OUR BACKYARD
Loyola students Mikayla Davis (left) and Aliyah Jervier (right) spend time with local teen Deshanti (center) during a recent gathering of Edgewater Kids United. STUDENT OUTREACH
More than kids play
Loyola students and local teens have
found a perfect way
to spend Friday nights BY ELIZABETH CZAPSKI (’17)
E 22 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
very Friday from 5 to 9 p.m., about 50 middle and high school students from Edgewater, Rogers Park, and
Uptown gather to play games, get homework help, and hang out with friends. Among those friends are Loyola students who choose to spend their Friday nights shooting hoops or lending an ear to kids from the community. The two groups are brought
together by Edgewater Kids United, a unique mentorship pro- gram launched last October by Loyola and Sacred Heart Schools. “We noticed when working with the alderman and the other local schools that the middle school
kids in the neighborhood—given the increased violence and gang activity—were more at risk,” says Bridget Couture, director of Inclu- sion and Community Engagement at Sacred Heart School in Edgewa- ter. Confident they had the skills to address this problem, Couture partnered with Bridget Wesley, director for Student Transitions and Outreach at Loyola, and Anto- nio Thomas, a counselor with the Becoming a Man program at Swift and Goudy Elementary Schools, to develop the program. The group usually meets at
Sacred Heart, but on nights when the school is being used for other events they move to Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus. Loyola students play a key role, serving
as mentors to the teens. “It’s been an amazing gift to the kids to have mentors who are older but still relatable,” says Couture. George Roussakio, a senior
political science major at Loyola, found out about Edgewater Kids United from a friend and has been serving as a college coach ever since. Seeing how much the kids get out of the program mo- tivates him to keep coming back. “We create opportunities for kids to succeed because, unfortunate- ly, the communities do not open the doors for them,” he says. “In one way or another, all of the kids are extremely talented and they have a lot of potential.” The program is designed to be whatever the kids involved
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