NORTH LAWNDALE — Although he grew up in Chicago, J'Meer Walton had never been to Greektown or one of the city's most famous landmarks, Willis Tower, until recently.
J’Meer, 16, said he largely spent his free time hanging out in his North Lawndale neighborhood, but he didn't feel safe.
But thanks to the Young Men’s Educational Network, a neighborhood Christian-based organization, and My Block, My Hood, My City, a program that exposes teens to neighborhoods outside of their own, he's been able to greatly expand his horizons.
"It got me out my neighborhood, took me out of the norm and exposed me to things I can’t really do by myself,” he said.
In his trip to Greektown, the Little Village High School student tried Greek food for the first time and visited the National Hellenic Museum, 801 W. Adams St., which documents and preserves Greek immigrant history and showcases the work of Greek-American artists.
“It was cool,” J’Meer said. “It makes me feel special to be able to do this stuff, like I’m chosen, because not every teen gets to do this.”
Lawndale resident Darryl Moton, 16, is excited for the next trip and said that he had fun going to Greektown, too.
“It was a great opportunity,” he said. “Going to the museum was the best part. It was exciting just seeing the different pictures, paintings and designs.”
Darryl and J'Meer and the group also visited the Willis Tower.
Darryl said he's eager to go back.
“It was great, I didn’t really know what we were going to do, but it was fun."
The man who started it all is a Chatham resident.
Jahmal Cole, 32, started the My Block, My Hood, My City group. An advocate for educational reform, he started volunteering in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, where he would speak to the teen inmates.
“They told me they had never been Downtown,” he said, adding that he quickly realized that there was a lot of pride in where each person was from. That’s where the name came from — My Block, My Hood, My City.
"I knew immediately that I wanted to create a program where I could take teenagers from under-resourced communities" on field trips, he said.
Antonio Gross, the program coordinator at the Young Men’s Educational Network in Lawndale, said Cole reached out to him to see if he could work with their participants. Gross said many of its youths have never been out of Lawndale.
“I wanted Jahmal to come here because I like what he’s doing,” he said. “He’s giving the kids new experiences, even more than what I can do for them.”
The Lawndale network offers tutoring, art classes, basketball, cooking classes and more. Gross said the youths receive spiritual and educational components of the learning process.
Cole plans to expand and take more on exploration trips in 2016. Right now, Cole takes 10-15 teens, once a month, but by 2016, he says he wants to take 60 all together. The plan is to take a small group out each weekend. The ultimate goal, though, is to go global.
“There’s a block in the hood everywhere, and everybody loves their own city,” Cole said, “so I envision myself in the next five years having expanded the organization to different cities.”
To fund these trips, Cole sells T-shirts, hoodies, tank tops and jerseys with the group’s name at his website, mbmhmc.com. He said people in Switzerland and Sri Lanka have been spotted wearing his clothes. He’s working towards becoming a nonprofit so he can receive grants and not have to solely rely on sells from the clothes.
For the next trip he plans to take 15 teens from Pullman Butler College Prep to visit Edgewater. They will learn how to make chainmaille jewelry and eat at the Ethiopian Diamond restaurant and Lickity Split, which offers homemade frozen custard, cupcakes and other homemade sweet assortments.
“The magnitude of it always hits me like a day later,” Cole said. “I think the program has given them confidence to travel, so it is working.”
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