Ahora un poco del trabajo!!

Work this week has been interesting. I went to go buy a bike because I have been wanting to commute to work and back on a bicycle and was informed by one of my coworkers about a co-op called Working Bikes. Pete, The other intern, and I went to go and try and buy a bike each and since we were there and Lily the youth coordinator had asked me to see if their was any bikes for under $40 for the youth, I instead asked if I could get bikes donated for our organization. And it worked. I talked to Jesse who actually was the store manager and gave him a business card and he said it would be easy to donate the bikes to our organization! so it looks as if we have some bikes coming our way:) The great thing about this and why I am getting excited about it is because we not only found uses for the youth but also for everyone in the office to be able to go on bikes to do outreach within the communities, help us get out of the use of cars and set the example for the community. The other great thing is that we can use it for smaller groups that will be going on Toxic tours. Toxic Tours are run by LVEJO and they take you throughout different parts of little village and demonstrate some of the most polluted areas of Little Village. So you can get a better understanding of this all, here is a bit of facts that come from LVEJO:

Throughout the past ten years, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization has collaborated with a number of CPS grammar schools and high schools. The vast continuum of projects range from environmental education to community actions all geared toward raising awareness of the hazards posed by the carbon emissions released by the coal-fired power plants. The region’s largest coal-burning electrical generating plant (Crawford Station) is in Little Village, releasing 18 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, with 75% of the total particulate matter in the community each year. 46.8% of the population of Little Village is living in Dirty Diesel Hot Spots as documented by the Chicago Metropolitan Lung Association Dirty Diesel/Asthma Report in 1999. The prevalence rate for asthma is over 15% and childhood lead poisoning is over 20%.

LVEJO invested over two years of paid staff time to develop the Community Asset Toxic Tours (CATT), which take community and non-community members on a tour of some of the most polluted areas of Little Village and allow them to see the everyday struggle the residents of the area have to go through.

m This should allow you to understand some of the severe problems they go through in this part of town. But not only does this happen here but also across the United States the majority of pollution is in the minority neighborhoods! This is for sure something that needs to be fixed.

I also was able to meet someone that was a school counselor and learn that even if you are an undocumented Immigrant you can still go to many of the ivy league schools because they are privately funded and would consider you an international student and not ask you for a social security number. the other interesting fact is that 5 years back the rate of students from Little Village going to college after High school was 11% and now with the hard work and dedication of the school and the counselors the rate went to 57%!

I also sat in for a presentation from 2 student from Northwestern University, Virgina and Beth, here in Chicago and they worked on a plan for an area of land the organization has been able to recuperate and will soon be a community garden with a park for kids. What I really enjoyed about the presentation is that they were trying to use rain to water the plants. The rain would be trapped in a tank and the pressure for it to be used would come from the merry-go-round every time it spins making giving it some extra pressure for the water to come out the hose. The other thing that was great is that they actually researched plants that were native to the region vice another presentation that just wanted European plants.

Also this week I have been preparing for this weekend where I will be introduced to the community that I will be working with and trying to motivate them to get organized and fix the problem of polluted soil on a plot of land in front of their houses. So I have been doing a lot of research lately and doing some role play in case they have questions for me at the time. I am also creating a questionnaire for them to figure out what the majority of their problems are, other than this plot of land.