At City Year Chicago, there’s a very unique team that serves alongside our sixteen school-based teams working to improve student’s attendance, behavior, and course performance. While this special team may not be in schools day-to-day, they are hard at work hard behind the scenes bringing new champions to our organization and improving the lives of Chicago’s students at a whole other level.
City Year Chicago’s Civic Engagement (CE) team is responsible for providing Chicago communities with excellent service beyond our daily service in public schools. The team engages community members, elected officials, other nonprofits, companies, and the public in transformative, sustainable, and inspiring service.
Recently, the CE team wrapped up work on a large-scale service project in Chicago’s southside Englewood community where they were joined by over 400 volunteer associates from Hyatt who completed beautification and construction benefiting Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Earle Elementary School, and the Abraham Lincoln Center. Projects ranged from mural painting to bench and bookshelf construction and Earle Elementary even got help organizing its library’s collection of unshelved books. Over the course of just one half-day, the level of transformation and enhancement to the student and community learning environments was incredible.
The work of the CE team is never done, though, as already they’re knee-deep in preparations for City Year Chicago’s largest community service day of the year: the Martin Luther King Day of Service. This year, Chicago’s North Lawndale community will welcome over 800 volunteers for a day of powerful service in three of the community’s most prominent public institutions: The Northlawndale YMCA, the Bethune School of Excellence, and Powerhouse High School.
Be sure to stay tuned to the blog in the coming days for more about the MLK Day of Service and the fine work of City Year Chicago’s Civic Engagement team!
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