Green shirts mean city streets are 20,000 bags of trash cleaner
 
By Susan S. Stevens
 
Illinois Medical District and Bronzeville streets, sidewalks, and vacant lots are looking tidier thanks to crews of men and women wearing bright green shirts and smiles.

They are interns at Cleanslate Chicago, a not-for-profit agency that helps ex-offenders and recovering addicts start life over with a "clean slate." As they make the transition into a new life, they pick up trash.

“Cleanslate is not about cleaning the streets,” said intern Effie Childs. “It is about cleaning the inner you. It inspires us to keep moving despite our past.”

Childs’s own past includes five imprisonments for drug possession, drug delivery, and prostitution. “It is a life I choose never to live again,” she vowed.

She successfully completed five weeks of classes ranging from computer training to conflict management at the Cara Program, an agency at 703 W. Monroe St. that helps the underserved. Afterward, she became an intern with Cleanslate, which operates under Cara’s auspices. As an intern, she receives weekly grades on attendance, performance, and attitude.

“We grade hard,” said Steve Sullivan, Cleanslate’s acting director and a ten-year veteran of Cara. On a scale of one to nine, most interns had received grades in the middle on their report cards the previous Monday, he said. When they leave for another job, they must measure up for the benefit of everyone else in the Cleanslate program.

Good grades come from the Illinois Medical District Commission board. Executive Director Samuel W. Pruett said at the IMD’s Aug. 29 board meeting that Cleanslate had made a remarkable improvement in the five months since it began working in the area.

“It has been very successful,” board member John E. Partelow agreed. “They are doing good work.”

At a morning motivational meeting (one is held each day before trash pickup begins)a woman proudly announced she had been hired as a housekeeper by Northwestern University Medical Center, one of more than 80 employers who hire participants. The other interns clapped and cheered for her.

Each intern begins the day with exercise, roll call, and a question-and-answer session, followed by the motivational session. During the final phase before work starts, each must answer a question and share a song. One day’s question was “Who inspired me?”

“First of all, my superior, Kenny Holyfield,” said a man who added that “God’s grace and mercy” also inspire him.

A Cleanslate graduate, Holyfield has been supervisor for eight months. He grew up in the ABLA Homes, has been shot five times, and has served 18 years in prison.

“The Lord blessed me,” Holyfield said. He has advice for the new interns. “I tell them this is your last chance.”

At the morning meeting, Juanita Lyon credited Childs. “She inspires me.” Lyon joined the Cara program Feb. 13. “The great thing for me in starting with Cara was that it was exactly on my birthday.” She began with Cleanslate June 6.

“We have people around us to remind us where we are going, not where we have been,” Lyon said.

Since June 2005, Cleanslate interns have collected more than 20,000 bags of trash. The approximately 35 interns in four neighborhoods fill two containers¾one for recyclables and the other for trash destined for landfills.

More than 1,800 individuals have been placed in quality, full-time jobs since Cara was founded in 1991, with 72% still working one year later. Cleanslate supervisor Jesse Teverbaugh said the success comes partly because of follow-up counseling and other services provided to people who move on from Cleanslate.

“Yes, we provide a service,” said Teverbaugh, who has been with Cara since its inception and currently supervises crews in Bronzeville’s 4th Ward. The chief goal, however, “is to transform people’s lives,” he said.

“People can change,” Childs said. “I am a prime example of that.”

Cleanslate also operates in the 17th Ward and Uptown, Sullivan said, and “hopefully several more wards next year.”

To raise funds, the Cara Program will hold its fifth annual Celebration of Hope at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 13, at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. The organization’s chief fundraiser, it brings in about $200,000 a year. Ticket information is available at (312) 798-3303.