Community Talk: College Hacking

We were so excited to host our second community talk for the month of October. This month, Maya Hill, Executive Assistant at The Firehouse Dream facilities College Hacking. Maya has been able to attend college for low cost and wanted to teach her neighbors her tips and tricks. She talked about her story so far, what is college, and of course the tricks she used to go for low cost. We ended with a Q&A on the importance of educating students on their options besides college and decreasing the stigma against community college!

Thank you, Maya, for sharing your knowledge!

Community Yoga

This past weekend we held our first community yoga for this fall! We were excited to see returning and new faces this time around! As always, we started with breathwork and then went into the morning flow led by Kathy Khang. Kathy loves to introduce balance techniques as a part of the flow due to the importance of balance throughout life. Additionally, we did a flow circuit where the same moves are introduced and you create a circuit by doing them one after another, like a routine. This helps stimulate the heart rate but provides amazing stretching!

Thank you Kathy for continuing to share your knowledge and skill! Our next session is Saturday, December 9th, 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM!

Art Therapy

This week, we hosted Art Therapy for our community! This session, we painted sunflowers, to resemble that we can still grow within hardships. Sunflowers take up lots of sunlight but they are still able to survive off little water. Additionally, they produce many seeds when they are fully grown. Dana thought that this was a good symbolization that although sometimes there is no water in our cup, we still have the opportunity to grow and present seeds for out future. As the session went forward, the community talked about their experiences living in Maywood, and what they did to be a good neighbor!

Thank you to those who joined us! Thanks again to Dana for leading another session!

Proviso West | Mental Health Kit Giveaway

Wow, its already our last giveaway for the fall semester! This week, we went to Proviso West to hand out mental health kits. We were able to hand out many kits to incoming freshmen this time. It was exciting to hear that some students had heard about us prior to the giveaway. Additionally, we were able to give kits away to those students who did not get one last time. The students who did get one last time shared how they were using their kits. We loved to hear the support from students and staff.

This time, we handed out 141 kits to students today. Our running total is now at almost 1,400 kits given away!

TFD 5-Year Anniversary!

Wow! TFD has turned 5 years old! We are so excited to celebrate another year of great opportunities and achievements that have made TFD what it is today. The Firehouse continues to create a safe space for BIPOC youth in the Proviso community. We do this through our 3 pillars creativity, mental health, and financial wellness. Through the beginning of our programming, we focused on building creative skills for the youth. Recently, we thought it would be important focus on mental health resources through our mental health kits and mental health workshops. We have had many achievements over these 5 years and we wanted to celebrate with our community.

First, we had our own red carpet for those who came to celebrate with us! Check out our gallery for some pictures! Then we went into social hour before dinner. Everyone was so excited for the taquiza grill. After we had a gallery which showed some of our highlights over the last five years. Mentees Maya (Spring ‘21) and Tracy (Spring ‘22) shared how the Firehouse impacted their lives. It was a beautiful night that we are so grateful to share with out community. Our hearts are so full!

Cheers to another year!