupying some space in
the basement and the third floor. They
were now vacating those additional rooms and wanted our help in removing all of
their stuff from there, most of which were boxes. There were already some folks working in the
basement and so Irina and I were taken to help out on the third floor. We entered an office room which was devoid of
most furniture, but there were several empty boxes, some of which also needed
to be broken down. All of these needed
to be transferred to the second floor and put in the back of the offices. While Irina took over the job of breaking
these down, I started moving them downstairs.
 |
| The junk piled up in their offices |
There are very few things in life
I dislike more than moving. One of the
main reasons is that I hate carrying boxes and other pieces of furniture from one place to another. Last year was still fresh in my mind as I moved my apartment within the city. There were many evenings leading up to the move day, spent in putting things inside boxes and then stacking them up. I had cursed every minute of it and while today was a bit different than that, it was not something that I enjoyed a lot. I was taking them to the back of the offices on second floor and dumping them on top of other boxes from the
basement. Slowly but surely, this was
creating an ugly pile in the offices and I wondered if they would require One
Brick to come in the next week and take that pile to the dumpster in the back
alley. In fact, Irina and I discussed the
overall task as we collected the garbage on the third floor. To me it felt like the employees of ‘Girls On The Run’ could have easily
given up 30 minutes of their lunch hour for 2 days and done all that we had
done. We all go a bit above and beyond
in our daily job and so there was no reason why they couldn't have done the
same.
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| The shirts- finally delivered |
Once the boxes were done, all
that was left were some folding tables and we brought them down as well. During one of the trips I saw Wilson walk in
and I yelled "Slacker!”. As I had suspected, he had been detained on
one of his other programs. But his
timing was impeccable, since we had just about finished, and it wasn't even
close to 7 pm. Since there was so much
time left, we asked Christina to tell us more about their program. ‘Girls
On The Run’ is an after school program in which over 260 schools
participate. There are currently more
than 6,500 girls in the program, starting with 3rd graders. Besides teaching them life
skills, the program trains girls for the 5K race in June. They give out scholarships and it amounted to
over $260,000 last year. While it is a
fee based national organization and payment is requested, no girl is refused entry due
to lack thereof. I saw their 8 year plan on a board and it
said that amongst other things, they were aiming to have over 51,000 girls
registered by 2021, with a budget of $12 Million. Their current President is an ex-staff member
of Chicago Cares, meaning they have the right leadership in place as they
pursue these goals.
We went to ‘Silver Cloud’ after that and as usual, Wilson was holding court. Irina asked him how many people he knew in
Chicago and he said that he lost count after the first 2000. He claimed that we could walk down Michigan
Avenue and ask people about him and we would encounter many who knew him. I don’t even think he was kidding! We talked about his work with Red Cross and
he showed us some of the ruined sites that he periodically visits. We chatted about some other things as well and although
the project itself had been a disappointment, the rest of the evening had
proven to be as interesting as any other with One Brick.
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