Dreams Become Reality for Former Mentee and Mentor!

Below is a GREAT story of the power of the Cabrini Connections' program and how not only the students benefit from being involved in the program, but how the volunteers that work with the students benefit from seeing all of their hard work, dedication, and commitment pay off. This is not only another great entry in the Cabrini Connections' story, but another example of why programs like Cabrini Connections need to be put in place in neighborhoods all over the country.

Just wanted to share with all of you that a couple of weeks before Christmas I had the distinct honor of watching Diara Fleming graduate from Northern Illinois University. It was one of the most amazing things I have witnessed. In just over 4 years, Diara has worked her way through NIU to graduate with a GPA of over 3.0. She plans to go on to graduate school as soon as possible.

For those of you who don't know Diara, she was a bright student at both Cabrini Green Tutoring and the Cabrini Connections. She graduated from Walter Peyten High School and went straight to NIU. Although the road was not easy for her- Diara has done tremendously through her career at NIU and I am confident she will accomplish amazing things. Diara will tell you that she could not have graduated without the support of many others outside of her family which simply did not provide the support she needed.

I tell you this not to be boastful in any way of my involvement- but to stress how critical it is for programs like Cabrini to continuing pairing up tutors/mentors so they have the support network they need to be successful.

Wishing everyone at Cabrini a very Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Courtland

Beards For Kids! Support Cabrini Connections!

Fellow Tutor/Mentors,

Along with a few friends, I created BeardsForKids.org this week to raise money for Cabrini Connections. Check out the site: http://beardsforkids.org/ (Also, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beards-For-Kids/107547929317605

I'm wondering if any of the male tutors would be interested in participating...AND if any of the female tutors might be able to get any of their male friends to participate, as well!

The idea is to try to raise $10 per day per person up until New Years. I think this is a very modest goal and that together we can build a critical mass to really make this a success!

I've included a short email below to make it easy. Please let me know if you're in by sending me a note and a picture of you sans beard!

Thank you!

Gabriel
312.804.0228
______________________________________________________________
Here’s an email you can send to friends and family:

Dear Friends,

This holiday season I’m participating in the Beards For Kids 2010 Challenge. I’ll be growing a beard from now until the end of the holidays and have a goal of raising $10 per day for Cabrini Connections http://cabriniconnections.net , a program in Chicago that helps underserved kids finish high school with the goal of moving on to complete college and have successful careers.

The program has helped countless students during its almost 20 years of existence, and I want to make sure they’re able to continue doing the good work that they do!

Please help me reach my goal by donating here today: http://www.firstgiving.com/beardsforkids

Thank you and happy holidays!

--Gabriel Chapman

2nd Quarter Perfect Attendance Recognition

The Cabrini Connections tutoring/mentoring quarters closely relate to the grading periods that our students follow in their schools. Our 2nd Quarter, which we consider our Winter quarter, began on Jan 14, 2009 and just ended on March 26, 2009. And for anybody who has lived in an area in the world where it gets as cold as a Chicago winter will truly understand and appreciate the news that I am about to announce.

Through the cold, windy, snowy, and sometimes...below minus 10 degrees and blizzard conditions we had several of our students and volunteers made an effort to beat the elements and attend every scheduled tutoring/mentoring session during the 2nd quarter!!!

The STUDENTS that earned Perfect Attendance Recognition:

Gregory Hatchett

Yolanda Hyles

Angelene Hemphill

Whitney Hemphill

Ashaunti Roby

Cierria Tharpe

The VOLUNTEERS that earned Perfect Attendance Recognition:

Jen Jozwik

Mike Jozwik

Stephanie Rogers

Carla Reyes

Alexandria Hill

Jacqueline Shay

Steve Pawlik

Sarah Randag

We truly want to thank each and every student and volunteer who had perfect attendance during the 2nd quarter, and to all of the other students and volunteers who made an effort to attend the program throughout the entire quarter. As staff we truly appreciate your dedication and commitment to not just the program, but to putting yourself in a position to be something GREAT in life!

~Keep up the great work during the 3rd Quarter as well!!!~

Sportscenter's Top 10 Plays...Cabrini Connections' Style

If you are person who loves sports, then I'm sure it is safe to say that Sportscenter is one of your top 5 shows on television. True, there is sport's radio, the sport's section of the newspaper, Sports Illustrated, but ESPN's Sportscenter is where millions of people turn to to catch the latest in sports. And on Sportscenter the Top 10 plays of the week is what catches the eye and attention of many of the viewers of the show. Where else can you witness the most amazing dunks, deepest home runs, and those unbelievable catches from your favorite college and NFL receivers.

Following 'Top 10 Plays of the Week" segment, Cabrini Connections would like to go one step further and show our fans our "Top 10 Plays of the Quarter." Cabrini Connections program is broken into quarters very similar to the grading periods in which our students follow in their various schools, and we are in our last week of our 2nd Quarter (Winter Quarter). I would like to to take the time now to announce our "Top 10 Plays of the Quarter." And just like Sportscenter, I will provide you, the fans, visual of these fantastic, amazing, and jaw-dropping plays.

(10) Vjekoslav Hlede (eLearning and Technology Coordinator) launches the new and improved Cabrini Connections' website in the month of February.

(9) Cabrini Connections was featured in the Chi-Town Daily News on February 16, 2009.

(8) Several of our players were stars of the "Who Am I" Trivia game that took place during the month of February. This was a educational but fun way for our students and volunteers to learn more about some of the famous African Americans who make Black History Month truly historic. (Raheem Muhammed, Whitney Hemphill, Cazimir Ozuruigbo, and many more)

(7) The outstanding attendance of our mentors and mentees this quarter in comparison to the 2nd quarter of last year. At this time last year the attendance for students was 68% and for volunteers it was 52% and the current attendance for students is 79% and for volunteers it is 82.9 %. Check out the STATS section on the Cabrini Connections' website. With several of our students and volunteers who have made an effort to attend every tutoring/mentoring session of the quarter. (Mentors/Volunteers: Alexandria Hill, Mike and Jen Jozwik, Sein Lui, and Sarah Randag. Students: Gregory Hatchett, Angelene Hemphill, Whitney Hemphill, Ashaunti Roby, Breonca Hyles, Yolanda Hyles, Akeim Phipps, Cierria Tharpe).

(6) Sophomore student Whitney Hempill get 1st place in the Cabrini Connections' "I Have a Dream" project. This project encouraged students to put together and submit either a written piece or an audio/visual piece off how they felt Barack Obama and the new Administration could assist them with making their dreams come true.

(5) Cabrini Connections volunteers, students, and staff support our College and Career month by wearing college apparel during the month of March.

(4) Cabrini Connections' tutor/mentor Mary Catherine Nelson has been the leader of the FUNdraising for Quarters competition for the entire 2nd Quarter. This is a competition in which the Cabrini Connections' volunteers make an effort to spread the word about all of the their involvement in the program to their network, and in return their audience supports the program by making a donation OR find ways to get involved themselves.

(3) January is National Mentoring Month and our students put together videos to express their feelings of gratitude for their mentors being in their lives

(2) Cabrini Connections was featured on Oprah's Angel Network's website.

(1) The number one "Play" of the quarter has not actually taken place. Hopefully in the near and distant future the "Top Play of the Quarter" will be a Corporate Sponsor being willing to support our program by providing us with a donation. Because without more and more Corporate Sponsors and their donations....then not only can we maintain our great players and our overall team, without those donations it will be a struggle to have the overall Cabrini Connections' organization!

Hopefully our 3rd Quarter will be filled with even more "Top 10 Plays" and hopefully YOU will be one of the many people who will assist us with reaching that goal!

http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com/

Read this week's Student and Volunteer Profiles

Each week Chris Warren interviews one student and one volunteer and writes a profile on his blog. This week Mike Hayes and Christian Palacios are featured.

This Week's Student and Volunteer in the Spotlight

This week’s student in the spotlight is Gary Wise!!!

Read the story at: http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/12/student-spotlight-gary-wise.htmla

This week’s volunteer in the spotlight is John Knight!!!

Read the story at: http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/12/volunteer-spotlight-john-knight.html

Student and Volunteer in the Spotlight (11/25/08)

2008 Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council


This week we’d like to congratulate 6 individuals rather than just one for our Student Spotlight. These 6 students will be making up the 2008-2009 Youth Leadership Council! Three students from each tutoring night, Wednesday and Thursday, were elected to the council last week by tutors and students. These students not only got up in front of tutors and their peers to give an election speech two weeks ago, but sat down in front of everyone and fielded questions last week as part of a “Town-Hall” style debate. Last week, democracy reigned at Cabrini Connections as everyone lined up at 3 designated polling places to cast their votes for the 3 students who they thought would best represent them on the Youth Leadership Council. Now we are proud to announce that the following individuals will comprise our 2008 YLC:

From Wednesday night:

DeSean Hale
LaFaye Garth
Eboni Rivera

From Thursday Night:

Savon Clark
Sean Mayfield
Cierria Tharpe

We are putting these youth in the spotlight because they are the future of Cabrini Connections. The ideas they bring to the Youth Leadership Council and the decisions that they make will fundamentally affect the way Cabrini Connections operates. These youth will be assisting Cabrini Connections Staff in making decisions pertaining to everything from field trip destinations and the tutoring schedule to coming up with strategies to increase youth involvement and attendance in the Winter months.

One of these 6 students will also be representing Cabrini Connections on a Regional leadership council. This council is comprised of a youth representative from each of the numerous tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections around the Chicagoland area. This representative will not only earn the opportunity to make decisions that affect youth all around Chicago, but he/she will also receive $200/month to reward their leadership.

Congratulations Eboni, LaFaye, DeSean, Cierria, Sean and Savon on your election victories, we’re excited to see the change you bring to Cabrini Connections in the year to come!

Volunteer in the Spotlight

Joe Alverson

This week, we’d like to bring some attention to 2nd year tutor/mentor and Senior Electrical Engineer Joe Alverson. He started mentoring at Cabrini Connections last year on the recommendation of a number of friends and immediately threw himself into it. He was matched up with Lincoln Park High School 9th grader and Cabrini Green resident William Gallion right away and has been “really really enjoying it” ever since. William came to the program last year struggling with his math homework and now, one quarter into his freshman year, finds that math is his strongest subject. In speaking with Joe, he expresses how hard a worker William is and is quick to give the credit to William for his dramatic improvement. However, it is obvious that Joe provides William with a great role model, someone who it not afraid to work hard towards a goal and achieve it, inspiring others in the process.

In the past year working with William, Joe has really pushed William to realize his potential. For example, in preparation for the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), which is very important in Chicago since it’s used to weed out low-performing applicants from the best magnet schools, Joe came to William’s house every day for a week to help him study. In doing this, Joe not only helped William gain enough confidence and skills to ace the ISAT, but he also developed a valuable relationship with William’s family, with whom he ate dinner each night in exchange for his tutoring expertise. Joe has developed a great relationship with William’s family, even going so far as to attend a family reunion, where the rest of William’s family, seeing what a great influence he is on William, strongly encouraged that he stay with William through High School graduation and beyond!

Perhaps the secret to Joe’s strong mentor/mentee relationship with William is that he encourages William to meet with him outside of tutoring to augment the tutoring/mentoring he gets each week at Cabrini Connections. Joe and William frequently go out and grow their mentoring relationship together, going to the movies, talking about politics and even building furniture!

Joe makes it clear that mentoring means a lot to him when he says “it’s nice to give your time back to the community and see that you are having a direct impact on someone else’s life”. We are so glad that we here at Cabrini Connections can facilitate strong and mutually beneficial mentoring relationships like Joe and Williams and we’re looking forward to seeing them both grow in the coming years! Congratulations Joe!

Lots happening. Read the blogs.

Read the blogs by Chris, Nicole and Tech Club to sty informed with what's happening at Cabrini Connections

This week Chris writes about college visits.

Also read this week's student spotlight and volunteer spotlight

In Nicole's blog you learn about tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region.

And the Photo Friday's articles on the Tech Club blog provides ideas of how to use technology. Volunteers are welcome to join tech club as well as teens.

Former NFL Quarterback Joins the Cabrini Connections' Team

As Cabrini Connections continues to try to recruit adult tutor/mentor leaders to work with the students who participate in the program, we are truly excited to have a natural born leader, Zak Kustok, join our program as a new tutor/mentor. Mr. Kustok is a former Northwestern University superstar quarterback and a former NFL quarterback as well. More than just being a record breaking quarterback who earned numerous awards during his playing days (Big 10 Champion in 2000), Zak Kustok was a proven leader on the field and will hopefully continue that leadership ability inside of the Cabrini Connections' program.

As a quarterback there are numerous skills and talents that a leader of team must posses in order to gain the confidence of the players on the team, make important decisions, and lead the team to victory. Now that Mr. Kustok is no longer on the field, those skills of being a leading quarterback can be applied on the Cabrini Connection's 'field!'

We are looking and encouraging each and every tutor/mentor within the program to become a quarterback within the program. In order for our team to win, and a victory is getting all of our students into a career by the age of 25, each and every tutor/mentor within the program must lead by example, gain the respect and trust of the students, pay attention to detail, know and understand the role of all the other members on the team, and understand the Cabrini Connections' playbook. I am confident that if each and every member of the team (staff, volunteers, students, and donors/supporters) become leaders within the program we can and will be victorious!

Mr. Kustok we thank you for joining the Cabrini Connections' team and we hope that you can share your leadership and team building skills with us all!

Cabrini Connections' Student and Volunteer Spotlight

Student/Volunteer Spotlights

Angelene Hemphill is this week’s Student in the Cabrini Connections' Spotlight:
http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/11/student-spotlight-angelene-hemphill.html

Zak Kustok is this week's Volunteer in the Cabrini Connections' Spotlight:

http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/11/volunteer-spotlight-zak-kustok.html

Read student and volunteer profiles

I hope that as you visit this blog, you'll also visit the blogs listed on the right side of these pages. They are written by other staff and volunteers and expand the perspectives of what Cabrini Connections is trying to do and who is involved.

In particular, I encourage you to read the student and volunteer profiles that Chris Warren is writing each week, as well as his discussion of student participation and leadership.

If you read Nicole's blog you'll learn more about the Tutor/Mentor Connection part of this organization, and how what we do here is an example for programs all over the country!

Finally, if you read blogs by Cassina and Dan you'll learn about fund raising and about actions leaders can take to help programs like Cabrini Connections serve kids in Cabrini Green and other high poverty neighborhoods.

These change every week, so check in often.

Student and Volunteer Spotlight; Martini Madness

Charles Thomas is the featured Student Spotlight this week. You
can find the post at
http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/10/student-spotlight-charles-thomas.html

Alice Toth and Steve Pawlik of the Tuesday night Tech Club will be profiled at http://chrispip.blogspot.com/search/label/volunteer%20spotlight

Find the list of Raffle Prize Winners from Martini Madness at http://cassinazcabrini.blogspot.com/2008/10/martini-madness-success.html

Volunteer in the Spotlight: Heather Coleman

Cabrini Connections would like to congratulate art club volunteer and veteran mentor, Heather Coleman, for being our volunteer in the spotlight. Read more on Chris' blog at: http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/10/volunteer-spotlight-nicole-gordon.html

Perfect Attendance Awardees

The Cabrini Connections' staff would like to time out to recognize the students and volunteers who have perfect attendance in the Cabrini Connections program for the first three weeks of the 2008-2009 year! We are proud and honored to recognize these volunteers and students at this time:

Volunteers

Peter Brandt
Fran Fritzman
Susan Garver
Caroline Grunst
Mitchell Holzrichter
Carl Hurdlick
Mike Jozwick
Jen Jozwick
John Kemnitzer
John Knight
Tonya Myers
Jen Nolan
Amy Proger
Frank Roberts
Autumn Sharp
Amanda Tribo
Brea Adams
Joe Alverson
Tammy Baired
Courtney Jerdan
Mike Kolberg
John Ryan Kracow
Wendy Lasar
Sarah Randag
Stephanie Rogers
Allen Tyson

Mike Ozmeral
Joseph Volini
Tamy Wielgus (Volunteer Coordinator)
Alexandria Hill (Volunteer Coordinator)
Carla Reyes (College Readiness Program)
Jackie Shay (Art Club Coordinator)

Students
Terrisha Brownlow
Dominick Dobbs
Marquita Fisher
DeSean Hale
Arden Harris
Charles Hill
Charles Kilpatrick
Romel Newell
Joshua Vera
Olivia Williams
Ashanti Anderson
Lawrence Brown
Savon Clark
William Gallon
Angelene Hemphill
Whitney Hemphill
Breonca Hyles
Victoria Rivera
Keiri Sandlin
Malik Savage
Dijana Smith
Darius Suggs
Malina Tate
Charles Thomas
Melissa Young
Aarion Woods
Yolanda Hyles
Joshua Jordan
Sean Mayfield
Ashanti Roby
Ce’Landria Tharpe

Cierria Tharpe

Thank You and Keep up the GREAT work!!!

This week's volunteer spotlight!

As mentioned in the last post, we bring attention to the dedication and accomplishments of one student and one volunteer each week through both our "student spotlight" and "volunteer spotlight". This week, Cabrini Connections is proud to feature Wednesday Night Volunteer Coordinator Alexandria Hill as our volunteer spotlight. Read about Alexandria on Chris' blog here.