8th Annual Meeting Features Change Makers Once a year the North Lawndale Employment Network has the opportunity to honor a few of the many people and organizations that believe in our work and support us throughout the year. On September 12, 2007 at our eighth annual membership meeting, we were delighted to recognize our Creating a Community that Works awardees and new board members, report on our many accomplishments of the year, hear from some of our most successful clients, and feature the words of an admirable change-maker, Dr. Jocelyn Sargent of the Kellogg Foundation, as our special guest speaker. More than 200 friends and members attended this year's event, held at the Sinai Community Institute. In addition, Sweet Beginnings employees worked a sales table and NLEN friends bought more than $600 in Beeline products. In the last year, NLEN received a number of prestigious awards recognizing the important work that we do. These include the MacArthur Foundation's inaugural Creative and Effective Institutions Award, Shorebank's Community Impact Award, and Social Venture Network's Imagine What's Next: Ideas that Will Change the Way the World Does Business award. Also, NLEN CEO Brenda Palms Barber was honored as an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow. We are proud to see that the world recognizes our accomplishments. But, "We receive the biggest award daily - the success of a participant moving from being in need toward self-sufficiency," added outgoing Board President Bob Wordlaw. Three of these successful program alumni shared some of their personal experiences at the meeting. Rolando Davis, Going Home Program alumnus, spoke of entering U-Turn Permitted thinking that no one could help him. But NLEN did help him "focus on where I want to go," which is pursuit of a career as a professional photographer. Rolando now attends the Harrington College of Design, is employed, and occasionally contracts as a photographer for private events. Lakeshia Rhone brought the room to tears when she told her story. After having to borrow 50 cents to call NLEN on her first day out of prison, this U-Turn Permitted graduate is now employed, interested in completing her education, and dreams of working in a job where she can help other women returning from incarceration. She said she "never imagined I would be in the presence of such caring people only six months after release." Lorenzo Rowell had an eighth grade education and was homeless when he entered the Building Beyond Young Adult Program 22 months ago. He is now a freshman at Chicago State University and Microsoft Office certified. NLEN honored these three people and their successes as examples of how NLEN helps clients help themselves. NLEN honored five partners with our Creating a Community that Works award. We recognized two Board members, Richard Kordesh, Bluehouse Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Bob Wordlaw, Chicago Jobs Council, for their outstanding service to NLEN. John Hansen, the volunteer beekeeper at NLEN's subsidiary, Sweet Beginnings, LLC, has been teaching our transitional jobs employees the art of beekeeping and is much appreciated for sharing his art with us. We recognized Bea Reyna Hickey of the City of Chicago Department of Revenue for her "Pioneering in Policy." Ms. Hickey is responsible for getting the City to hire NLEN clients with criminal records in city jobs as collections agents through a contract with CTI, Inc. NLEN also recognized the Emloyment Project for "Outstanding Collaboration in Service" for its Community Voice Mail project. The Employment Project is responsible for providing 75 voice mail boxes to NLEN clients and many more to other people across the city who do not have the means to get their own phone numbers. This year, Bob Wordlaw passed the board presidency on to another dedicated board member, Cerathal Burnett. NLEN also added new board members Esther Franco-Payne of Metropolis 2020, Michael Kramer of the Boeing Company, and Steven Casey of the MacArthur Foundation. Each of these new board members have been supporting NLEN over the last year or longer and we look forward to new roles for them. Ms. Franco Payne commented, "I am so excited and encouraged by the work that NLEN does every day. They truly make a difference in the lives of people." Michael Kramer is looking forward to helping NLEN "reshape the community and give people the tools and opportunities to put their lives on a different, productive path." A presentation by Dr. Jocelyn Sargent was the highlight of this year's meeting. A program director with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Sargent is also a fan of the North Lawndale Employment Network. Dr. Sargent spoke of race, social justice, and economic development related to neighborhood-based initiatives like NLEN, and how they operate in a community context. She brought the audience to several moments of silence when she read a passage from W.E.B. DuBois' Dusk of Dawn, capturing the essence of the struggle of African American communities like North Lawndale. "It is difficult to let others see the full psychological meaning of caste segregation. It is as though on, looking out from a dark cave in a side of an impending mountain, sees the world passing and speaks to it, speaks courteously and persuasively, showing them how these entombed souls are hindered in their natural movement, expression, and development, and how their loosening from prison would be a matter not simply of courtesy, sympathy, and help to them, but aid to all the world. One talks on evenly and logically in this way but notices that the passing throng does not even turn its head, or if it does, glances curiously and walks on. It gradually penetrates the minds of the prisoners that the people passing do not hear, that some thick sheet of invisible but horribly tangible plate of glass is between them and the world. They get excited, they talk louder, they gesticulate. Some of the passing world stop in curiosity, the gesticulations seem so pointless, they laugh and pass on. They still either do not hear at all, or hear but dimly, and even what they hear, they do not understand. Then the people within may become hysterical. They may scream and hurl themselves against the barriers, hardly realizing in their bewilderment that they are screaming in a vacuum unheard and that their antics may actually seem funny to those outside looking in. They may even, here and there, break through in blood and disfigurement, and find themselves faced by a horrified, implacable, and quite overwhelming mob of people frightened for their very own existence." She explained, "This describes a lot of our isolated communities today, and what we are going through trying to achieve the success that America promised its citizens." However, it is organizations like NLEN that are addressing these struggles, and NLEN is an organization that offers an "innovative practice" that is "not just a job training program, but something that leads to community sustainability." She commented that she is "heartened by the diversity in the room - across race, ethnicity and sector - and NLEN's ability to engage all stakeholders, especially residents, to invest in neighborhood-based efforts and to work to dismantle structural racism to result in just and successful outcomes." She finished with a quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu: "Do your little bit of good where you are. It's those little bits of good together that overwhelm the world." She reminded us that NLEN is doing such good, "To make North Lawndale a just and equitable model of community building and economic development."
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