Night has fallen in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. A group of students from Ridgewood High School gingerly head out into the cold December evening to help feed the neighborhood’s impoverished residents.
The students, many of them freshmen, ride in a car driven by an older mentor as they trail close behind a Salvation Army Mobile Feeding Unit.
When the Salvation Army driver stops alongside a group of hungry people who have gathered on the sidewalk to meet the truck, the teenagers jump out and grab a bunch of brown paper-bagged dinners to hand off to the hungry recipients.
The paper lunch sacks are decorated with bows and holiday images drawn in magic marker by their classmates earlier during the school day.
Inside each bag are a few simple food items including a ham and cheese sandwich, pretzels, chocolate cookies, and an apple.
About 200 Ridgewood students made 900 “supper sacks” between Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 that will help feed the hundreds of homeless and struggling residents of the crime-ridden South Side neighborhood.
Infamous for shootings and gang activity, Englewood is an area of the city that mostly-white suburban teenagers would usually avoid, but senior Julia Przepiora said her fears dissipated after her first visit two years ago.
Przepiora is one of 40 upperclassmen at Ridgewood who work with the freshmen class of 180 students as part of a mentoring program at the school.
“I was nervous to go out there at first, but when I handed the food and a pair of gloves to a little girl who approached the truck it felt rewarding to help people who need it,” Przepiora said.
The mentor program, led by the school’s communications director Carol Valentino-Barry, pairs freshman students with an adult and older-student mentors, who work together to complete a different service project each month. The activities focus on skills like goal-setting, time management, and how to manage limited resources—time and money, for example.
“December mentoring is pretty much about service—making the sandwiches and delivering them,” Valentino-Barry said.” This is our fourth year making the trip to deliver the sandwiches, and we continue to realize how important it is to connect the students to those in need.”
All the freshman pitch in to put together the bagged dinners during a class period, but only a handful of students like Przepiora volunteer to stay late and go to Englewood for the in-person deliveries.
“Service is on the students’ own time,” Valentino-Barry said. “Because it’s not required, nor is it a ‘get-out-of-school’ field trip, it’s a bit of a risk and the students need some encouragement.”
Last week, even the students who choose not to take the trip out to Englewood had the chance to see a face of the homeless who has benefited by their work.
Henry Williams had lived on the street for eight years in the same spot across from the Ogilvie Transportation Center until one night last January when he was approached by a Salvation Army volunteer who spotted him under a mound of tattered sheets and blankets.
A year later, Williams is in Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center for adults recovering from homelessness, and is working hard to get his GED and find employment.
Williams, who was brought to safety on a night when the thermometer had dipped to negative 18 degrees, came to Ridgewood on Dec. 2 to talk to the kids about the importance of their service project.
Valentino-Barry said Williams talked about how the simple act of making a sandwich can have a huge impact on one person’s day.
“I think they’re getting the idea that they’re fortunate and blessed to have what they do, and that connecting to the greater good gives them a greater sense of purpose,” Valentino-Barry said.
Freshman Riana Go, 14, said she started volunteering for Toys for Tots while she was in junior high, and the experience helped her see that helping people “works both ways,” she said.
“You’re doing something good for someone else, but you’re getting a sense of accomplishment in return,” Go said. “One little thing you do can brighten a person’s day.”