Photo/JUAN FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ, New Communities Program

Summer in the city has meant no shortage of outdoor activities in New Communities Program neighborhoods, ranging from the annual Basketball on the Block and Hoops in the Hood basketball leagues, to a blooming array of farmers markets and street festivals of all varieties.

The B-Ball/Hoops program, which combines basketball for youth, arts activities, health screenings, and a police presence to ensure the peace is kept, has tipped off in nine neighborhoods: Auburn Gresham, Back of the Yards, East Garfield Park, Englewood, Humboldt Park, Little Village, North Lawndale, Pilsen and West Haven. (More on farmers markets and street fests here.)

NCP lead agencies Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp., Enlace Chicago, Lawndale Christian Development Corp., The Resurrection Project, Teamwork Englewood, and Near West Side CDC are managing or co-managing their leagues. GADC is paired with In the Paint, Teamwork Englewood is working with Safety Nets, and Enlace is holding court alongside Beyond the Ball.

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Adults of Puerto Rican heritage who live in Humboldt Park have Type 2 Diabetes at thrice the average national rate, or about 21 percent of the population, according to research performed from 2002-06 by Sinai Urban Health Institute.

To combat this scourge – and its accompanying conditions like blindness, kidney failure and the need for amputation – Diabetes Block Captains this summer will start going door-to-door as part of Block-By-Block: The Greater Humboldt Park Community Campaign Against Diabetes.

The campaign, funded through the National Institutes for Health, is aimed at intervening to create awareness and education, improve early diagnosis, and provide resources for self-management for those who have Type 2 Diabetes or are at high risk for contracting it.

“The community needs more information about the risks,” said Digna Gerena, a block captain for Block-By-Block who will help raise awareness, and a diabetic herself. “It has different effects on everyone. I feel hyper to do some exercise, I am thirsty all the time, and sometimes I want to sleep. Some people are always hungry.”

On April 23, about 100 stakeholders gathered to celebrate the opening of the Greater Humboldt Park Community Diabetes Empowerment Center, which will serve as a hub for the Block-By-Block effort and provide treatment and information for patients, their families and other community members.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center, located at 2753 W. Division St., brought together the partners to the effort: Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, The Greater Humboldt Park Community of Wellness, Rush University Medical Center, Sinai Urban Health Institute, and Norwegian American Hospital.

“This is a community-run center working in partnership with the hospitals,” said Jaime Delgado, project director for Sinai. “This is a symbol of what people can do working together as a community. … This facility is set up to be multi-purpose.”

Delgado elaborated on the purpose during the quarterly Community of Wellness meeting on May 19. The four block captains in Block-By-Block will be going door-to-door with notepad computers to capture client data, which will then be forwarded to Rush and analyzed. They expect about 1,300 to 2,000 of those surveyed to be diagnosed with diabetes.

The empowerment center will attempt to bring a new level of cultural competency to outreach efforts, Delgado said. “We don’t want to impose this on people; we want an empowering model,” he said. “If we just tell them our way … it’s not a reciprocal communication.”

The center will have exercise programming, educational videos, a specialized nurse on hand, and a demonstration kitchen with a full-time dietician providing cooking advice for diabetics and those at risk.

Dr. Steven K. Rothschild of Rush University Medical Center read a bittersweet note at the center’s opening in April.

“It’s a really exciting day. We’ve been working a long time to make this possible,” he said. “The reason behind this project isn’t such a joy. Too many people in Humboldt Park have diabetes and complications from diabetes. For that reason, I wish I wasn’t here today.”

The center will serve as the home base of Block-By-Block, Rothschild said.

“The campaign is being born today,” he said. “Block-By-Block happens out there. You talk to your neighbors, the people you work with, the people you go to church with. The minute we pin one of these buttons on you, you’re deputized.”

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26^th) said he hoped the center would improve people’s self-management of diabetes and praised the partners to the effort.

“You don’t feel any symptoms until it’s too late … and you have to have your toes amputated,” he said. “Without your commitment, without your sacrifice, without your perseverance, this never would have happened.”

Speaking shortly before the May 19 Community of Wellness meeting, held at the center, Executive Director Juana Ballesteros described it as “a monumental and innovative effort. It tackles diabetes not using the traditional medical model. To get at the root cause, you need to work at the community level and in people’s daily lives, to understand what’s impacting them.

“The work being done in Humboldt Park, in general, is taking a holistic, wellness, prevention approach,” she said. “That ultimately will have a much bigger impact. It’s not giving people a hand-out, it’s giving them a hand up.”

“If they don’t have Medicare or insurance, we will send them to a free clinic,” said Gerena, a healthcare research assistant at Rush, in addition to being a block captain. “I didn’t take [proper tests in time], believe me. It’s not a game. It’s so serious.”

Attendees to the ribbon-cutting had the opportunity to tour the new center during an open house held after the remaining speakers, who included Ballesteros; Emma Lozano, executive director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras; Alan Channing, CEO of Sinai Health System; Myrna Pedersen, interim administrator at Norweigan American Hospital; Dr. Steve Whitman, director of Sinai Urban Health Institute; and Jose E. Lopez, executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

Fifteen students, most of them from Orr High School, sat around a storefront in Humboldt Park last Wednesday night, taking turns role-playing situations encountered by security guards in their school – and discussing better and worse ways of handling them.

One student, portraying a guard, watched an argument between two students escalate into a fight and then roughly subdued one of the contenders, who ends up in a choke hold.

How often does this kind of thing happen, the students are asked.  ”Every day” is the response from several of them.

The students, members of the Blocks Together Youth Council, say they routinely witness or experience inappropriate behavior by school security guards. In a survey of Chicago Public School students across the city, they gathered reports of guards cursing and insulting students; sexually harassing them; failing to prevent fights, and even instigating and initiating them; and using excessive force, including beating and paddling students.

Too often security guard misconduct “contributes to an unsafe learning environment,” said Blocks Together Youth Council youth organizer Ana Mercado.

“Their approach leads to more conflict and tension,” she said.

And while she said there are guards who focus on problem-solving over punishment, “it’s not just a few bad apples who are unprofessional, it’s a natural extension of the zero-tolerance mentality.

“If you think kids only learn if you are harsh on them, if that’s the only recourse you have, then if it doesn’t work there’s nothing for you to do but go harder, and you end up beating kids up.”

Blocks Together Youth Council maintains that one of the most direct ways to promote a “culture of calm” in CPS high schools is to revamp security guard training to include an introduction to restorative justice principles. They say an interactive workshop format could help guards think through ways of reacting to immature and disruptive behavior in a professional manner.

And they’ve been pushing, with limited success, for a seat at the table as CPS revises its security guard training, arguing that young people’s perspective is crucial.

As participants worked through different scenarios – a student who shows up without a shirt, another who refuses to remove a hat – they talked about how to apply restorative justice principles, which were posted on hand-written signs around the room, the importance of listening, of relationships, of taking into account individuals’ needs, of problem solving, of considering the larger community, and of modeling the behavior you want to see.

The group had expected Michael Shields, chief of security for CPS, at the meeting.  At a previous meeting, he’d asked for a demonstration of how restorative justice principles could be applied to training for school security guards, and this date was subsequently set, they say.

But when Blocks Together Youth Council called to confirm the meeting, they were told it wasn’t on Shields’ schedule, said Orr student Edward Ward.  When they inquired at the school board meeting earlier that day, Shields spoke with them briefly and said something personal had come up that morning.

Ward noted the discrepancy – if it had come up that morning, why wasn’t it on his schedule days earlier?

“We’re angry about that,” Ward said.

On one wall of the office hangs a sheet with a list of agreements including Blocks Together Youth Council’s involvement in revising security guard training, and in monitoring and evaluating trainings, and ensuring that training includes an introduction to restorative justice, discussions of the developmental needs of youth and the proper role of adult professionals, and an interactive format.  At the bottom is Shields’ signature.

Shields has since backtracked on several promises, Mercado said, including allowing group members to observe trainings.  At the meeting last October where that agreement was signed, Shields also agreed to provide a copy of the current curriculum for guard training, said Blocks Together Youth Council, organizer Ana Mercado; to date, that promise hasn’t been kept, she said.

CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond couldn’t address specifics of discussions between Shields and the group but said a comprehensive review of security guard training is underway as part of the district’s anti-violence plan.

Misconduct by guards should be reported to teachers, principals or the district’s inspector general, she said.

“These are very serious allegations, and the only way to address them is to file a formal complaint,” she said.

“For young people there’s a lot of fear of backlash from security guards if they hear about a complaint,” said Mercado.  “We’re trying to deal with the problem preventively.”

Blocks Together Youth Council has been supporting an effort to establish a confidential grievance process for students to report incidents of violence and harassment in school, a campaign being spearheaded by GenderJust, which has carried out a series of direct actions.

“Right now there’s not really a process,” said Sam Finkelstein, an organizer for the LGBT group.  “You complain somehow, maybe you tell the principal and if you’re lucky, it gets acted on.  There’s no followup, no oversight.”

Blocks Together Youth Council has worked on this issue for years (Newstips first covered their efforts in 2002), organizing high school youth, working to bring restorative justice to local elementary schools, helping to establish a peer jury at Orr High School. With limited administrative support and resources, school-by-school efforts have had limited success, Mercado said.

Now she wonders whether the call by  CPS chief Ron Huberman for guards to act as mentors to students will be anything more than “lip service.”

Lee remembers her first day of work last September, being nervous as she took the elevator to the 22nd floor of a Chicago high-rise. Her nerves soon settled, and now she completes daily office tasks with ease and confidence.

This is her second year participating in the corporate work-study program at Christ the King College Preparatory High School, which just moved classes to a new $28 million facility in Austin.

“I think it’s a great experience. It’s teaching me what my mom and other adults go through. I’m working to pay a part of my tuition, and I’m learning a lot of new things,” Lee said.

Lee, who — like many of the students attending Christ the King — lives in Austin, hopes to become a lawyer.

All of the 162 students at Christ the King participate in the work-study program once a week at over 160 participating employers around the city. Lee, along with the three other students in her “work-team,” alternates workdays throughout the week to provide the manpower for one full-time, entry-level position at Community Investment Corp. located in the Near West Side community.

“We saw that it was a great opportunity for students who are just coming out of grade school to know what it is to work. Even though the kids are young, they’ve done a great job,” said Monica Kirby, office manager at Community Investment Corp.

Fran Thompson, communications director for Christ the King, said the program creates an opportunity that students wouldn’t normally get from a traditional classroom setting.

“For some students, working these jobs gives them their first visit to the Loop, and there they are going up an elevator in a skyscraper to work in a financial office,” Thompson said.

Christ the King is part of a national group of 24 Jesuit schools operated by the Cristo Rey Network. Although this is the school’s second year in Austin, it moved into the new 100,000-square-foot, three story building earlier this month. The school is located at 5088 W. Jackson Blvd., on the site of the former Resurrection Parish.

Each one of the 24 Cristo Rey Network nationwide schools, including one in Pilsen, employs the work-study program.

“The premise began as a solution,” said Preston Kendall, vice-president of the corporate work-study program. “We wanted to open a college prep high school what would serve families with limited resources, and we wanted a model where we wouldn’t need to raise tuition.”

The work done by students in local businesses funds 65 percent of each student’s tuition, said Kendall. The other 35 percent is made up of family contribution and scholarships.

“It started out as a solution to a financial problem, but we soon discovered very quickly that this is a multi-faceted program. It gives students ownership of earning their education,” said Kendall.

Studies done by the Cristo Rey Network showed a need for schools in Austin, a community of more than 100,000 with high unemployment and no neighborhood public high school, said Thompson, communication director for Christ the King. It found that Austin needs 14,000 seats for students, yet only offers 7,000.

“There is a humongous shortage in this area,” Thompson said.

When at full capacity, the new school should hold around 600 students. The school, which currently has 162 students, will add a new class each year, Thompson said. It is currently running with only a freshman and sophomore class.

“We are not trying to only pull the cream of the crop students here, we are also looking for the average and above-average, hard-working students who otherwise may have fallen through the crack,” she said.

Kendall said the admissions office at Christ the King looks at academic and financial history, yet concentrates mostly on past behavior and attendance reports.

Currently, the majority of Christ the King students are coming from a few key areas, said Kendall, including: East and West Garfield Park, Lawndale, Humboldt Park and Austin.