By Maureen Kelleher/LISC Chicago
On October 30th Perspectives-Calumet Middle School hosted a visit from Adolfo Carrión, Jr., director of the White House Office on Urban Affairs, who said he hoped to replicate initiatives like the school's Elev8 program.
In Chicago to address a conference of LISC/Chicago’s New Communities Program, Carrion toured the school, met with a sixth-grade class and visited the
school-based health center that’s the centerpiece of LISC’s Elev8 program in five middle schools. (The Perspectives health center has received over 1,000 students visits since opening in May 2009!)
Adolfo
Carrion tours Perspectives-Calumet Middle School with (from left)
Principal Tamara Davis and Elev8 Director Tenisha Jones. Photo: Eric Young Smith
“He was very impressed with the health center,” said Tenisha Jones, Elev8 director for Perspectives and the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation (GADC). “I heard him say, ‘We need more of this.’ ”
The
visit presented an opportunity to showcase the Elev8 model to a
high-level representative of the Obama administration. President Obama
created the Office on Urban Affairs last February, with the mission to develop a national strategy to help
cities and their surrounding suburbs increase jobs, housing and quality
of life.
Carrión, a city planner, grew up in New York City’s
Bronx borough and served two terms as borough president before Obama
tapped him to lead the new office. As a New Yorker, Carrión is very
familiar with the Harlem Children's Zone, a comprehensive effort to help children and families within a defined geographic area.
The
Zone began in 1997 serving a 24-block section of Harlem. By 2007 its
network of services, including parenting workshops, charter schools and
programs to manage asthma and obesity, were serving 7,400 children and
more than 4,100 adults over nearly 100 blocks.
Carrion visits the health center at Perspectives, about which he said: "We need to do more of this." Photo: Eric Young Smith
When
Chicago Elev8 partners compared their work to the Harlem effort, “He
understood that,” said Carlos Nelson, executive director of GADC.
Representatives
from Chicago Elev8 will attend a national conference in New York
November 9-10 to learn more about the Harlem Children’s Zone and the
Obama administration’s effort to replicate their success through a
national Promise Neighborhoods Initiative.
Back in Chicago,
Carrión also connected with the young man who took his photo for the
Perspectives yearbook, sharing that he too had worked on the yearbook
when he was in school.
“It was a really, really good time,” said
Principal Tamara Davis. “Not just seeing the school, but visiting the
South Side of Chicago and seeing really good and positive things
regarding academics and living a healthy lifestyle.”
