About this story
The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration Communications Team visited Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center and Food Pantry in Chicago with Kristin Peters, FSPA, pictured above. She volunteers offering supportive presence at both the center and pantry and introduced FSPA to the organization. “I’m trying to be in relationship with the people in the neighborhood; I like being part of that. It is in building relationships that we build trust.”
Mismanaged government structures and systemic racism are just two factors in Chicago’s complicated makeup. Where there’s wealth on Michigan Avenue, there’s hunger in nearby East Garfield Park and North Lawndale community areas. Hunger for basics like food and shelter. But there’s also hunger for connection and community.
Above and Beyond: meeting people where they're at
Enter Above and Beyond’s Family Recovery Center and Food Pantry. When you step inside Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center, the atmosphere is bright and welcoming—music is playing and there’s an energy that makes you feel like you’ve entered the family room of a home. “Welcome Home” signage greets you. It’s far from a traditional clinical space with sterile waiting areas surrounded by magazines and brochures. The environment almost catches you off guard; it's that welcoming. Take a tour for yourself: https://youtu.be/3wAQsmADAvU.
We arrive just in time to join one of Above and Beyond’s classes offered to its members in recovery, Soul Train Group Fundance. Leader Octavio Campos invites us all to check in, offering our names, how we’re feeling and our favorite dance move—in the meantime, scenes from Soul Train, the African-American focused music-dance television program that aired on TV for 35 years, play on a TV behind him. Some check in tired, angry, agitated, a couple are worried about bills. As people share their favorite dance moves, we hear two-step, footwork and the Electric Slide.
Octavio invites us to get comfortable in our chairs, to wake up our bodies through movement. He guides us while music from singer and rapper Lizzo starts moving into our soul. Small movements become big movements. We stand. We move gently around our chairs. Then, the chairs are pushed to the side and we begin to dance in community.
Octavio is a gifted facilitator. He’s not only encouraging us to move our bodies, but he’s connecting all of us through music and dance. He connects how we store trauma in our bodies—deep in our bones. How our nervous and endocrine systems can get stuck, unable to feel calm.
It is in this hour that Above and Beyond’s phrases painted on the walls and in its literature really come to life. One whimsical sign reads “Welcome to the Hokey Pokey where you can turn yourself around.” It’s this sentiment that you’re able to understand on a deeper level: “In the relationships of our shared humanity and responsibility for each other … we find healing.”
Read the rest of the story at https://www.fspa.org/news/above-and-beyond-meeting-people-where-they-re-at.