Halloween Outreach Weekend!

We had a great start to the Fall semester with an awesome outreach weekend here in Champaign Il. We worked with Nicole Bridges at Prosperity Gardens, as well as Mary Wallace at the Center for Women In Transition. We were also joined by Bob Hughes and a few of his HCD students bringing our total to 21. Though it was a bit cold and wet, we had a wonderful tour on Friday morning. We were joined by John Ruffin, the Neighborhood Coordinator for the City of Champaign. He gave us a bit of information on the North First Street and Church and Hill neighborhoods as well as compared and contrasted them to other neighborhoods in Champaign. We then heard a bit from Nicole Bridges about her work with Prosperity Gardens, and her long term goals and vision for the garden. She is very proactive about achieving this and is incredibly passionate about the work she is doing with the garden. Upon leaving prosperity gardens we drove through a bit of the neighborhood passing some residents and local services. We stopped by Douglas Park. Following the stop at Douglas Park we made our way to the Fifth and Hill site. This site is owned by Ameren and was formerly used in chemical manufacturing. Regardless of what was done on this site, countless chemicals have leeched away from the site or been dumped around the site causing chronic illness to plague the community. Jose Castillo-Pilcol a Graduate Assistant with ARI has researched this and shared a bit of his findings with us on the tour. Or final stop of the tour was at the Center for Women In Transition. We were joined by Mary Wallace who showed us around the center and gave us a brief description of what they do. Students were full of questions, and very interested to learn more about the Center for Women in Transition. Of the three houses they have on site we visited two of them, and were also able to talk with a couple of the residents. As we wrapped up the tour we all filled out stomachs with the local flavors of Fiesta Café. Students dialogued with one another about their own backgrounds and how eye opening much of the tour was. This was also a great opportunity to warm up and fuel up for the projects in the afternoon After lunch we split into two groups. The HCD students along with Bob Hughes made their way to CWT to help with come painting they needed to do were the FAA students went to Gardens to begin the process of winterizing the garden for the winter. The group at the Center for Women In transition was joined by a few children who live there. They successfully repainted the hallway that lead to many of the short term stay rooms. Students also had the incredible opportunity to talk with the children. The FAA students spent the rest of the afternoon working at Prosperity Gardens, and fortunately the rain decided to hold off. The primary goal for Friday was to clean out the evidence building and organize everything that was stored in there. As we began Saturday, we again broke into the same two groups. The group at Center for Women in Transition finished up the painting that was not completed on Friday as well as completed some odd jobs and organization that needed to happen. The FAA students at Prosperity Gardens began winterizing the garden. Some students emptied out the storage shed to organize it, while others cleared and harvested the remaining plants in the garden. This garden waste was then transferred to the compost bins that we helped Prosperity Gardens build on our previous Outreach Weekend. We all has Pizza for lunch at Land of Lincoln where the students had an opportunity to share what they had been working on In the afternoon all of the students went out to the Fall Festival in Champaign. Some students helped Nicole Bridges with the Prosperity Gardens booth that she set up, while others participated and helped with the fun and games. One particular event that students had fun with was the pumpkin toss into the boneyard creek. Kids would toss a small pumpkin at a target in the pond and students would help to retrieve it. After a long hard day of work we wrapped everything up with a delicious Ice Cream from Custard Cup! – Chase Miller