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Solidarity with the South Side

Friends of Shoesmith

Shoesmith Elementary is the public school right across Kenwood Park from SPR. Parishioners of SPR are part of the Friends of Shoesmith, which meets monthly to explore and plan ways to support the school. We take our lead from the teachers, staff, and parents and work to meet the needs that they identify.
Here are some things Friends of Shoesmith members are working on :

  • Tutoring primary grade students;
  • Piloting a Saturday science club for fourth through sixth grade students led by IIT students;
  • Applying to become a 501(c)(3) organization;
  • Providing childcare during literacy nights;
  • Helping solicit book donations and assisting in set up for Shoesmith's book swap;
  • Working with teachers to inventory classroom libraries in preparation to launch a targeted book drive;
  • Creating a Shoesmith 100 Book List, a list of 100 books all Shoesmith students will have read by the time they finish at Shoesmith;
  • Volunteering on Shoesmith's Openlands Building School Gardens team;
  • Working with an artist and students to create a mosaic mural for the exterior of the building.

Friends of Shoesmith typically meets the second Wednesday of every month at 7:15 p.m. at Shoesmith, 1330 E. 50th St. (Google map). If you have questions, are interested in helping with any of these efforts, or would like to be added to our email list, email Sara Bigger, secretary of the Friends of Shoesmith. You can check out Shoesmith's website.

SOUL: Southsiders Organizing for Unity and Liberation

St. Paul & the Redeemer is a member church of SOUL, a grassroots organization of the South Side and South Suburbs of Chicago that provides vehicles for ordinary people to organize for social justice issues and community concerns.

The Mission of SOUL

SOUL serves as an organizing vehicle that:

  • Provides a methodology for people to act effectively together;
  • Trains people to become leaders and build powerful public lives;
  • Establishes a set of ongoing structured relationships so that people can work together on a variety of issues over time;
  • Provides a democratic structure for decision making;
  • Brings together resources: relationships, talents, constituencies and interests that cannot be garnered by any one individual, congregation, neighborhood or single issue group;
  • Provides, through its affiliations with other networks and coalitions, a racially, economically and geographically diverse base of people to greatly expand everyone’s power and impact.

How SPR Gets Involved

  • We support SOUL financially as a member organization.
  • We provide meeting space for SOUL's leadership.
  • Many of our parishioners are members and leaders within SOUL.