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I have been working with a few community organizations over the past few weeks in preparation for our HIV Health Fair on May 18th at the Vietnamese Association of IL. I would like to highlight one of those organizations in this blog: the Asian Health Coalition. 

This past Friday I was given the opportunity to join a group of seniors taking a trip to the immigration detention center in Broadview, IL. The seniors are part of Casa Esperanza Community Center’s Senior program.

This past weekend HACES and Father Gary Graf held a citizenship workshop in Hainesville. Hainesville is a very small village close to Round Lake in Lake County. We had never held a workshop there and it could not have gone any better!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jing Zhang, the Community Health Program Director of the Asian Human Services. Dr.

‘You are my other me;” reads the first lines of Luis Valdez’s poem, ‘In Lak’ ech,’ a poem that embraces so much more than the words from which it is comprised.  This Mayan greeting embraces mutual respect that stems from the precious knowledge of self, allowing us to develop as complete, loving beings.

On May 19th NAI’s Northwest Collaborative will be hosting a citizenship workshop at Wright Community College. I have taken on the responsibility of contacting local businesses who might be interested in making in kind donations or giving monetary support to help provide food for the volunteers who will be dedicating 7 hours of their Saturday morning.

Volunteering should always be something that is fun.  Whether it is cleaning a park and getting all dirty or sitting and spending hours helping someone for a citizenship test there must be some sort of enjoyment from volunteering.  Since this week was volunteer week I decided to have my weekly group of volunteers do something a little different.

When we live in Chicagoland, sometimes we forget that Illinois extends below I-80, but Tuesday the Muslim community took time to acknowledge the rest of Illinois and gave to people they will probably never meet.

Today, political, religious and community leaders joined together to tell Corrections Corporation of America that they are not welcome in Illinois.