Roosevelt, Loras students help out at CCIL homeless shelter 

By Hayley Carlton 

College students are getting up close and personal with homelessness thanks to a class at Roosevelt University. In City and Citizen Empowerment with Service Learning, 15 students—ten from Roosevelt and five from Loras College in Iowa—will volunteer at the Chicago Christian Industrial League (CCIL), a North Lawndale homeless shelter, in addition to classroom learning.

            The students will spend four to five hours a week at CCIL performing services including tutoring, office work, teaching residents in the computer lab, or doing kitchen work. Onn student will work with CCIL Executive Director Judy McIntyre learning about non-profit management. In addition, they will attend weekly classes in social justice and urban issues.

            The student working with McIntyre wants to start her own nonprofit in Pilsen after she graduates. In the meantime, she will research grants for CCIL and shadow McIntyre as she goes about her business of running the agency. “It’s not all glamour, you know,” McIntyre said.

            Having the students aboard has “been wonderful, since we had to reduce our staff" following funding cuts, McIntyre continued. "Their energy is wonderful.” In February, CCIL lost $1 million in Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development funding and had to make cuts, including employees.

            McIntyre said CCIL lost the HUD funding as a result of “not being in the front of the line.” The organization has hired a consultant to make sure it is “in the front of the line next year,” she said.

            On the first day of class at CCIL McIntyre told the students, "What you’ll get out of this class is a good grade, but you’ll also get a life experience."

            She answered students' questions about topics such as whom CCIL might turn away. “We can’t take sex offenders because we have families here,” she told them. CCIL might take in an offender who has committed a violent crime, however, “but not someone who committed a massacre.” Also, CCIL cannot admit anyone who has a serious mental illness who needs medication “because we don’t have enough staff,” she explained.

            Not everyone who walks through CCIL’s doors is a former offender. “We’ve had people come in who have had some bumps in the road of life,” said McIntyre.

            Students will put their classroom work, including keeping a diary and reading academic texts, to use volunteering with CCIL. They also should come away with knowledge about themselves and insight on how to create social change, according to Pamela Robert, the class’s professor. 

            “I moved from making service learning a small part of the course to making it a way of teaching the course,” said Robert. As a result, Robert said, she knows she is not “just relying on students doing the reading.” Instead, she is “relying on the fact that they’re having these experiences in the community, bringing them back to class, and we’re discussing them and they’re writing about them in their journals.”

            Robert added the program ranks as one of Roosevelt’s signature classes—sessions that emphasize metropolitanism and cultural diversity. All Roosevelt students must take a signature class in order to graduate.

            Roosevelt University requires all its students to learn about social justice and provide service to the community. “I could have an accounting major here,” said McIntyre concerning the diversity of the students. “It’s wonderful.”

            One of this semester’s students, Megan Weignd, is a biology major. “I hope to work in the computer lab since I am good at teaching the older generation about computers,” Weignd said. She added she would love to work in a clinical setting if possible, because of her major.

            Weignd took Robert’s class in part because she is not from Chicago and wanted to learn more about the city. “At home, in Cedarburg, WI, I’m involved, and I wanted to get involved in Chicago," she said.

            Another student, junior Jessica Ruka, is an English/sociology major and hopes to tutor CCIL residents and teach adult literacy.

            Some students already have social justice experience. “I’m a community activist, a community organizer," said Allen Manuel, a junior majoring in political science. "I’ve worked on several political campaigns. I’m active in the church but really wanted to go to college to get a better understanding of the whys and hows of people who are hurting.”

            Manuel, who has a teenage daughter, said he hopes to work with CCIL either as a tutor or in the kitchen and plans to bring his daughter. “The more I worked to help people move on, the more I realized we need to figure out how they got there in the first place,” he said.

            The CCIL is located at 2750 W. Roosevelt Rd. Call (773) 435-8300.