CC Volunteer Interviewed by BNN

Roman Schuster was interviewed on May 16 by BNN, the Canadian version of CNN. You can view the interview here.

Keeping OUR Students Safe This Summer

As we all know there have been over 20 CPS students slain this year, and violence has affected many more. If this violence is taking place in or around the school, we can only imagine what the summer is going to bring. This is why the staff here at Cabrini Connection, Tutor/Mentor Connection wants to be proactive in our efforts to protect our students this summer and provide them with a fun, education, yet safe environment to continue on the path to a successful summer. But we need your help!!!!

We are asking for you to keep in contact with students throughout the summer. Either over the phone, through email, on outings, or by taking advantage of our Open House nights here in the center which are scheduled for Wednesday nights from 6-7:30 p.m. Also encourage the student take advantaged of summer school opportunities, seek and obtain summer employment or interns, and encourage students to enroll in one of the many summer programming opportunities that we are offering this year. We also are asking and encouraging volunteers to get involved as well in the summer planning and programming opportunities this year. We feel that if more and more volunteers get involved in the summer programs then the students will get involved as well. Again, we are trying our best to take any measures to ensure that our students are safe this summer and they continue to learn, grow, expand their social network and skills, and obtain the necessary skills needed for a successful future. And together I know we can do it!!!

If you are interested in assisting with summer programming planning or implementation please contact me and I will gladly find ways in which to get you involved.

Lets Prepare for a Safe Summer,

EL Da' Sheon Nix
Administrative Coordinator
Cabrini Connections

PS: The Great America Trip will be July 26, with a rain delay scheduled for Aug. 2. See the complete summer event schedule.

Year End Dinner Celebration, June 12, 2008

This year's dinner theme is "Coming Together. Growing Together."

We hope our current and former students and volunteers, our leaders, parents and other supporters will join with us on June 12th to celebrate the work students and volunteers have done during this 2007-08 school year, and to help us kick off summer activities, and the 2008-09 school year.

In the Lion King movies, the Circle of Life was a main theme. At Cabrini Connections we have a "cycle of tutoring/mentoring" that starts at the beginning of one school year, and continues through the end of that year, and into the following year.

We have two seniors this spring, who will join more than 520 other students who have attended Cabrini Connections one to seven consecutive years since 1993. While these students are headed for the next stage of their lives, and still need our help so that they successfully negotiate the challenges of college, work, and families, most of our kids are 7th to 11th graders, who will need our support next year, and for the next several years.

Thus, the dinner is a fund raising event, as well as a fun and warm celebration of the relationships that form at Cabrini Connections.

In leading up to the dinner we're hoping that some of our alumni, both students and volunteers, will post message on this blog, or in our Facebook or MySpace communities, to tell us what they are doing now, and to tell us how Cabrini Connections, or the mentors they have met through Cabrini Connections, have had an impact in their lives. We'd also like current volunteers and students to post their own reflections.

Student, volunteer and alumni stories are as important as the stories of what has happened in the past year because they show the real potential of programs like this. They show that we can reduce the isolation of poverty by creating a network of youth and adults that stay connected in many ways, for many years beyond high school.

Thank you to Courtland Madock and Gabriel Rodriguez, who are the co-chairs of this year's dinner. They deserve a lot of credit for it's success, along with a team of volunteers who are helping them.

Here are some links to follow to learn more about the dinner, making a donation, or connecting on-line:

Donor page - http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate

Facebook page - here

MySpace page - here

Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Ning.com

Cabrini Connections would like to welcome Mr. Burt Blachard!!!

As our tutoring sessions begin to come to a end for this academic year, we continue to carry out our mission of connecting our youth to resources that can and will assist them with preparing for the future. On May 8th, 2008 during our Thursday night tutoring session we are providing an opportunity to do just that, connect the youth to a very respected and beneficial resource. Mr. Burt Blanchard will be our guest speaker for the night and will be addressing our middle school students, their mentors, and the Thursday night staff. Mr. Blachard, whose bio will be located in the weekly newsletter, has the ability to not only talk about the importance of staying in school and focusing on a career, but also to talk about the specific opportunities that exist in his field (Supply Chain Logistics/Management). We are honored to have Mr. Blanchard here as a guest speaker and we hope that this experience will be beneficial for the volunteers as well as the students.
Tutors/Mentors we would also like to encourage you to take this experience one step further and use this as another opportunity to get and keep your students motivated and driven for the colleges and careers of their choice in the future. You can have them begin to write their own 5 year plans, career plans and goals, or have them attempt to get an intern at an organization they could see themselves at in the future.
Student's, volunteers, and Cabrini Connection staff, lets welcome Mr. Burt Blanchard with open arms!

EL Da' Sheon Nix
Administrative Coordinator
Cabrini Connections