By LORRAINE SWANSON
Editor
Representatives from Lawyers-Lend-A-Hand To Youth present the Much Shelist Founders Award to Edgewater's Inspired Youth Tutoring Program at the Bezazian Library. From left to right at Genita Robinson, executive director of Lawyers-Lend-A-Hand To Youth; Beth Struck Palmer, director, Inspired Youth; Stephanie Hall of the Much Shelist Law Firm; Carrie Risatti, board member and attorney at Much Shelist; and Morrie Much, a founding partner of the Much Shelist law firm. Inspired Youth received a $7,000 as an "exemplary community tutoring and mentoring" program.
For the past 25 years, at-risk youth in Uptown and Edgewater have had no better friend than Beth Struck Palmer and the Inspired Youth tutoring program.
Inspired Youth has helped kids with their homework, provided free piano lessons, and let kids’ hearts sing in song in a children’s choir.
Last month, the Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth, a program created by the Chicago Bar Association in memory of Judge Abe Marovitz, awarded its Much Shelist Founders Award to the Inspired Youth Tutoring Program.
A musician and teacher, Palmer founded the program in 1985, after then-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett’s infamous tour of Goudy Elementary School, when he declared Chicago’s public school system the worst in the nation. Palmer recruited some volunteers from the neighborhood and began helping Goudy students with their homework after school.
The program, then called the Epworth Tutoring Program, operated for many years out of Epworth Methodist Church. In 2004, the program lost its space and was reorganized as “Inspired Youth,” at the suggestion of a parent.
Like Goudy, the Inspired Youth Tutoring Program has come a long way from those dark days in the 1980s. Inspired Youth now serves 150 students in kindergarten through 12thgrade from Rogers Park, Edgewater and Uptown with a mix of academic tutoring and mentoring in arithmetic, reading and writing, music enrichment and pairing children with adult mentors.
Inspired Youth was honored with a $7,000 award donated by the law firm Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C. The award has been presented to promising community tutoring/mentoring programs that have been in existence for five years or fewer.
A volunteer tutor works with a student from the Inspired Youth Tutoring Program at Bezazian Library in Uptown.
The honorees are chosen by a Much Shelist selection committee from a group of high quality tutoring and mentoring programs recommended by Lend-A-Hand. In addition to funding, Much Shelist partners volunteers with various programs as tutor/mentors or board members.
Morrie Much, one of the firm’s founding partners, praised Palmer saying, “With no organization and very little money, what she has done is organize about 140 tutors and mentors to provide services for more than 100 children. That’s about 4,000 tutoring hours a year not including the choir and piano lessons provided here.”
Much said that Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth took him and his partners to see several other programs throughout the city, but they were attracted to Inspired Youth’s sense of community.
“We came to Inspired Youth and fell in love,” Much said at the presentation ceremony.
Volunteers, parents and students also paid tribute to Palmer, who lives in Edgewater, and her work on behalf of a generation of neighborhood children, and her abilities to turn struggling students into academic stars.
“I’ve been involved for nine years,” said Susan Mattison, a volunteer and certified teacher. “I’ve never known Beth to kick a kid out of the program no matter how needy or difficult. Each child receives special attention customized to his or her academic needs.”
Another mother thanked Palmer for her years of helping her children blossom academically, and for providing gifts to her children at Christmas. “My family is so grateful to have her in our life for so many years.”
The best tribute came from a boy named Le Mar, who thanked all his tutors for helping him in math. “My grade changed from a D to an A,” Le Mar said. “If it weren’t for my tutors, I would never know how to do math.”
Lawyers-Lend-A-Hand to Youth awards approximately $200,000 in grants per year to exemplary tutor/mentoring programs, raises community awareness of the importance of mentoring to disadvantaged youth, and recruits lawyers and others in the legal community as volunteers to support local tutoring programs.
Inspired Youth meets four days a week at Bezazian Branch Library at 1226 W. Ainslie and Saturday mornings at Margate Park Field House at 4912 N. Marine Drive, and includes afternoon and evening tutoring for children in kindergarten through 12thgrade. Inspired Youth is always looking for motivated volunteers to tutor and mentor children. Volunteers range from high school students to retirees. For more information, contact Inspired Youth by phone at 773-561-4759 or at Inspiredyouth2@yahoo.com, or visit the Inspired Youth website.
Inspired Youth Tutoring Program
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Glad to hear this! I have been familiar with Ms. Palmer’s work with kids for many years.