The first week of November, TFD and Marvin Flavien partnered to start filming all the work we do here in our community. Marvin is from New Jersey and has a passion for creating fun branding videos. We are so excited to see the final project of the busy week we had of programming. For now, see below some BTS of the shoot!
Over the last two weeks, the team and community members were invited to restorative justice training. Specifically, Andrew Hong of We Each Belong, trained the team in how to lead healing circles, which is a native practice built on restorative justice. Over 4 days, the team got to know each other on a deeper level, creating a circle, and then started to dream what their own independent circles would look like in the future.
We see how impactful circles can be for our community members. This practice was built on the idea that healing can be achieved through conversation, but most importantly, listening. We can’t wait to see how circle will grow in the Proviso community!
Thank you, Andrew, for creating a safe environment for the team! We appreciate your wisdom and kindness.
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!
Can you believe we are already halfway through week 4 of mentorship? On Wednesday, our mentees participated in a coping skills workshop led by Erika Luna from the Oasis Project. As mental health is one of our three pillars, it is important we incorporate it into our mentorship. Throughout this workshop, coping skills were discussed amongst our mentees and Erika Luna. Our mentees learned how to deal with stress more constructively, establishing boundaries on what you cannot control, and skills to deal with stress.
We then transitioned to our next workshop with our mentorship coordinator, Sandra. The mentees and Sandra talked about the basics of Adobe Illustrator on an Apple iPad. All through this software was challenging to use, it was rewarding to see our mentees work together to meet their goal of designing something new!
Don’t you just hate how furniture and building supplies go into landfills? ReUse Depot, a non-profit organization, prevents this from happening by reselling items that would’ve been tossed away (https://reusedepot.org). On day 3 of learning photography, we took a trip to ReUse Depot for the second time. Our mentees got to meet the store cats, look around at all the amazing antiques, and on top of that they got to photograph all of it! Its was an amazing adventure! We can’t wait to come back!
We also learned some history at ReUse Depot…the Firetruck (pictured below) was a World war II Firetruck that was then donated to Maywood. At some point between the years 1943-1980’s this very truck was Maywood’s official Firetruck, meaning it was in our Firehouse! How cool is that?!
