Final dispatch from Harrisburg: Celebrating accomplishments and community

Final dispatch from Harrisburg: Celebrating accomplishments and community

Student group continues green space project in Harrisburg

Harrisburg, Pa. -- This summer, six student volunteers from three universities, including four Penn Staters, are continuing a green space project in Harrisburg's Allison Hill neighborhood that was started by a Penn State landscape architecture service-learning class two years ago.

Among other goals, the students from Penn State, Shippensburg University and Columbia University are working with the intergenerational Pride of the Neighborhood program to transform a vacant lot at Seneca and N. 5th Streets into a public garden. They will also maintain lots around the Catholic Worker facility that were landscaped into green spaces in previous summers.

Below, in reverse order, are the Summer 2004 dispatches intended to keep Penn State Live and Penn State Newswire readers up-to-date on the project.

Final Dispatch (#7): Celebrating accomplishments and community

For photos related to this dispatch, go to http://live.psu.edu/still_life/2004_09_09_dispatch/index.html

Our hands-on work in Harrisburg has ended for the summer. Maia, Jesse and Chris are back at Penn State and Shippensburg University, while Cori is studying in Brazil and Anjana is studying in Nicaragua.

Before leaving Harrisburg for the summer, we helped finish grouting the mosaic, painting the black and white portions of the mural, pouring the concrete sections of the sidewalk and the stage, and we held a closing celebration at the lot. In contrast to the mosaic that took weeks of diligent work to complete, the concrete sections of the sidewalk and the stage were poured in just two days. We were fortunate to have a crew of volunteers from Dauphin County's work release program and the Firm Foundation helping us out. None of us had a background in concrete work, but after a few hours on the job we quickly picked up the basics.

To commemorate all of the hard work that our community partners and our group put into the project, we held a commencement ceremony at the lot. At the ceremony Pride of the Neighborhood's summer-camp kids put on a dance routine to hip-hop music. The dance routine was preceded by speeches from Harrisburg's Mayor Reed, Pride of the Neighborhood's Marcia Reeves and our own Maia. An awards ceremony was also part of the celebration.

During the awards ceremony, we were thrilled that both Harrisburg's city council and the mayor's office issued proclamations to Pride of the Neighborhood for their involvement in the project. The proclamations are paper proof that our community partners are viewed as the project's owners and that we are on track to accomplish one of our primary goals—to have the community take ownership of the green spaces and the project.

Living together in the inner city, managing the project and working closely with our community partners has been a growing experience for us all. Living in Harrisburg's inner city gave us insight into the area's economically depressed but culturally enlightened landscape. After a summer, it became obvious that the area's high percentage of blighted buildings, vacant lots and struggling families are the products of external influences—such as poor planning—that are outside the direct control of residents living in Harrisburg.

It is our belief that external influences are partially responsible for encouraging area residents to build compassionate, accepting and close-knit communities—communities with neighbors that rely on each other for friendships, for rides to work, for tools, and for keeping a watchful eye on unfamiliar faces. It was surprising and inspiring to us that our neighbors and community partners were extremely accepting of us and the project and offered advice, encouragement, materials, tools and even volunteered themselves.

The summer was an amazing learning experience for us all, and we are impressed by how much we were able to accomplish with the support of our project partners, friends, families and universities. Most importantly, we learned that Harrisburg's compact urban infrastructure, its public spaces, its close-knit communities, its civic events and its projects, are all positive qualities of urban communities that can serve as examples for other cities and suburbs.

Sincerely,

Anjana, Chris, Cori, Dan, Jesse, and Maia

Dispatch #6: Helping hands from near and far

For photos related to this dispatch, go to http://live.psu.edu/still_life/2004_08_03_dispatch/index.html

Pursuing adventures abroad, Cori and Anjana have left for the summer. Cori is studying in Brazil for four months, and Anjana is studying in Nicaragua for one year. Their presence is greatly missed, but we are excited that they are carrying their amazing positive energy to other parts of the world.

Since our last dispatch, most of our attention has been focused on Pride of the Neighborhood Academies' (PNA) lot, which was recently named "Pride Park" by youth from PNA. We are in the final stages of installing a sidewalk around the lot and have almost completed the brick sections of the sidewalk. While working on the brick sections, a few neighbors with masonry experience were concerned that we didn't know what we were doing. At first they were critical, but seeing that we acknowledged our inexperience, they offered us some great advice, which made the construction go much faster and smoother -- a perfect example of the community's willingness to share knowledge and resources with those who are working for the good of the neighborhood.

The non-bricked areas of the sidewalk will be concrete. This week, we are preparing to pour the concrete for the remainder of the sidewalk and the stage -- which will be another learning experience for all of us. But with the help of two volunteer masons, William and Mike, we should encounter few problems.

Another project on the lot that receives a great deal of attention is the mosaic wall in front of PNA's Uptown building. The final task in completing the mosaic, applying the grout in between the tile pieces, turned out to be the most tedious. Thankfully, the encouragement we received from almost every passerby helped keep us and others excited about the work. It is amazing how much of a positive response such a small wall can create, even if it just conjures up a smile or curiosity.

The same goes for the mural of Ray Charles that was just started on the side of a neighbor's row house. Dan came back down this past weekend to paint the black and white parts of the mural. Because the mural is very visible from the road, drivers are constantly slowing down to give us positive comments. We hope to finish the color parts of the mural in September.

We can't forget to mention that work went especially fast last week because we had five groups of volunteers helping us. High-schoolers from the local Catholic diocese spent a week volunteering in the city. In addition to furthering the project, these white, suburban volunteers were given the opportunity to experience the physical fabric, culture and sense of community of the inner city -- a place from which they are far removed. We hope that their volunteer experience was a positive one and helped dispel some of the stereotypes created by the media, who tend misrepresent life in the city by focusing so much on the city’s crime rather than on its positive attributes. Further, we hope that the volunteers were able to experience and appreciate the city's strong sense of community and residents' willingness to volunteer time and energy on behalf of the community.

As Friday swiftly approaches, we are working hard to prepare "Pride Park" for an end-of-the-summer celebration. Among the attendees will be the children and staff from the Pride of the Neighborhood, local residents and Mayor Stephen R. Reed. This celebration will be an important opportunity to recognize all those who have dedicated time, energy and money to support the work at "Pride Park." We thank all of you who have encouraged us with your words, thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely,

Jesse, Maia and Chris

Dispatch #5: Finding inspiration amid the harsh realities of a neglected neighborhood

After two more weeks of hard work, we are happy to see the gradual improvements in the transformed lots. At the Heart of the Community lot on Derry Street, we planted sunflowers, corn and pumpkins and painted a trashcan with the middle-school summer camp. At the Pride of the Neighborhood lot, we finished tiling the mosaic spelling "PRIDE" and are now busy filling it in with black grout. We also had fun with the kids there painting bright designs onto two telephone poles and some decorative rocks, as well as planting a whole bunch of sunflowers in the garden space. The two Catholic Worker gardens are looking beautiful, thanks to some high-school students living at an organic farm upstate for the summer who came in to weed, turn compost and water the plants.

Although watching the visual changes in these green spaces is rewarding, perhaps just as valuable are the lessons we are gaining about working in an impoverished neighborhood. As white, middle-class college students we are working in a very different culture, but we have found all of our community allies, neighbors, and summer camp coworkers to be tremendously welcoming and supportive of the projects. Although it is very clear that it is only because of our privilege that we are able to take a summer to volunteer with this project, it is satisfying for us to channel our energy and resources into an area that is often neglected by city funding.

The connection between racial and economic divisions within Harrisburg has been a very clear lesson for us. The city has invested a lot of money into downtown Harrisburg, while in the Allison Hill and uptown neighborhoods of mostly people of color, buildings on almost every block are condemned, and the streets are nowhere near as well maintained. Just last week the abandoned house next to the duplex of the Catholic Worker House and the Joshua House caught fire. It was put out quickly but is merely one example of the results of neighborhood neglect. The other obvious consequence is crime. Tragically, in the past month, one man was killed in the house of one of our project's employees, and another young man was killed just a block from the Pride of the Neighborhood lot while we were working on it. Although these deaths were shocking for us, they are a reality in this area. Crime in the neighborhood stems from far deeper systemic economic and social issues. Our small community has spent some time praying and reflecting on the senseless violence.

Nonetheless, we are inspired by the people all around us investing their energy in projects to transform this vibrant neighborhood in countless ways. The key to reversing the systemic problems facing Harrisburg and so many other areas is for all of us to work together across social, racial and economic lines and to share our collective resources, energy and insight.

Sincerely,

Anjana, Cori, Maia, Dan, Jesse and Chris

Dispatch #4: Little hands and little pieces transform space

Our little group has finally reached a point where we are seeing tangible results of our work on the lots, and it sure is gratifying.

Our new arrival, Maia Zampini, who came on June 19 from State College, has shown up just in time to help make the projects happen. Maia jumped right into work with us and loves heading up our mosaic team with Anjana.

Thanks to generous donations from Hepschmidt Tile Co., Harrisburg Wall and Flooring, and Gipe Floor and Wall Covering, we have hundreds of tiles and mirror pieces that the kids at Pride of the Neighborhood are using to install a mosaic on the retaining wall outside of their school. The mosaic spells out "PRIDE" in white tiles with a background of colorful tile and mirror pieces fill in the space around the lettering.

The kids are having a great time applying the know-how they acquired on our June 18 field trip to the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia; even their parents and passersby are stopping to affix a tile or two to leave their mark on the mosaic.

At the Village of Arts and Humanities, the kids saw lot upon lot of reclaimed vacant space that has been turned into an oasis of art, beauty, and nature in the middle of North Philly. Refurbished homes border a number of these lots in an area that encompasses at least four city blocks and is continually expanding.

In one of the lots, next to a park bordered by a waving stucco wall highlighted by triangles of color, the kids had the opportunity to affix tiles to a fallen tree that had been stuccoed over in order to turn the obstruction into a work of art. James "Big Man" Maxton showed the kids how to properly affix the tiles with just the right amount of cement.

In the mid 1980s, James teamed up with an artist named Lily Yeh to transform an inner city vacant lot into a community arts park. Soon the lot turned into two lots and then three, and continued growing as James and Lily won award after award and grant after grant for their work.

The Village was a fascinating place for both the kids and us as we discovered the transforming potential of a pair of creative minds who saw possibility in what many would consider one of the most impossible environments in Pennsylvania.

In other news, on June 21, we started working with a summer camp of middle schoolers at the Derry Street United Methodist Church. On Mondays and Fridays, we have been working with the campers to maintain a community green space and add artistic elements to the space.

Also, this past Monday June 28, two teenagers from Allison Hill teamed up with us to help us oversee the kids at Pride and Derry Street. Shay Bullock and Avery McCraw will be paid for their daily help by the Southcentral Employment Corporation as part of a summer employment program that finds productive, positive ways for teens to use their free time.

As for us, we are all living well and are constantly inspired by our project partners who have furthered our commitment to making a difference. We are also inspired by each other; it feels great to wake up every morning in a house full of likeminded and dedicated people.

Sincerely,

Anjana, Cori, Maia, Dan, Jesse and Chris

Dispatch #3: Exercising muscles, minds, patience

Two more weeks have gone by, and although we're still trailing the red tape through City Hall, we've finally gotten into the heart of what we came here to do this summer: work hands-on with Harrisburg residents to reclaim vacant spaces.

Since our last update, we've finished uprooting the old sidewalk on the Pride of the Neighborhood lot and have almost completed digging an 8-inch deep trench for the new one. We began working with the kids at Pride this week, who have been helping us to dig as well as weed the garden plot in preparation for planting. The kids are full of energy and enthusiasm, but it's a challenge to keep that energy focused on the tasks at hand, as their short 8-year-old attention spans tend to take them off in all different directions!

We’re also working with 10-12 year-olds in the afternoons, who are easier to keep focused for longer periods of time -- they've been the biggest help in making progress with the sidewalk trench. Kids from the neighborhood also show up when we're working, asking if we need any help and offering to pick and dig to occupy their now school-free afternoons. It's awesome to see young kids offering to help out in their neighborhood when they could be playing or stirring up trouble instead; it goes to show that when youth have a positive outlet for their energy, they're just as happy to help a good cause as they are to wreak havoc on their parents or neighbors.

We've been relishing the opportunity to spend our summer days working outside in the sun (and sometimes rain!) with our hands, exercising our muscles and our minds, and at times our patience! We've also been having fun collecting used, discarded, and/or broken materials for creative use in the lots we're now beginning to work on.

Last week, two of us went on a scavenger hunt after Anjana discovered a broken mirror discarded next to a dumpster off of 13th Street. We grabbed a couple of plastic bags and headed over to collect the broken pieces glinting in the sun and brought them back to Dan, who has been scoring them into neat shapes for the kids to use in mosaics in the Pride lot. We've also been keeping our eyes peeled for colored-glass bottles and shards whenever we're out for walks for additional mosaic materials.

We discovered our best find yet when a couple of us were outside turning compost piles in the Catholic Worker lot last week. While we were busy shoveling, we heard a loud crumbling sound and saw a cloud of dust billow up from outside the fence. Curious, we exited the lot and discovered a pile of high-quality, undamaged bricks and a gaping hole where a garage wall once stood. Immediately we realized the value of our find and ran for a wheelbarrow so we could start hauling the bricks to the Catholic Worker house for storage until we can use them for a walkway or patio in one of the lots.

We love the idea of reusing old parts of the city in new projects -- of maintaining temporal and spatial connections within the city. Plus, we're saving money and turning so-called trash into treasure!

Until next time, keep it real … and remember that the real doesn't exclude the ideal.

Jesse, Chris, Cori, Anjana and Dan

Dispatch #2: Prepping for the "real" work

Another busy week in Allison Hill is coming to a close. We added a new crew member last week, Anjana Sharma from Colombia University. Her unique spirit and creative energy bring a great new dimension to our team. Together we're immersing ourselves in the community and gearing up for the outdoor work we'll soon be starting.

To begin with, we met the children from Pride of the Neighborhood with whom we'll be working in Uptown beginning on June 15. We shared computer images of artwork such as mosaics, sculptures, pathways and murals from various lots in the area and from the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia to show them what we can do in the lot across the street from their school. The kids loved the pictures and were really excited about the neat forms, designs and colors that can be incorporated into the lot. Some even began drawing pictures of murals and pathways that they'd eventually like to implement.

We've also spent a good deal of time -- and energy! -- tearing up the old sidewalk framing the lot across from Pride. The Vartan Group, a Harrisburg developing company, has offered to lend us concrete forms and the assistance of one of their supervisors to lay a new sidewalk to replace the existing damaged one, but it's up to us to have the area prepped for the pour. Pouring a new sidewalk will be a great opportunity for the kids to literally leave their mark in the neighborhood by using the wet cement as a canvas.

A large majority of our time this past week has been spent setting up and attending meetings in preparation for the "real" work we will soon begin. We've followed the red tape all the way up to City Hall and met with officials in the Department of Building and Housing Development to secure the go-ahead to work on some of the city-owned lots in Allison Hill. In addition to Pride of the Neighborhood, we've also been meeting with our other community partners to map out a summer work schedule. After beginning work on the Pride lot on June 15, we will begin to work on a lot on Derry Street alongside middle-schoolers from the Derry Street United Methodist Church summer camp on June 21. On June 28, we'll begin working with a second group of teenagers to maintain and enhance various lots throughout Allison Hill.

Our days have been long, but rewarding. We have met so many residents of Allison Hill and Uptown that are excited about the work we'll be doing in the lots -- work they have been wanting to do, but that they don't have the time and resources to set in motion. We certainly aren't experts ourselves, but as students from privileged universities, we do have time and resources to share. We're learning as we go and are continually adapting our own agenda in order to accommodate the needs and desires of the community around us. The residents are teaching us that establishing a trusting relationship is the most important foundation for any work that we hope to accomplish together. Knowing that we are interested in the long-term well being of their communities above all else is essential to them, and to us.

Dispatch #1: Setting plans in motion

Well, we're settled into our summer residence here in Allison Hill on the east side of Harrisburg, uphill from Cameron Street -- hence the name, Allison Hill. It's hot and rainy right now, but the weather isn't dampening our spirits. We're psyched to get to work and we're beginning to set our plans in motion.

So what are our plans? And who are "we"? We are Chris Spahr, Jesse Hunting, Cori Thatcher, Dan Reynolds, Anjana Sharma and Maia Zampini, a diverse group of students from across the country who share a commitment to positive social change.

Chris ( chrisspahr2003@yahoo.com) is a grad student at Shippensburg University working on a master's degree in geoenvironmental studies with an emphasis on land use planning and urban development. A native of Mechanicsburg, Pa., he's familiar with the area and taught for a year at the school across the street from the Catholic Worker, our home for the summer.

Jesse ( jlh457@psu.edu) is an undergraduate student in landscape architecture at Penn State who has been volunteering his time in Allison Hill for the past two summers working to develop many of the gardens we'll be maintaining this summer (more on that later).

Cori ( cet131@psu.edu) is a Latin America studies major at Penn State who has had experience working in urban areas in both Mexico and the United States -- so though she's a State College native, her life has not revolved entirely around Penn State!

Dan ( dvr111@psu.edu), a native of Bethlehem, Pa., is looking forward to supplementing our project with his artistic background. He's pursuing a bachelor of fine arts at Penn State with an emphasis on sculpture as well as a degree in art education.

Anjana ( aes2004@columbia.edu) is a pre-med environmental biology student at Columbia University who hails from San Francisco, Calif. She's interested in expanding upon her work for Project Health, for which she taught fitness, nutrition and self-esteem to at-risk teens, by teaching similar topics to teens here in Allison Hill.

And last, but certainly not least, Maia ( mrz122@psu.edu), a native of Westborough, Mass., and student at Penn State, will join us in mid-June to add her landscape architecture expertise to the project.

Now that you know who we are, let us tell you about what we're doing. We all decided to come together this summer to expand upon Jesse's efforts in urban gardening in Harrisburg over the past two summers. Jesse has invested a lot of time and energy into crafting appealing green spaces in Allison Hill in partnership with local organizations and wants to keep his energy alive and spread it to more and more people in the neighborhood -- so we're here to contribute our own energies both to ongoing and new projects in the area.

Our whopper of a project is to work with the intergenerational Pride of the Neighborhood program to sup up a vacant lot at Seneca and N. 5th Streets using the $7,700 in grants and donations we've received to purchase materials. We want to use art in addition to vegetation, in order to tap into and foster the creativity of the youths and elderly we'll be working with. We also plan to keep up the lots around the Catholic Worker that Jesse helped to landscape in previous summers.

We'll be working with eight teens from the area beginning in late June to put their energy and ideas into maintenancing and additional landscaping. Unfortunately, we don't have any monies to purchase supplies for these gardens, so we're looking for funding opportunities so that we don't have to limit what the teens and we can do with the lots.

If you have any ideas for potential funding sources, please let us know!

In addition to our work in the community at large, we'll all be putting effort into keeping the Catholic Worker clean and organized amidst so many people and so much activity.

We've already made significant headway in straightening up the place and in organizing the food bank in the basement, which had fallen to quite a measure of disarray due to an influx of donations.

It was Jesse who brought us all together, but as Jesse is quick to emphasize, this is not his project -- nor is it ours; at least we hope it won't be. One of our primary goals for the summer -- as well as our primary challenge -- is to have the community take ownership of the green spaces we'll be helping them to install and maintain.

We want the ideas, art, energy, and enthusiasm to come from residents here so that they feel a sense of ownership and pride in place when the lots are finished, and so that they'll continue to maintain the lots once we are no longer around to facilitate work.

Another of our primary goals is to build community amongst us at the Catholic Worker, between us and the residents in the area, and amongst the residents. All of us know from experience that it is the intangible outcomes of projects like this that are most important to stimulating and maintaining positive social change, so our focus is going to be on building human capital rather than building beautiful gardens -- although we certainly hope that building beautiful gardens will be a by-product of our efforts.

To date, in addition to tidying up the Catholic Worker, we have toured the green spaces in Allison Hill and the lot at Seneca and N. 5th Streets and met with Marcia Reeves of Pride of the Neighborhood to get the ball rolling on the intergenerational project at the latter lot. We've also set up a trip to bring the youths and elderly we'll be working with to the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia to get their creative juices flowing.

We're all very excited about living and working together in Allison Hill and will continue to keep our friends and family up to date on what's going on in the 'hood. We hope to get a few pictures out with our next update, which we'll send out after the ball is really rolling on some of these projects.


For pictures of the latest action, visit http://live.psu.edu/still_life/2004_07_07_harrisburg/index.html and http://live.psu.edu/still_life/2004_06_07_dispatch/index.html

For earlier stories about the work in Allison Hill, visit http://www.psu.edu/ur/2003/allisonhill.html (from Spring 2003) and http://www.artsandarchitecture.psu.edu/news/hunting_101702.html (from Fall 2002).