The Springfield Downtown Rotary Club was recently designated the first Peace Builder Club in the District by Rotary International. For the last two years the club focused on teaching financial literacy to low-income youth, supporting efforts to eliminate homelessness in the next five to seven years, and launching a program to combat the toxic effects of racism in Springfield.
The Club worked with Goodwill to deliver financial literacy programs to low-income youth. We are now in conversation with the Illinois State Treasurer’s office to deliver their many financial literacy resources to those who need them.
Following that effort, the Club joined with “Helping Hands,” a key player in the fight against homelessness in Springfield, to provide access to computing resources to their clients in a new expanded facility. This was crucial to connecting them to jobs, family, writing resumes, and more. Computer Banc in Springfield, a non-profit led by a fellow Rotarian, and Central Baptist Church partnered with us to provide high quality refurbished laptops with proper security and printers.
The Peace Builders Committee has visited the new, expanded Helping Hands facility. We seek to be a continuing part the community effort to eliminate homelessness.
The third, and largest, peace building initiative addresses the toxic effects of racism. The club secured grants from “Healing Racism in Illinois” (https://fieldfoundation.org/healingillinois) and a Rotary Literacy Grant program to create a partnership with the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) (www.sjsacademy.org) and The Outlet (www.theoutletillinois.org) supporting an SJSA “academy” for the African American young men (as well as some of their parents and grandparents) served by The Outlet. The Outlet serves youth without present fathers.
For three nights 25+ participants (a) talked about what it means to be an African American male in Springfield and America (b) worked with SJSA staff and experienced quilters to translate the ideas and emotions sparked by those discussions into visual images imprinted onto quilt squares and (c) created artist statements expressing what their squares meant to them. Each of the young men were given a copy of the book “Stitching Stolen Lives” authored by one of our SJSA partners and a picture of themselves with their square.
These squares will be transformed into a beautiful full-sized quilt by SJSA. The Springfield Outlet/Rotary quilt be on display at national quilting expositions and museums along with the estimated 45 other community quilts created to date by SJSA to give voice to those who are often not heard by their communities and country.
The club will organize community events this year where the quilt will be displayed locally, and the young men will talk about their work with leaders and citizens across Springfield. The goal of these events is to spark community conversations and ACTION to address the issues raised by these young men and their quilt and build peace by reducing the impact of racism.
The insights and high level of engagement of participants was amazing to hear and see. We heard inspirational and heartbreaking stories. Everyone involved from SJSA organizers to Outlet staff, to Rotary and quilter volunteers came away in awe of the young men’s work as well as energized and motivated to make sure their message was heard far and wide to spark change.