Youth Speak! Responses and Comments from the summer youth crew.

Posted by Marque Jensen on Sep 8, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

TJ was the youngest of our work team, and lives just a block from the office.  Her home was greatly impacted by the tornado.  She wrote the following in response to being asked,  What did you learn this summer working with Sanctuary and the NCRT Youth Crew?

This summer while working at NCRT I learned 5 key things:

1 . How to pick weeds.

2. How to mop a basement

3. Communication

4. Patience

5. Tolerance

Now this might not seem like important things, but to me they’re key.  Walking into this job I knew nothing of this stuff, I tought I would never need them and I was wrong.  Walking out of this job I became a stronger, more tolerant person thanks to my teammates.

Love,

TeJay  Chax

Semaj  joined us the second week of the work team.

The following are his reflections on the impacts of the tornado.

Semaj and Dorell, Washing Windows at the Adult Day Care Center

When the tornado hit, I wasn’t impacted as much as other families. The tornado did not hit my block. My Auntie who lives in Golden Valley was somewhat affected.   My lights went off and then I heard sirens. After the tornado hit I saw a couple dozen police, fire, swat cars just zoom by. It was weird because it happened within about ten minutes.

Some of my friends texted me to see if I was okay, and I did the same. People didn’t really think that a tornado would actually hit the north side of Minneapolis. Before this incident, I was never a part of a tornado storm. So naturally I was terrified, I watched movies like Twister, so I had a fear of tornadoes.

I was disappointed that the night of the tornado’s passing there was a looting of a liquor store on Broadway. I heard there was also a shoot-out as well. But for a short period of time I did feel a sense of community afterwards when people starting throwing bar-be-cues and helping out the people who were in need. Places like Emerge has been a big help in making a difference, and other places have been as well.

The liabilities of the Northside are very obvious, and is the reason for our bad reputation. It’s the violence, the gangs, and the hate. Instead of growing together we rather be against each other. It never made sense to me, and it never will. I am working with NCRT at Sanctuary CDC to help people out with the tornado damages. There are positive things about the Northside, like  when something like this happens, we come together and help each other out.