Chicago Marathon Val

When I made the decision to register for the 2009 Chicago Marathon, I knew that I wanted to fundraise for an important charity as part of my marathon training.  When I was training for the 2007 Chicago Marathon I raised money for the Afghan Women’s Association International.  While this was a great organization, this time it was important for me to raise money for an organization that would directly affect the safety and wellbeing of the students that I work with as a school social worker in Chicago.

Basically, Ceasefire is an amazing organization that does a ton of great things for Chicago residents, but its main campaign is to stop gang violence. As a school social worker in Chicago’s inner city, I have seen far, far too many students be touched by gang violence, and frankly I’ve had enough. So, it’s very important to me to raise money for this awesome organization.

Here is a snippet from their website:

CeaseFire relies on highly trained outreach workers and violence interrupters, faith leaders, and other community leaders to intervene in conflicts, or potential conflicts, and promote alternatives to violence. CeaseFire also involves cooperation with police and it depends heavily on a strong public education campaign to instill in people the message that shootings and violence are not acceptable. Finally, it calls for the strengthening of communities so they have the capacity to exercise informal social control and to mobilize forces — from businesses to faith leaders, residents and others — so they all work in concert to reverse the epidemic of violence that has been with us for too long.
These activities are organized into CeaseFire’s five core components, which address both the community and those individuals who are most at risk of involvement in a shooting or killing:
- Street-level outreach
- Public education
- Community mobilization
- Faith leader involvement
- Police participation

One of the things that I think is really cool about Ceasefire is that many of their staff members are ex-gang members who were previously incarcerated but are out of jail and want to rehabilitate themselves and others. They actually go into the trenches and try to mediate between opposing gangs – in the streets of Chicago. As you can imagine, this can be dangerous work, and these men and women are extremely brave to be doing this.  Ceasefire has struggled for years to get adequate funding from the state – actually they were briefly shut down once (from a lack of funding) only to be reopened once Blagojevich realized what great work they were doing. Violent crime had gone down drastically in the areas where Ceasefire was working, so he renewed their state funding so they were able to reopen. Yay!
I would love for anyone who wants to help Ceasefire to make a contribution – any amount, large or small, would be appreciated by this organization and for the children and adults whose lives it will undoubtedly help save.
I will personally give a shout-out to every single person that donates, no matter what size the donation is – I don’t care if it’s a single $1.00!!

If you are interested in helping out this great cause, this is what you can do:

1) Go to http://ceasefirechicago.org/donate.shtml
2) Type in “Marathon Val” under “special instructions” so that I can keep track of how many dollars coming in (I won’t be notified right away, but sporadically Ceasefire will email me to tell me who has recently made a donation)

Please let me know if you have any trouble accessing this website, or if you have any questions for me!

THANK YOU so much for your help and support!!!!

XOXOX Marathon Val

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Edited to add:  The Chicago Marathon has come and gone, but Ceasefire, and the children of Chicago, still need your help! It’s never too late to make a donation to this cause