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!

Mental Health & Creativity

Today, we welcomed back Sarah, from Yo Soy Ella, to lead a workshop called “Progress Over Perfection”. During this workshop, our mentees had a conversation about how you do not need to be perfect to succeed. Everyone has their ups and downs, but as long as you put your mind to what you want, you will succeed. Our mentees really enjoyed this workshop and the chance you dive deeper into what success means to them. Sarah has now led a total of four workshops with TFD, how amazing!

Our mentees made a transition to the tables to go over illustrator once more! Each group was given a prompt to create a design in Adobe Illustrator and present it at the end. Illustrator has so many unique tools to utilize, but we are taking it one step at a time!

Photos: Mariah

Coping Skills & The Basics Of Illustrator

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!

All Things Editing, Safe Spaces, And Intro To Graphic Design!

Photo Credit: @mariah_julianna_

Not only is photography difficult, but the editing process is a lot harder! During the first day of week 4 in mentorship, our mentees wrapped up the learning process of editing, partook in a safe space dialogue, and began the intro to graphic design! It is so awesome to see all that our mentees have learned in the past few weeks. We are eager for what is to come in week five!

Photo credit: @mariah_julianna_

A Trip To ReUse Depot

Don’t you just hate how building supplies get tossed into landfills? ReUse Depot prevents this from happening. We recently visited ReUse Depot once again for our mentees to practice their photography skills! It was amazing to see our mentees put all that they have learned about photography to use, as well as meeting the store cats! We also learned about Maywood’s original Firetruck. The Firetruck pictured above was a World War II Firetruck that was donated to Maywood. This means that at some point between 1943-1980’s this Firetruck was in our Firehouse! We love learning about the history of our community, especially about our Firehouse. We can’t wait to visit again!

Photo credit: @mariah_julianna_