It was a bright and sunny afternoon during the opening day game of the North Lawndale Police Youth Baseball League at Franklin Park. Funded by Get IN Chicago, the league aims to create trust between police and the community while helping the children build leadership, sportsmanship, teamwork and conflict resolution skills.
“We started this last year in Englewood and it was such an unexpected success,” said Toni Irving, executive director of Get IN Chicago. “Generally speaking, [with] young African American boys and girls people think basketball [and] football. It was a lot of work to really rally the people.”
Irving said that after two weeks, the community response and support for the kids playing baseball was huge and cited surveys the organization had done before and after the program that showed an improvement in feelings of self and collective efficacy in the children.
“Every week there’s some other piece that’s added to it that are giving them the building blocks to be more successful throughout their lives,” Irving said. “And so, at the core of it there’s a kind of resiliency that becomes transferred through the Little League process.”
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Chicago Defender
Briahnna M. Brown 