Location: Chicago Cares Offices
Date: Saturday, October 19, 2013; 10:45 am-12:30 pm
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| Sweeeet |
Faithful readers will recall my triple-header
on ‘Valentine’s Day’ earlier in the
year. I had three things on my calendar for
today and it also happened to be the ‘Sweetest
Day’, Valentine’s Day counterpart in the Fall. I had been unaware of this one and after a
quick search on the trusted ‘Wikipedia’,
I learned that this was in fact a “holiday”
celebrated primarily in the Great Lakes region and one where “females shower men with gifts and sweets”. Well then, sign me up! My first stop was at the Chicago Care’s
offices, which happen to be near the ‘French
Market’. On a beautiful October
morning, I walked over there and treated myself to a nice Italian Chocolate
drink for breakfast. I wasn’t going to wait around for any woman to shower me
with sweets when chocolate is at stake.
I had already shadowed Youth In
Services (YIS) projects thrice, even taking an active role the previous time. However, Joyce at Chicago Cares wanted
to make it official and asked me to come in for a leadership training
session. Actually, this was Chicago
Cares’ quarterly Leadership Training and YIS was a breakout
group. She told me that since I had already done it, I did not have
to be there for the common training. So while the session had begun at 9 am, I
showed up at 10:45, just in time for YIS training. I was directed to a room with two other
trainees, Keisha and Veronica. Since all
of us had previously shadowed at YIS, we started by discussing some of our
experiences and I talked about my time at the Ruth Shriman apartments and they
shared their stories as well. One of the
points I made was that YIS was unique because you get to train the next
generation of volunteers and leaders, while serving the community. As we were having this discussion, another
trainee Tom joined us.
Joyce then handed us small cheat
sheets with different scenarios to discuss – an exercise I have done at all of
the other training sessions. I read the first
scenario which was, “What would you do
if the youth are running late”.
Well, I said that it was funny you should ask since this is exactly what
had happened at my previous YIS project.
I told the group how we had switched things up a bit by having Bingo
first while we cooked. Everyone agreed
that this was the right approach, though I did caution that since the youth
have to leave at a certain time, by leaving the dinner for later, you may not
get a chance to complete the clean-up; also something that we had
encountered. Next scenario was a one
where the youth are not interested in the activity and have been coerced into
attending. We discussed how it is
important to communicate to them why we were doing this project; how it impacts the community and the people
directly. But the main thing is to
deliver this message in a way that gets them excited. Finally, there was a scenario where the chaperon
was not being helpful. Hmm, this was
interesting one. The youth usually take
their lead from the adults and if the chaperon with them was being difficult,
it would make our job as leaders more tedious. But the worst thing we could do was get into
an argument with the chaperon in front of the youth. I said that everyone has a bad day and it
could be the same for the chaperon. The
right thing would be to take them aside and ask “How can I help you?”
Showing that courtesy may get them to help out and it would also help to
give them actual tasks to do.
Before we left, we had a
reflection game where Joyce would throw a foam piece that was shaped like a brain at someone, and
the person holding that was allowed to speak.
Everyone spoke about what they liked about the program, and many echoed
what I had said earlier. When my turn
came to speak on what were our main concerns, I mentioned safety – with the burn
marks still fresh on my fingers. We
discussed how it was important to fill out accident reports and mention everything. Also, in case of a cooking project where
knives were involved, it was our duty to ask everyone if they were comfortable
handling knives and if they said no, move them to another task. Our training was done and we discussed some
of the other Chicago Cares programs before leaving. I told them about my hilarious experience at
Caroline Hedger Apartments and while I meant it as a humorous anecdote, I saw
Joyce taking notes. Uh Oh. But it had been a useful session and I felt
like I was prepared to lead a YIS project.
Now it was just waiting for the right opportunity. Well, there had been no “showering of sweets” here, but I had certainly enjoyed it a
lot. Onward to the next project.
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