Off the Street Club, Western Springs Kids Party Together

It was 1996 when 10 kids from Western Springs and 10 kids from Off the Street Club first met for a small bowling event in the basement of the Village Club. What became an annual party has now ballooned to a Saturday afternoon of fun and brotherhood for over 200 elementary-school youth.

The neighborhoods that the two groups of students come from are only about 13 miles apart, but the differences could hardly be starker. Off the Street is on Chicago’s west side in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, predominantly black and low-income; Western Springs is relatively crime-free, predominately white and affluent.

But on an inflatable obstacle course in Corral—tossing beanbags, playing board games, making bead necklaces—they’re one and the same.

“I don’t think it’s over-speak to say that this is probably a model for the nation… for how people in the suburbs can reach into the inner city and make a difference,” said Off the Street Club director Ralph Campagna.

The party is a yearly event of the Western Springs/OTSC Circle of Friendship, the organization that brings kids from the two neighborhoods together in several capacities, including at a camp in Wheaton and one Thursday a month at the OTC headquarters in Garfield Park.

Village mom Patti Winegar launched the Circle of Friendship program with that bowling party in 1996, and has seen it grow by leaps and bounds.

“Hopefully what kids get out of it—and certainly what my kids got out of it—is that they learn that the color of skin doesn’t matter, that kids like to do the same things regardless of your race or religion or anything else,” Winegar said. “They all like to play and have fun and be a kid.”

The event filled the Corral this Saturday with brightly-colored shirts and a cornucopia of fun activities. Students from OTSC and Western Springs were paired off with a buddy for the afternoon, then spent it playing pool and foosball, walking a cakewalk, having their faces painted and scarfing down pizza.

It was casual and it was joyous, promoting friendship and brotherhood, all words that OTSC takes as a motto.

“On the west side of Chicago, casual joy is often robbed from these kids with all the crime and violence,” said Arnett Morris, OTSC’s assistant director, adding that the Circle of Friendship program was “kind of unique.”

“We have a really strong partnership with Western Springs,” Morris said.

The next step for the Circle of Friendship may be to encourage more in the way of permanent contact and long-term personal relationships between kids in the two neighborhoods. But as it is, the fiesta is already a memorable event for its attendees.

“What I’ve heard from kids who are now in high school who went to the party, they’ve said they always remember going to this,” said event organizer Laura Gatland. “And I think as a parent it sends a message to your child that we embrace everybody.”