Birthday Celebrations At Cabrini Connections

A person's birthday is considered by many to be one of the most special days of the year because it is like your own personal holiday. This is a day where people receive gifts, have a party, get cards, or simply get a lot of "Happy Birthdays" from family and friends.

Here at Cabrini Connections, we strive to make birthdays special to all the students, volunteers, and staff that make up the program. In Cabrini Connections, we designate the first Wednesday and Thursday tutoring/mentoring sessions of the month to recognize those who are celebrating a birthday that month. During our announcements we ask all of those celebrating a birthday to either stand where they are at in the room or to come to the front to state their name, birthday, and age (optional) to the group in the room. We then make sure everybody claps and really just make sure those celebrating a birthday feel special about their birthday.


We then follow the recognition by having a special birthday snack and beverage for all in the program. Typically the staff or volunteers who sign up for snacks brings in cupcakes, cookies, and other fun desserts for the group, and all share in eating the snacks before leaving the program for the night, and these nights are always pretty fun for all.

For the February birthday celebration Thursday night Volunteer Coordinator, John Knight, went above and beyond the typical birthday celebration. John Knight, who is also celebrating a birthday in the month of February, had catered food from Quench. The staff, students, and volunteers last Thursday had chicken, mac and cheese, fish, rice, cake and MORE to help celebrate the birthdays for the month of February!!! The Cabrini Connections' program would like to thank John Knight for this opportunity on Thursday and to new volunteers Tim Minton and Jessica Newberg for the great birthday snacks for the Wednesday session.

And since the Cabrini Connections' program is always looking to help others, we went above and beyond the call of duty to brighten the day of some of Chicago's less fortunate, the homeless. On Friday afternoon, I packaged up the remaining food from the Thursday celebration and drove to the North Ave exit off the 90/94 highway and provided food, plates, cups, napkins, and some bottled water to those populated the area.

So what started off as a great gesture by a Cabrini Connections' volunteer, turned out to be an even bigger act of giving and sharing, and that is what Cabrini Connections and those who make up the program are all about. If you would like to help us in our efforts to help others, please make a donation to the Cabrini Connections' program here.