Summer Youth Program participants learn about the environment

September 9, 2008

For nearly three dozen young refugees, Heartland Alliance's Summer Youth Program offers a chance to meet new kids, practice their English, discover more about their new city, and have some fun.

This year, it's also an opportunity to learn about the environment. The topic for this summer's five-week program was "Green It and Mean It." Each week included a day dedicated to a field trip, a soccer league and a beach day, and many activities were geared toward how to "go green" and how the kids' actions impact their community and the city.

"It's fun, but it's also teaching them something," says Léa Tienou, the youth case manager for Heartland Alliance's refugee and immigrant community services. "For our kids, it's really important because they're not from an urban area like Chicago. It's hard to know how to live green in an urban center."

The green theme is woven throughout the events, from an afternoon learning about organic produce with Heartland Alliance's staff nutritionist to a pause for everyone to stop and pick up trash on the sand before swimming at the beach. The students built a mini-greenhouse from a shoebox, ate carrots straight from the ground at an urban garden, and talked about the benefits of mass transit. The end-of-thesummer celebration was a visit to a working farm, where the kids saw and discussed what it takes to get food to the stores in Chicago.

The students were from age 9 to 17 and represent countries from all over the world, including Burma, Liberia, Burundi, Iraq, Ivory Coast, the Congo, and Somalia. "It is better for the kids than staying at home. They meet new people and go new places," says 17-year-old Amal Abbas, a junior counselor with the program. "I especially like that we help each other; that is a good thing for us. It helps us make more friends."

Making friends is one of the core goals each year. "The program helps them venture out of their own ethnic group. It's easier to stay with kids who speak your language, but we find that with some encouragement, they quickly make friends across language barriers," Tienou says. "That also helps them learn English."

The program has always focused on young refugees who have recently arrived in the U.S., but this year, with a rise in the number of refugee families arriving in the country, the participants are particularly new to Chicago—many within the last year. Abbas, for example, arrived in Chicago only a few months ago, a refugee from Iraq who had lived in Jordan for several years before coming to the U.S.

"Some of these kids don't get out of their neighborhoods too much," Tienou says. "They've moved here to Edgewater or Rogers Park, and their parents are busy, and it's all pretty new, so they pretty much have been doing everything in that neighborhood. When we say we're going downtown, they're all really excited by that."

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