Five people likely to become leaders soon in Elgin-area politics and volunteerism gathered Tuesday with eight teenagers for a bowling and pizza party.
The parties’ organizers were among the 2014-2015 class members of Elgin Area Leadership Academy, a group that the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce assembles every two years to train how to be an Elgin-area leader. The kids attending were participants in the Boys and Girls Club of Elgin’s after-school activities held at the two Elgin high schools and four Elgin middle schools.
Chamber of Commerce President Carol Gieske said this year’s Leadership Academy class numbers 23 people. Their class activities included viewing a play put on by Elgin Community College students that explored the social and political aspects of the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave. The group will graduate in May. But before then, Gieske said, each member is required to participate in some kind of team service project.
Toya Webb, one of the academy students, said that as they discussed possible projects, she and four other students realized they were “passionate about working to empower youth.” So they decided to hold what they called the “Spring Break Bowling Bash” at Elgin Lanes to reward some of the Boys and Girls Club’s top-performing kids and to do some one-on-one mentoring with them.
Webb is a certified life coach and works in the community relations department at Elgin Community College. Other Bowling Bash organizers included Arisleyda Taylor, an international logistics planner who already is running for the School District U46 Board in the April 7 election; Raquel Robelo, an administrative assistant in District U46’s early-learning office who also is president of Lords Park School’s parent-teacher organization; Aliana Aquino, the human resources and payroll coordinator at the Petroliance fuel dealership in Elgin; and Theresa Higaredo, a part-time case manager at the Elgin PADS shelter who does substance-abuse counseling with homeless people.
“I want to work with families, especially within the Hispanic community, and get them more involved in their children’s education,” Robelo said.
For their service project, a second team of Leadership Academy students is preparing a checklist of requirements and resources for anyone who wants to start a new business in Elgin. A third team is preparing a list of opportunities for teenagers and young adults to volunteer for good causes in and around Elgin.
Once those lists are completed, Webb said, both will be posted on the chamber of commerce’s website, elginchamber.com.
But as the eight Boys and Girls Club honorees arrived at Elgin Lanes aboard a minibus Tuesday, the first team’s effort was more hands-on. The kids and academy people joined in to gobble up several pizzas that had been donated by Nick’s Pizza. Then they began rolling black balls toward white pins.
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The teens and the organizers alike rolled lots of gutter balls. A more seasoned adult bowler at the alley next door used his wicked hook shot to score strikes and spares in nearly every frame, amassing a final score of 224 in his first game. Half of the bash bowlers had not yet scored 20 by halfway through their first game.
But the bash was great fun anyway, agreed Ellis Middle School students Jose Perez and Jose Ramirez.
Perez said that when he grows up, he hopes to become a forensic pathologist and help solve crimes by analyzing blood splatters and DNA. One of the adults talked to him about having interviewed the pathologist who used to do most of the autopsies at the Kane County Morgue, and some of the real-life mystery deaths that man has explained.
Ramirez said he also has a scientific bent and hopes to become a medical doctor, because “I like to take care of people.”
Sarah Cranmer, director of teen services for the Boys and Girls Club, said the Bowling Bash participants were chosen because of their good grades and good behavior. She said the club’s six after-school sites offer kids homework help plus learning and recreation activities.
Some of these kids could become the leadership academy’s students of tomorrow and the community leaders of the day after that. “We talk with the kids about the importance of volunteering in your community and being a positive role model for your peers and for kids younger than you,” Cranmer said.
The leadership academy has graduated about 450 people since it started in the early 1990s under the leadership of Dan Fox, Don Waters and Ruth Munson.
The chamber’s Gieske said this year’s students “will get lots of calls from the nonprofit organizations. They’re already calling us and asking, ‘Have the leadership academy students graduated yet?'”