Coverage can be a particularly prickly thing. Media coverage in particular. In a neighborhood like North Lawndale, we have all kinds of challenges, and to some extent, the negative coverage of our community is honest; the things reported about our community are factual. However, the media usually only covers one side of the story. WCIU, in the piece below, offers another perspective — a neighborhood of both challenges and transformation. (The entire piece is 26 minutes. If you want to jump to the portion that features YMEN, slide over to around the 8:40 mark.)

And it’s particularly exciting that we had our Director of Development, Xavier Ramey, representing us in the studio. Intelligent? Check. Handsome? Check. Passionate? Check. Young man who has grown up through YMEN and has come back to invest in the lives of young men like himself? Check! Xavier, you make us proud. Thanks for having us covered.

We often labor in anonymity. And while we don’t do the work that we do for public recognition, it still feels good to get some. So we are grateful to WGN, and especially Gaynor Hall, for sending us some shine. And of course, we are grateful for the privilege of doing this work. If you didn’t see the feature channel 9 did on YMEN, you can watch the video above.

This video highlights the work we have been doing over the last few years in our capital campaign to build a campus to bring YMEN college graduates back to North Lawndale (Indigenous Leaders!), as well as our youth programs that help students like Jameson Parker.

Working hard to create a mural the celebrate all of the colors and cultures in God’s paintbrush.