This semester I decided to say “yes” to things that I would normally say “no” to. I dropped a tutoring organization on campus that I felt wasn’t exactly fitting the mission I set out to do in making an impact in the communities sidelined to the poorest zip codes in the greater Saint Louis area. I had heard about the “SLU bubble” as soon as I arrived on campus and was determined to leave it whenever I could.
I first met the organizers of Claver House, the new organization that I volunteer at, at a community outreach fair on my way to class. Their goal is to provide literacy and science enriched activities in a hands-on fashion, working directly with the children living in the Ville District in North Saint Louis. From hearing this, it seemed to fit everything I was looking for in a volunteer organization; it was interactive, far from the familiarity of SLU’s campus, and impactful in a completely forgotten community. So second semester, I pulled out the Claver House business card I received months earlier and sent the organizers an email to start volunteering there right away.
From weeks of trying to find transportation, I eventually found myself on a public bus taking me further into the outskirts of central Saint Louis, where the organization was grounded. I learned quite a bit about neighborhoods like the Ville in my sociology class throughout the semester. It physically fit the stereotype of an inner-city neighborhood: run-down gray buildings and abandonment, which all was so diverged to the bustling motion of college-life in Midtown.
When I step inside, a smell of pancakes wafts through the air. Every Saturday morning, breakfast served with all the works is being cooked up: pancakes, sausage, orange juice, along with conversations about all of our weeks. Throughout the house, you’ll find little crevices that open into rooms with various STEM, literacy, and art activities. Each room has its different purpose: one may be working on building a robot arm that can shoot hoops or another maybe preparing saltwater solutions to watch brine shrimp hatch. The main goal is simply developing their interests in activities beyond the rigidity of the classroom. Several rooms also have shelves of donated books or whiteboards often used for challenging the kids in solving quick arithmetic problems. Besides what’s in each room, every wall of the house is surfaced with words of encouragement, newspaper clippings of heroic African American individuals like MLK, Barack Obama, and Kobe Bryant. In a way, everywhere they look, they’re given the constant reinforcement to be to be fearless in seizing opportunities and dreaming big.
Claver house is in the process of reestablishing their presence of a place for children to escape their realities. After initially losing many families in the community to issues like safety and better opportunities, Claver House began having transportation to pick up the remainder of the children that had no means of coming. Once that began threatening the safety of volunteers and the kids, the only thing every could cling on to was just continuing their mission. It’s all of us: undergraduate students, college alumni, Jesuits, and dedicated volunteers from the community that are trying to change the path for the next generation of these kids.
My experiences at Claver House have only encouraged me to explore opportunities that lie outside–outside SLU’s campus, outside my comfort zone, and outside the familiarity of the people and area of the Saint Louis I thought I knew all this time. With a city of over 300,000 people, it’s known that we don’t all live the same way. I encourage you to find those opportunities that are in those zip codes you may often find yourself avoiding. After all, it’s those opportunities that may be the most rewarding and impactful.