10 Years

10 Stories

Geneva is celebrating ten years of service to youth in the child welfare system. We are honored and grateful to have had this opportunity.

Many of you joined us for the 10 Years of Transformation kickoff benefit in September, when we celebrated at Province Restaurant. As promised, we now share one story of Geneva transformation for each month between the kickoff and our gala festivities in June. Click here for details.

September - Story #1:
Transformation of Nicholas

Nick, a current program participant, was our guest speaker at the kickoff event. He talked about his experiences of physical abuse, homelessness, domestic violence, and neglect. Nick came to Geneva with a history of several failed foster placements and educational disruptions. He said, “My biggest transformation while at Geneva has been in the way I think. I used to look at life in the short term. Now I look at things long-term.” For young people who grow up wondering about their next residential placement, and sometimes even their next meal, this is a significant accomplishment.

October - Story #2:
Transformation of the Self Leadership Training Checklist

Lisa, Geneva Foundation's Founder and Executive Director, walks into the kitchen of the group home to find Jeremy standing at the counter with his back to her, singing about love and dancing around, seemingly without a care in the world. Curious, she asks him what he's doing. He turns and says, “Duh, I’m making a cake. Whadya think I’m doing?” But as he makes this typically sarcastic, teenaged comment, he gestures broadly at Lisa, and forgets that he is holding a hand mixer with the power on. After they have a good laugh and clean up the mess, Lisa calls the Strategic Planning Team together to design a comprehensive checklist that has undergone a number of revisions & transformations over the years. The kids use the checklist to move through the program step by step (click here for Self Leadership Steps). The staff provides feedback as the kids learn the skills needed for independent living. . . including baking cakes!

November – Story #3:
Transformation of Jeremiah

Jeremiah was 17 years old and lived in an abandon car. He hadn’t bathed or shaved in weeks. He weighed 105 pounds – much too thin for someone of his height. He'd been diagnosed with depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Antisocial Behavior, and several other health issues. The state had been unable to locate any family for him. Then he came to Geneva. For weeks after moving into his own room, the staff would find him sleeping on the floor, because he didn’t feel comfortable in a bed. He would hoard food, even though there was plenty available to him at all times. His depression was so severe that he couldn’t find the motivation to bathe or engage in a conversation. During Jeremiah’s eighteen months at Geneva, his true self slowly began to emerge, and he developed some strong relationships with both peers and staff. Eventually, we discovered some of Jeremiah's extended family in Kentucky. On his 19th birthday, after completing our program, we put Jeremiah on a bus to Kentucky. Since he's been there, he calls several times a month to fill us in on the dishwashing job he has at his aunt’s restaurant. He reports that he is also taking care of an uncle who was disabled in Vietnam. Several months ago, Jeremiah was back in Chicago and came by for a visit. He was unrecognizable. He had transformed into a handsome, well-groomed young man marked by confidence and a beaming smile.

December – Story #4:
Transformation of Joe

In our Annual Appeal letter (click here to read), we told Joe’s story. Joe was easily one of the toughest kids we have ever served, tough in every sense of the word. He wouldn’t let anyone get too close physically or emotionally. He presented to the world an angry energy that was intimidating and frequently threatening. In December of the year Joe arrived at Geneva, we asked all the kids for their “Santa lists.” At first Joe refused to give us one. Our staff believed that he had been disappointed too many times, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. Somehow, we finally got a “Santa list” from him, one that included an MP3 player, socks, an alarm clock, art supplies, a neck chain, and house slippers. Santa brought Joe everything he asked for that year, as well as a few things he hadn’t thought of. As he opened each gift, he was transformed from a tough “street kid” into a giddy five-year-old who couldn’t wait to tear open the next gift. Joe developed a particular attachment to the house slippers – fuzzy, white bunnies with ears! He loved them and wore them until his toes poked through. Shortly before he moved out, staff suggested that he dispose of them. He declined. “Nah, man. Those are my slippers. I need those.”

January – Story #5:
Transformation of the Board of Directors

What is the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the term Board of Directors? Stuffy rooms with long, shiny tables? Boring meetings conducted in monotone? Unproductive agendas and inadequate leadership? That may be an accurate picture of some boards, but definitely not Geneva’s. Ten years ago, the Board consisted of a few professionals lending their names to a start-up agency. Today, our active membership has transformed into an accomplished group that governs with creativity, passion, focused expertise, and a strong connection to our mission. This lively Board enthusiastically serves our boys, volunteers their time and specialized skills, plans strategically to achieve the most effective outcomes, and contributes financially to Geneva.

February – Story #6:
Transformation of Tremaine

Tremaine was born in the projects . . . literally. Not in a sterile hospital room near the projects, but on a filthy mattress in an abandoned apartment. For the first three months of his life, he lived there with six siblings and an array of characters whom his drug-addicted mother called “friends.” Tremaine became a ward of the state when his mother was sent to jail for prostitution and possession of heroin. As he grew up in the system, Tremaine moved from one foster family to another. There were no records of his developmental milestones, no photographs of his childhood, no favorite books or blankets, no lasting relationships. With each move, he would transform himself into the person he thought the foster family wanted him to be. “I kept thinking that if I could be different, bad things would stop happening,” he said. He is haunted by two vivid memories from his foster days. He remembers being tied to a chair for hours in a dark room as punishment for not sitting still in church. He also recalls staying with an elderly lady he called “Grandma,” who made him breakfast every day before he went to school. When she had a stroke, he was removed from her home without being given a chance to grieve or get closure. He says he started to feel the symptoms of depression and rage around that time, when he was nine years old, but he couldn’t identify or understand the feelings. During his initial interview at Geneva, he was asked to name his strengths. He sat quietly for several minutes, and then mumbled that he didn’t have any. Sixteen months later, Tremaine was preparing to attend Kishwaukee Community College. During his last Support Plan meeting, he was asked once again to identify his strengths. This time he responded that he was “caring, helpful, giving, respectful, cooperative, and independent.”

March – Story #7:
Transformation of the House Guidelines

Geneva has three House Rules that everyone, staff included, is expected to keep:

1) Respect yourself. 2) Respect others. 3) Respect your environment.

These rules never change. House Guidelines, on the other hand, are subject to change, depending on the maturity of the boys as a group, and their ability to act responsibly. Examples of House Guidelines are curfew times, chore rotation, and music volume. House Guidelines are set in accord with the House Rules and may be adjusted at the boys' request. If they feel that a certain guideline isn’t fair, they bring their ideas to the weekly community meeting for discussion. When they propose a reasonable adjustment to the guidelines, stating a case that is in alignment with the House Rules, the staff takes the proposal into consideration. The staff uses a consensus decision-making process to determine if the guidelines should be modified. You might think that a house of twelve teenage boys would produce an endless list of demands for changing “unfair” guidelines. On the contrary: this year there have been only two quite reasonable changes suggested and made.

April – Story #8:
Transformation of Thurman

Thurman left the house around 6 pm to play basketball at the YMCA. He'd only walked a short distance up our block on Pulaski when two boys got out of a truck. One of them pointed a gun at Thurman’s head and fired. In a split second, Thurman made the ultimate and final transformation from life to death. News reports that evening said an 18-year-old man had been shot. Everyone who knew Thurman knew he wasn’t a man. He was a kid. We've been trying to make sense of this violence, but there is no sense to be made. It is likely we will never know who was responsible or why. Was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Was it revenge for an earlier argument at school? We don’t know. We only know that we buried one of our boys on April 7, 2011, and we miss him.

May – Story #9:
Transformation of Willis

A few years ago, we admitted a new participant to the house several weeks before Mother’s Day. Soon after his arrival, Willie began demonstrating some particularly cruel and hostile behaviors. This transformation was puzzling, as his previous foster placement had not mentioned anything like what we were seeing. We've learned, however, that our kids have a particularly difficult time around family holidays. The reminders of family loss are frequently more than our kids can manage. Some become irritable, others try to self-medicate, and still others may even disappear for significant periods of time. Staff encourages the boys to name their losses. We create an environment that makes it safe to grieve in whatever way the boys need to grieve. As we worked with Willie, the story of his loss unfolded. We knew from institutional records that his mother had died of AIDS when he was five. The records didn’t show that, at the time, no one told Willie she'd died. He found out accidentally, much later, when he was eight years old. During those crucial formative years, he'd thought that his mother didn’t love him, that she'd left him. He was devastated at having lost the opportunity to say goodbye. After a significant amount of investigative work, Geneva staff discovered where Willie’s mother was buried. On Mother’s Day, we took him first to a florist to buy a bouquet, and then to the cemetery to visit her grave. He sat quietly weeping by her headstone for much of the morning. When he was ready to leave he told the staff, “I think I feel better.”