Deloitte Impact Day: Sharing Fields

On June 5, America SCORES Chicago teamed up with their corporate partner, Deloitte, to “share fields” of their different expertise with 30 volunteers from Deloitte and 10 poet-athletes from Chalmers Elementary.

On a bright and early Friday morning, half of the Deloitte volunteers grabbed their boxed lunches and boarded a school bus bound for Chalmers.  Their task for the day, should they choose to accept it: paint a soccer field on the asphalt playground outside the school.  This brand new field would be perfect for all the poet-athletes at Chalmers to use for practices, and in their spare time outside of school.  Once the team of volunteers arrived, they put their noses to the grindstone to cut out stencils, measure the field, mix the paint, and got started.

Meanwhile, our Chalmers poet-athletes boarded a bus headed for Deloitte's Chicago office in the heart of the loop.  Some were a little speechless upon seeing such a beautiful building, but at least one girl was inspired; in fact, she walked through the glass revolving doors and cried, "This is where I'll start my career!"  

Once upstairs and all settled in, the poet-athletes were paired up one-on-one with a mentor from Deloitte who guided them through their day of activities, from making a good first impression to how to write a letter.

As the volunteer group at Chalmers finished up with the field, our poet-athletes and their mentors headed over to Douglas Park to play a little bit of soccer and get to know each other better.  Sounds a little unfair, right?  One group works while the other group gets to play?  Not so!  The volunteers that played soccer with the kids had quite a lot on their hands— those Chalmers poet-athletes are fast!

At the end of their day, both groups of volunteers and the poet-athletes reconvened at the school to see the finished project: a brand new soccer field!The kids were certainly impressed to see the SCORES logo painted on their brand new field, and the volunteers were happy to have done something special for the Chalmers community.