First Post

Welcome to the Blog of Dave Pitts Jr! I am a Gary Comer College Preparatory student, and I am working with the Summer Service Partnership at the University of Chicago to find ways to enrich the Greater Grand Crossing community. Last week on Monday, June 20 2011, my team and I met for the first time at the University of Chicago's bookstore. The first day was a great deal of fun I must say. We all got to know each other by playing icebreaker games such as: Human Knot, Two truth and a lie, and talking about our lives. It took us approximately forty-five minutes to untangle ourselves. We brought a whole new meaning to working closely with each other as we maneuvered around each other. After lunch, my team went to Theater Gates' home where we met a young lady by the name of Hallie. She explained what their mission in the community was, what they were doing to help the community, and what problems they faced with trying to help the community as an outsider. She was very helpful. Finally, we came back to the bookstore and headed home for the day. I have a feeling that this is definitely going to be an interesting summer. I'm looking forward to completing our project! Stay tuned for more post.

Urban Health Initiative Summit

Hi, my name is Kishonna Hall and this past Thursday I attended the Urban Health Initiative summit at the Apostolic Church Of God, on 6320 S. Dorchester. The purpose of the summit was to try to find ways to improve the health of the communities on the South Side of Chicago. There were many people there trying to help increase health access in the community. At the summit there was a breakout session where they split up all the people and put us in different groups and in random rooms. The session was very interesting because everyone brought up some very interesting points about how we should start working in the community by interacting with the citizens and just basically trying to get involved and used to the community. I had never experienced anything like the summit in my life and i actually enjoyed it. The people were very friendly and the food was delicious! I am very grateful for experiencing something so important that is trying to change my community.