Unable to escape the gangs, drugs, prostitution and teen motherhood rampant in their public housing development environment, girls staffing the city`s only public housing newspaper are learning to spotlight the good and focus on self-determination.
Led by a former journalist, 15 girls, aged 11 to 17, fill the monthly Community News with interviews of women role models, articles, fiction and poetry.
The intent is to nurture the girls` self-esteem and let them know there can be more to life than children and public aid, says Lois Ulrey, 44, a nine- year resident of Lathrop Homes, who founded the paper three years ago.
Ulrey estimates that up to 98 percent of the residents of the graffiti-marred, brown brick tenements at Diversey Parkway and Damen Avenue are families headed by women on welfare.
”I have girls in the group whose mothers tell them to go out and get a baby so they can get their own welfare checks . . . girls whose mothers are alcoholics and drug addicts,” Ulrey says. ”They don`t get the kind of positive role models other people have.”
Ulrey, a contributor to the Seed, a Chicago underground newspaper published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, launched the Community News with donations from the Lathrop Inter-Agency Council.
The single parent of a 17-year-old daughter, (who works on the paper)
Ulrey decided to get girls involved because, while there were sports programs for boys, there was a lack of positive, organized activities for girls in the projects.
”At first, getting them to write was like pulling teeth,” says Ulrey, who is partially disabled from diabetes and arthritis. Now her three-room apartment is a hub of activity during story meetings.
The Community News highlights successes, such as the story of a former heroin addict who now is an AIDS counselor. It also includes disturbing poems and articles expressing the harsh realities of drug abuse, alcoholism, and child abuse. A letter in a recent edition from ”A Concerned Teen” pleads for an end to gang wars in which ”gunshots can destroy property or hit the bystanders.”
By participating, the girls learn teamwork, meeting deadlines, and responsibilty, while developing their writing skills, Ulrey says.
The paper`s efforts recently earned a special $4,000 award from the Chicago Foundation for Women because it ”creates opportunities for girls in an environment where neglect is often commonplace,” and encourages them to
”set standards for themselves and to become more aware of the choices they can make,” says Marianne Philbin, foundation executive director,
The money will help pay small monthly stipends to the girls and pay printing costs for the paper, which is hand-delivered by the girls about the first Saturday of each month.
This fall, staffers will begin to cover their own beats, most likely on-site programs and some will attempt music and movie reviews.
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”I`d like to see them expand their world, to see that the world doesn`t end at Lathrop,” Ulrey says.