ML - Michigan Avenue

2013 - Issue 8 - December

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY Volunteers from Target work together to assemble a bookcase at Christopher Elementary School. INSIGHT What: Chicago Cares Celebration of Service When: Saturday, January 18 Where: Various locations throughout the city continued from page 64 Info: Visit more effective, engaged employee base. You'll chicagocares.org. have the VP or the CEO volunteering side by side with the receptionist or the manager, and everyone's the same on service day. It breaks down barriers within companies, so the benefits are pretty amazing. Our annual Celebration of Service happens on January 18; it's the largest celebration in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. that involves service. Dr. King really has inspired everybody to serve their community, and we will be doing that through all of January but specifically on that day, when we will have up to 1,500 volunteers from Target working on service projects related to Dr. King's message. They'll be working with seniors, in schools, and with people with developmental disabilities. It's going to be a great day. Target just opened a new store on Division and Larrabee, and it will be great team building for their employees. We're also planning a big week called Empower to Employ, to train our volunteers to teach people job skills: résumé writing, how to do a job interview, how to behave in a job. When Chicago Cares was started, a lot of it was hands-on—fixing schools and doing improvement projects—but we have this large base of professional people who have professional skills that can be taught to others. Now we're talking about Empower to Employ Week or Month, and we aim to make something happen in April that centers around getting more people job-ready. When it comes to Chicago Cares, I'm most proud that we have inspired a lot of people to either make service or teaching if not their career, a significant part of who they are as people, whether it's with Chicago Cares or anywhere around the world. One of my favorite stories is that I had hired a math tutor for my kids, and she walked in and looked at me and said, "Are you the Chicago Cares lady?" I said yes, and she said, "I knew I recognized you—I used to be with Accenture, and now I'm a Chicago Public School math teacher." She used to come to Chicago Cares programs, and that seeded her desire to leave consulting and become a teacher. It was the best story I've ever heard. I'm proud that we have been able to plant this seed—we're creating the next generation of civic leaders. MA 062-067_MA_SP_Spirit_Winter2014.indd 66 11/19/13 2:21 PM

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