Watering the garden together

On Monday, we’ll return to the garden for our first Spring garden classes of 2013. If you haven’t signed your child up yet, but would still like to participate, you can print an application here and return it by email to team@letsgochicago.org or in person at your child’s first class. We are also looking for three teen interns to help out with the classes. Teens will receive a small stipend and learn how to teach the classes themselves by the end of the spring. Teens interested in the internship should inquire by sending an email to team@letsgochicago.org.

The greenhouse at Westwood Manor

Come mid-May, we will also be adding a community garden to this open space on the nursing home grounds:

Future site of a community garden

As a year round program, we are also excited to start our spring Children’s Garden Classes on May 6^th. Though it’s still a few weeks away, we have had plenty of curious visitors come through asking to visit our lovely hens in the side yard of the Koinonia House. To our housemates’ delight (our garden is in the front yard of an intentional housing community where some of us live), the chore of “chicken duty” now requires a willingness to give spontaneous farm tours to neighbors passing by. The hens have also begun laying eggs again as the days grow longer and they acclimate to the increase in light.

One of our long-time youth gardeners visits with the chickens

Nine fresh eggs from the LETS GO chickens!

Spring is also the time when we get to experience the joy of watching our honeybees emerge from their hive where they’ve been huddling together all winter long waiting for spring. Sadly, only one of the two colonies on top of United Church of Rogers Park survived this winter, but we have new colonies on the way to replace the loss.

Molly is also taking a woodworking class at Loyola Park Field House to learn how to build hive boxes for what we anticipate will be a third colony. If all goes well, we should have some honey to share with the community in late-May to early-June.

Bees bringing pollen back to the hive in early-April 2013

SAVE THE DATE: Our annual Summer of Solutions program will run June 17^th-August 16^th. Applications are open through Sunday, April 14^th.

For more information on our programs, please visit http://www.letsgochicago.org. You may also contact us at anytime at team@letsgochicago.org, Like us on Facebook , or Follow us on Twitter. We look forward to sharing more soon. Happy Spring!

Application deadline for Summer of Solutions is 4/14  Apply here!

My name is Ethan Viets-Vanlear, I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois where I am currently a student, activist, poet, and organizer. I started Summer of Solutions in the summer of 2012 through Let’s Go Chicago.

My initial motive for joining SoS was to spend more of my time outside building tangible solutions to some of the issues I noticed around me. I was also excited to spend my time growing food.  I think the biggest thing that I got from SoS was the notion that any problem has a solution that I can take part into making happen.  SoS really taught me a way to help a community without being part of various systems of oppression and control that dominate most organizations and institutions in our society. My favorite memories from SoS would have to be our various trips offsite to places like a farm, or spending time with all the participants around a campfire.

Right now I am finishing high school, attending open mics and various other art events in the city, and working on planning SoS Chicago 2013.  I’m also working for the Know Your Rights project where we give workshops to students on how to navigate interactions with the police, with Circles and Ciphers, a youth restorative justice leadership development group, I’m participating on the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, and I have a small internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago.

Summer of Solutions helped me really start to think deeply about how I want to function and work as a member of this society. This insight has helped me choose the paths and work I know will help me reach the goal of living my life while building harmony in myself, the people around me, and my community.

If you have decided to apply to Summer of Solutions 2013, I would congratulate you about joining a great organization, and planning a fun, informative, beautiful summer.

- Ethan

Calling all Solutionaries!  The National Participant Application for all Summer of Solutions programs is now open!

During the Summer of Solutions, you will receive training in community organizing and sustainable community development techniques. You will use these skills to demonstrate the promise of energy efficiency, community-based energy, green industry, local food production, and/or smart design as described in the locations you choose. Beyond the concrete skills you learn, Summer of Solutions will be a really fun community-based experience. It is a great chance to grow with, learn from, and work with other incredible young people and community leaders who are building a better future.

Not sure if you should apply?  Follow our new blog series, Alumni Spotlights, to hear from past Summer of Solutions participants about how their experience changed their life and prepared them for a life of solutionary work!

Now accepting participant applications: Arleta, CA; Chicago, IL; Hartford, CT; Iowa City, IA; Ithaca, NY; Johnson City, TN; Lexington, KY; Little Rock, AR; Middleton, WI; Oakland, CA; Raleigh, NC; Southern West Virginia; Twin Cities, MN; and Washington, DC!

Applications for the final round are due on 4/14/2013. Some programs may keep their local applications open beyond 4/14, but there is no guarantee that any specific program will do so.

Find more details and the online application here!

Fellowship Duration: June 17th to August 16th 2013

Hours:  40 hours/week during the summer program.

Compensation: The position may be eligible for financial support or a stipend from Grand Aspirations. Program Planners will support Program Participants in acquiring internship or independent study credit or doing grassroots fundraising for the position.

What is Summer of Solutions?

Summer of Solutions is a program of the national non-profit Grand Aspirations. Through the four gateway values of prosperity, justice, community and sustainability, Summer of Solutions addresses the economic and environmental crises.  Projects in the program use social entrepreneurship and community development tools to create models for change that are replicable, sustainable and meet community needs.  Past projects of Summer of Solutions have included starting a home weatherization team, increasing bike access, and developing urban agriculture.  Sixteen programs will be held in summer 2011 across the country.  Locations and full program descriptions can be found here: http://grandaspirations.org/summer-of-solutions/about.

The role of Program Participants

Program Planners work through the winter and spring to plan local programs.  Participants apply in the spring for a summer-long position.  Participants are expected to fully engage in the projects of the Summer of Solutions and the team-building and leadership development activities that occur during the program.  Participants take an active role in leading projects and shaping the outcomes of the program.

Fellowship expectations:

Full-time participants work at least 40 hours a week and record those hours in the Grand Aspirations hours-tracking system.  However this is not a 9-5 desk job.  These hours will be made up of meetings, hands-on project work, team building activities, community events and more. Part-time volunteer positions are available as well.

Program participants are expected to actively engage in the following areas:

Projects:

Participants will fuel and guide the project work of Summer of Solutions.  This work will vary by project but will include a team launch process, goal setting and timelines, meeting with community partners and implementing the project plan.  Summer of Solutions projects train emerging leaders, create tangible solutions, and create models that guide the future.  Projects are developed during the spring and continue after the summer program has ended.

Resources:

Program Leaders generate a baseline of program resources that are augmented by the team effort. Participants are expected to take an active role in generating the resources to support the program and themselves.  Program leaders will support participants in learning about social enterprise and other ways to generate resources.

Leadership Development:

A one-week training week begins the program, which full-time participants are required to attend.  Dates will differ for each local program.  Leadership development begins in this week and continues throughout the summer with further training sessions, personal transformation activities and one-on-one mentorship.

Anti-Oppression:

All participants will engage in discussion and training on Anti-Oppression for Collective Liberation and actively confront oppression in their program work.  The local team will look at issues of oppression in their area and how their projects are addressing these systems.  Participants are expected to engage in these discussions, think critically about how Summer of Solutions can confront oppression and take action.

Additional areas in which participants are encouraged to engage:

Media:

Participants may contribute to telling the story of the program through both traditional and new media.  Learning social media skills such as blogging, as well as traditional forms such as local newspapers and radio shows will be integrated into the program.

National Community:

Participants are encouraged to attend the Grand Aspirations National Gathering in August (dates and location TBD) to meet participants and program leaders from across the country to share ideas, new skills and craft the vision for GA’s future.

To apply:

Complete the online application here: http://grandaspirations.org/apply2sos

Contact Matt (matt.kazinka@grandaspirations.org) for a hard-copy of the application.

The priority deadline for full-time applicants is Sunday, March 13th at midnight PST. If you apply by this deadline, we will respond to you by Monday March 28th.
The final deadline for full-time applicants is Sunday April 17th at midnight PST. If you apply by this deadline, we will respond to you by Monday May 2nd.

It’s that time of the year. I can feel my bones stirring, getting ready for new beginnings. It’s that wintery feeling that comes when we get ready for the spring and summer to warm us up and get us out into the world again. In SoS terms, it’s the “January Gathering” time of year when we get together to plan our projects and programs for Summer of Solutions and all of our solutionary endeavors. And though I didn’t go to the January Gatherings this year, I still feel that sense of stirring, beginnings, and excitement. It is time to connect with people around us, to share ideas, dream up new possibilities, and get ready to grow in new directions.

As Solutionaries around the country organize and prepare for their Summer of Solutions programs, I’m getting ready for a new Solutionary launch of my own. This spring I will be rolling out Sol Chariots Pedicab Cooperative, a worker-owned and operated bike taxi service in Providence, RI. I’ve been organizing with my fellow founders and worker-owners to plan and prepare to kick off this spring with our self-created green jobs that sustain us while providing sustainable transportation in the city we live in. I’m super excited to be building my own job and creating a workplace that is autonomous and democratic, as we redefine work and the workplace in a way that is in line with our values. This past month we successfully completed a grassroots investment campaign to raise $5000 that reminded us of the community of support we are opening with and how powerful a cooperative economy can be.

The Sol Chariots Pedicab Co-op Launch video is up on Vimeo. Check it out!

As I get ready to roll, I can’t help but think back to the path that has lead me here and how much I learned from my experiences organizing and working with Summer of Solutions. I am a Summer of Solutions alumnus and still a Solutionary.

I attended the first-ever SoS program in 2008, with Emily Stiever (whose post you can read here), and saw it as a full-fledged “leap of faith” into a whole new type of organizing and learning experience. Emily and I were 2 of 4 people who came from outside the Twin Cities to partake in a summer of community-based organizing for solutions to climate change. When I flew out to MN that summer; I really had no idea what I was getting into. I learned that I could grow so much through taking leaps. To me, that means recognizing how much we can learn and grow by taking risks and putting ourselves, full-heartedly, into new experiences. The program was so new and so groundbreaking that the group of us who were committed to participating made it our own and grew so much through the process. Through my work with Cooperative Energy Futures, I learned about what a cooperative business is and what goes into starting one. As we worked, we had to figure out how to make our ideas and aspirations a reality, and a lot of that felt like trail-blazing new experiences. The friendships I built that summer are still so important to me and are people I see as my peers in charting our paths forward. Summer of Solutions gave me the skillset (and the resumé) to feel like anything is possible for me. That summer truly opened up an array of opportunities in my life.

Solutionaries gathering at a weekly potluck during SoS 2008, Twin Cities

From there I went on to be a Program Leader of Summer of Solutions in Worcester, MA in 2009 and 2010, diving into a whole new set of organizing skills that I had yet to develop. From my experience in SoS Twin Cities and SoS Worcester, I learned how to have creative confidence, which to me is being willing to put yourself and your ideas out there, boldly, knowing that you have the skills and resources within yourself and your community to make it a reality. I found that when I was acting with passion and letting that show, other people around me were so jazzed by what I/we were doing that they would participate, contribute, collaborate, and help it grow. Because of that, we had incredible programs opening community gardens in Worcester, building a movement for just, green jobs, and starting up a grassroots weatherization program that mobilized hundreds of people. Yeah, sure, we hit roadblocks along the way, but the solutionary way of thinking we had learned in SoS allowed us to see possibilities and potential, not closed doors.

Me with fellow solutionaries planting a new community garden during Summer of Solutions 2009 – Worcester

And last, with this growing experience in community work, I learned the importance and value of relationships, collaboration, and cooperation. In my first SoS program, I learned so much about being an attentive and responsive community organizer who knows how to have reciprocal relationships and work in solidarity. In Worcester, I learned so much by having one-to-one conversations with other community organizers in the city who were part of organizations or already existing projects, and by collaborating and working together. That has been so important in this new endeavor of mine. I know that in starting a cooperative business, I want to build new types of relationships between workers, between our business and our customers, between other businesses and organizations in the city, and I would even go as far to say, new relationships between humans and the environment we live in. There is so much potential for what is possible if we can redefine those relationships to be ones of solidarity and support, collaboration and cooperation, trust and care.

I am so grateful for my experience with Summer of Solutions through the years. Because of it, I feel that so much is possible in my life and the world. I have a whole set of skills that I can apply wherever I go and I have already seen the immeasurable ways it has made my life so fulfilling. And it means so much to me to have a way of working and sustaining myself financially that is in line with my values and creates more value in my community.

I am really excited to be taking a new leap for myself this spring as I ride out into the streets of Providence with my new project. I hope you will join me and take a leap for yourself into something that opens boundless possibilities for you as you work on sustaining yourself and sustaining the world. And if you’re not sure what your next leap is, I highly consider checking out this one: Summer of Solutions 2013.

Happy Leaping!

Ashley Trull

Calling all Solutionaries! The National Participant Application for all Summer of Solutions programs is now open!

During the Summer of Solutions, you will receive training in community organizing and sustainable community development techniques. You will use these skills to demonstrate the promise of energy efficiency, community-based energy, green industry, local food production, and/or smart design as described in the locations you choose. Beyond the concrete skills you learn, Summer of Solutions will be a really fun community-based experience. It is a great chance to grow with, learn from, and work with other incredible young people and community leaders who are building a better future.

Not sure if you should apply? Follow our new blog series, Alumni Spotlights, to hear from past Summer of Solutions participants about how their experience changed their life and prepared them for a life of solutionary work!

Now accepting participant applications: Arleta, CA; Chicago, IL; Hartford, CT; Iowa City, IA; Ithaca, NY; Johnson City, TN; Lexington, KY; Little Rock, AR; Middleton, WI; Oakland, CA; Raleigh, NC; Southern West Virginia; Twin Cities, MN; and Washington, DC!

Applications for the priority round are due on 3/3/2013 and applications for the final round are due on 4/14/2013. Some programs may keep their local applications open beyond 4/14, but there is no guarantee that any specific program will do so.

Find more details and the online application here!

Compartmentalized is a word that I often use to describe the separated realms that make up my day to day life, and I think that for many young activists this is a similar sentiment. Many of us have other jobs, school, children, relationships, other activist work, or passions that occupy our time and energy. The majority of my time is spent between the ceramic studio, Let’s Go Chicago, and feminist organizing. With so many of these sectors functioning simultaneously and often not in union with one another it is easy for me to feel spread ultra thin.

On those weeks when days feel like hours and work looks like steep mountains for me to conquer, it is important for me to know why I spend my time the way I spend it. Sometimes these reasons are more clear on certain days than others and it is often more challenging for me to find real clarity when the pressure keeps building on top of me.

This past week started off as one of these ‘bottom of the mountain’ kind of weeks. Several projects were due at school, a fundraiser I had been planning for months was taking place, and an important grant was in the works for Let’s Go. By the end of the week all of these tasks were successfully accomplished and all of those seemingly daunting mountains felt like foothills in retrospect. Admittedly, I think it is relatively symptomatic to make little of the pain of a challenging week when time has nursed the wounds. However, the transformation of my ‘mountains into foothills’ was not a temporal consequence, but the result of breaking down that precipice and conquering it with a team of fellow solutionaries.

The thing about working with Let’s Go Chicago is that even though I sometimes have to stretch my energy and time thinner, the truth is that I am stretching it over an incredible armature of people that reinforce and propel the work we do. I am not alone at the bottom of the mountain, I am standing with my fellow leaders Nell, Ethan, Molly, Peter and Pavan looking ahead at the foothills before us.

I am able to do this work and participate in Grand Aspirations because of the egalitarian leadership structure that is based on compassion and the fact that we all have a stake in the work we do. In my vision of the future more spaces and structures are organized like Let’s Go as a harmonious place where lots of worlds overlap and vertices intersect.

In this blog, I’m going to attempt to pack the two things I think about all the time into one tidy package about the future of our communities: schools and climate change.

A motto we use (not very much but enough that I’m going to say it’s our motto) here in Chicago is “A school in every neighborhood, a garden in every yard”.

BORING:

We’ve been talking about the connection between the education system and sustainable community transitions for awhile now and it makes sense to us that we should be working with schools, but mostly because schools are a resource to get more kids involved, not because we recognized why the schools need us. But as times in education shift, it’s becoming more clear why schools and community-based environmental groups need each other.

In Chicago right now, we’re in the midst of a battle for public education. It’s the modern apparatus of a 200 year movement for public education that includes the fight of slaves teaching their children to read and black organizers building freedom schools during the Civil Rights movement. But now, as the bloody hand of neoliberalism claws at one of the city’s (and country’s) last remaining public institutions the ground is being laid for a huge community uprising.

In March, the Chicago Board of Education will release its list of school closings. So far there have only been rumors and small leaks from the Mayor’s office, but predicted numbers have been around 100 schools.

WOW!

You may be thinking: “how can they close that many schools?”, “How many schools are there even?”, “Where will all those kids go?”, and “WTF? Thats the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard”. Closing 100 schools would be almost 1/4th of Chicago Public Schools. The city claims that many of the schools are “underutilized”. Ask a teacher in CPS if she or he agrees and you’ll see that the numbers they use to calculate “underutilization” are black magic compared to the real experience of people in the district. Despite justification by means of “underutilization”, they only have plans to open more and more charter schools in the city.

The public education movement, like the environmental movement, is a fight with some of the richest people in the country. (Bill Gates now gives more to charter schools than the federal government gives to public schools). Like with most unequal fights, we need to look at the good news to stay hopeful:

1. The mayor is scared. The City was supposed to release the school closings list in December and delayed releasing it in hopes that with less time, communities will be less organized to fight them.

2. The Chicago Teachers Union (ALL HAIL THEM) is super awesome and progressive and a beacon of freedom, joy, and fierce dedication to neighborhood schools, despite these dark times. They are also really amazing at community organizing. Its not teachers vs. the mayor. Its teachers and parents and neighbors protecting our schools.

3. Because we’re talking about schools–and basically everyone agrees education is important–there is great potential (and reality) for grassroots mobilization. Woo!

So why is this relevant to our Children’s Garden program and others like it around the country?

If the richest people in the country are investing in for profit schools with hopes of replacing public schools, then this fight has to be many layered (like an onion!). Our role as an after school and summer program is to support those schools that are in struggle and support these students by offering them creative, inquiry and community based spaces, as opposed to the corporate model that is taking over their education. If we can teach gardening while at same time offering kids a place to expand on the skills they are learning in school, then we are supporting their overworked teachers. If we can teach kids new skills, while at the same time getting to know their parents and building relationships so that when the time comes to mobilize for the schools (or for community gardens and clean energy), we’re all ready, then we are supporting the future of our shifting communities.

I hope this blog is proving relevant for every solutionary reading it, because its important to know that public schools are under attack all over the country and Chicago is just one stormy epicenter. Of the 30ish kids that attend our garden classes, most go to the neighborhood public schools (the others go to Rogers Parks three new charter schools hissssss). The public schools, mimicking Rogers Park’s diversity, range from “excellent” to “failing” schools and there is a pretty good chance come March, one of our schools will be on the kill list.

The convergence of the environmental and education movements can happen in school and community gardens, science and social studies classrooms, after school programs, and for high school students, it can happen in Summer of Solutions programs around the country. After all, both movements have a key focus on generational/the children are the future/we are the future change and the battles are being fought now.

Our three main programs have reaped great success and lessons for us this past year.

Students showing off pickles made in the fall children’s garden class

The children’s garden remains an active staple in the ‘playground’ of LETS GO
Chicago. We maintain a fruitful partnership with the United Church of Rogers Park to help elementary school students to dig in and learn in our victory garden. Their textbooks are the raised beds in front of Koinonia house, an intentional community that is part of our home base, where they learn to identify, cultivate, know and love the land. This summer was jam packed with all kinds of fun games and activities with new kids and instructors. This fall we continued the fun pickling cucumbers and painting pumpkins ahead of the first frost. Just like perennials, the children’s garden will blossom once again in the Spring bringing with it new adventures and lessons.

Enjoying a bonfire at one of our “yard shares”

The community yard-share program has spread through the grapevine of our warm Rogers Park community. This past summer we installed dozens of raised beds in several community gardens and watched neighbors share land, and exchange the recipes of community building. Over the summer we developed a yard-share booklet that details the concept of our yard-sharing network. In the next several months we hope to complete a “how to organize a yard-sharing network in your community” instruction booklet. Ultimately, we hope to help expand networks and see them become more inclusive and sustainable through community members.

Rain garden built by LETS GO Chicago in 2012

Our Green Infrastructure Program helps individuals transform their homes to save water and redirect stormwater into the local landscape. The program is the only for profit structure that is currently worked into our organization and is on its way to becoming an independent youth owned cooperative in 2013.  Leaders and volunteers retrofitted a number of homes and installed several rain gardens this summer to help our neighbors increase native habitat, save water, and reduce flooding risks in their homes. We can’t wait to announce the full structure of our business venture in the coming months!

With the support of a dynamic group of leaders, volunteers and partners these programs have proven to be successful initiatives and have been an appetizer to the new initiatives we are planning for the spring and summer. Several new group leaders have joined LETS GO to head up new and expanding project areas that will include rural faming, greenhouse plant production, herbal medicine, and local high schools. Among several new opportunities, LETS GO Chicago is officially partnering with The White Rose Catholic Worker Farm located in Mone, IL to teach urban dwellers about rural agriculture. The radical Catholic Workers have been open-minded partners that are open to the exciting possibilities to use their land for education and community building!

Last, but not least, we are super stoked to be hosting the January Gathering for Grand Aspirations in Chicago this year! Welcoming members from regions all over the US will be a great way to collaborate and exchange ideas with our fellow solutionaries!

About our team

Molly Costello moved to Rogers Park 5 years ago from Southern California. As an artist, activist, and growing agriculturalist, she loves to keep her hands dirty with one material or another. Molly enjoys living in community in the heart of LETS GO Chicago’s home-base. She is looking forward to continuing her journey of education around agriculture, place-making, and how to bring the spirit back into our daily work in Rogers Park.

Peter Hoy grew up in the Chicago area and escaped to Portland, Oregon for a short stint before returning to take on the challenges of creating environmental change in the nation’s 3rd largest city. He has a Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies from Loyola University Chicago and has been teaching garden-based education to neighborhood children in Rogers Park since 2010. He lives in the Koinonia Intentional Community and enjoys making large pots of food to share with friends and neighbors.

Pavan Maddamsetti is an upcoming graduate of Indiana University, and a dedicated science buff. He is enthusiastic about learning anything and everything, and wishes to bring an innovative spirit to the work of building sustainable communities.

Lookman Muhammed is originally from Lagos, Nigeria and grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. He is currently working as a sustainable community organizer through Grand Aspirations. He works advocating Restorative Justice practices in the community through peace circles, and came to Grand Aspirations to learn new skills and represent youth in Rogers Park.

Marissa Neuman is a recent graduate from Loyola University and current student at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is interested in exploring how her passions for art, feminism, food-justice, and gardening intersect and how they can blossom. She is most excited about joining forces with new community partners to amplify and empower unheard voices.

Nell Seggerson moved from Columbus, OH to Chicago in order to attend Loyola University where she will graduate this spring with bachelors degrees in Education and History. She is excited to continue working in Rogers Park, building community-based educational opportunities for her neighbors and self. She is also delighted to sharing the experience of learning how to grow food in the city.

Ethan Viets-VanLear is seventeen years old and was born and raised in the West Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. His goal in life is to enhance and enrich the communities he comes into contact with and the people in those communities.