The rainy days last week may have seemed dreary, but here at the Y we couldn't have been happier! The ground was soaked each day - just the thing for our baby native grasses and perennials at the Y's west side parking lot! They're sure to grow big and strong thanks to our student volunteers.
Students from SECS and Red Bison.
Photos available on Flickr for download.
On September 25, 2011, volunteers from Students for Environmental ConcernS and Red Bison spend several hours at the University YMCA. They planted over 300 native plugs from the Grand Prairie Friends along the West Side parking lot.
Student volunteer digs in native plant plugs.
Photos available on Flickr for download.
These tall grasses, wild onions, and flowering perennials will be wild and beautiful in a year or two. Refer to the last post, "It's going to be WILD..." for details about the planting plan and list of plants used.
The student volunteers from SECS and Red Bison also powered through some much needed property maintenance. They moved load after load of gravelly soil along the edge of the building to prevent water from seeping down.
When the planting was done, volunteers transitioned into pruning and weeding the front side of the building and the native shaded beds along Chalmers.
The Y is grateful for their expert handling of the native plants, overgrown shrubs, and wheelbarrows full of dirt!
Without our student groups, the Y's exterior couldn't be nearly as environmentally friendly, well-maintained, and welcoming.
Special thanks to SECS, Red Bison, and Grand Prairie Friends for their help. Extra thanks to Valerie Sivicek for her leadership and plant knowledge.
Environmental responsibility is part of the Y's mission, and in just a few weeks it will be part of the parking lot too!
Valerie Sivicek designed the native planting plant and Jenni Kotting rendered into diagrams and sections as seen above.
With the help of environmental student groups, Red Bison and SECS, the University YMCA is about to plant a native border along the west side of their parking lot! The long 3-feet-wide strip was formerly an unsightly gravel and weed mixture while the building was under construction. Volunteers will plant the entire area with a mixture of flowering perennials and grasses that can thrive even in poor soil and dry conditions.
The native grasses will offer texture and height against the fence while shorter plants will hug the asphalt closest to the parked cars. Plants include:
At this year's Student Program Orientation, groups created short promos to grab your interest, make you laugh, and ask you to care about their cause. Pretty effective, and well worth watching:
"Telling Stories" is a new oral history project that is beginning to unravel and explore the rich history of the University YMCA. We're also preserving current history by recording interviews with current Y members, such as student leaders, donors, and staff.
The first three Telling Stories episodes are now available on SoundCloud and can be live streamed, downloaded, and shared easily:
Jenni Kotting, the new Communications Director at the Y, has begun this process of interviewing, editing, and arranging the stories. She has a strong background in sound design, ethnography, and oral history. She says, "When I was hired, I wanted to bring my passion for oral history and archives to the table. I never imagined there would be so many stories to tell, and I've never had so much fun editing down a 90 minute interview into a 15 minute episode." Although she complains that her equipment isn't capable of recording at a professional level, she's happy with the way the stories have come together and proud of the students who shared so deeply during their interviews.
Currently available episodes include:
Martha Webber
Alternative Spring Break Volunteer and Graduate Student
Martha Webber, against some major odds, has become both a seminal academic and devoted volunteer. She is the storyteller here, and it’s fitting because that’s her passion as a grad student. Her dissertation is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic narrative which she describes in detail. Martha came to the Y almost as soon as she came to the University for her grad program. She became co-leader of Alternative Spring Break and her interests shifted both academically and personally towards service learning and civic engagement.
Andrea Rosales
La Colectiva Volunteer and Blogger for Undocumented Rights
Andrea didn’t discover she was undocumented until she was in high school when she had to decline a work study position to which she’d been accepted. From that point on, she was on an emotional roller coaster. She felt alone and helpless... until she began to connect with the larger undocumented community through forums and blogging. Now she’s an activist with Y Student Group, La Colectiva. This group of 18 students has put in over 2000 volunteer hours in the past year alone, for which they received the Y’s Outstanding Student Group of the Year Award. Quickly, Andrea became a big part of La Colectiva’s educational outreach, organizing, and action aimed at changing state and national legislation.
Kenny Long
Engineers Without Borders Volunteer and Student Board Member
Kenny Long is a leader in Engineers without Borders, and a new student board of governors member. When he came to the University of Illinois, his family in Texas couldn’t believe how far from home he would be. Soon enough, his involvement with the Y would take him even farther... to Africa. Kenny arrived to the village of Ntisaw with other student engineers. You can hear in his voice the affection and respect he developed for the place. He especially admires the way politics and religion played out while the water system was being planned. Listening to Kenny, you can understand why he got attached to Ntisaw. The people, as a community, worked so hard to get fresh water. They saved an improbable amount of money. And when everything went wrong, they did it all over again.
Hey PSA, I was able to make it out to your fashion show this past weekend, and as promised, it was awesome. I mean it. The amount of planning and rehearsing that must have gone into pulling off an event of that size and that quality is remarkable. Y'all deserve a huge round of applause (which you actually did get on Saturday, so I guess that works out.) Anyway, thanks! You made my weekend.
Maybe we could get some pictures from the show up here?
How do you like our new green wall? We like it a lot.
Okay, so we've got a strange collection of furniture, and our foosball table is covered in protest signs (among other strange decor issues), but (a) we like our non-matching couches and chairs (and we need a lot of them to house our meetings) and (b) who needs foosball when you can be part of a Y program that's out on campus protesting the use of sweatshop labor? Not USAS.
