Summer hasn’t quite ended, but Mount Prospect resident and John Hersey High School senior Sandra Gil has spent her vacation time studying.

In a storefront on an industrial stretch of Algonquin Road in unincoporated Arlington Heights, Gil and other predominantly high school students have been working to improve their academic scores with the help of Greater Wheeling Area Youth Outreach, or GWAYO to those familiar with the organization.

“For me, it helped get my grades up,” Gil said, taking a break from her studies on a recent morning. “I never had a B or an A in my life.”

The goal for Gil and her peers at GWAYO is a college diploma. The organization, which celebrated its eighth anniversary this month, works with poverty-level students—those who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches—in all six Township High School District 214 schools to help them improve their grades and eventually earn a degree.

It’s a goal to which founder and executive director Philip Herman said he is committed. Herman, an Iowa native, previously spent a decade working on suburban Chicago gang issues. He went on to do community outreach work with the Wheeling and River Trails park districts.

While working with the park districts, he received a grant from Northwest Community Hospital to start a pilot program with the aim of helping students living in poverty graduate from college. Between his experience working on gang issues and running mentoring programs, the stage was set for GWAYO.

“The national numbers aren’t good,” Herman said. “Ten percent of poverty students will graduate with a college diploma.”

In GWAYO’s early years, Herman relied on the connections he had made in his previous jobs to reach out to students. The organization primarily worked with two District 214 schools.

“It was Wheeling and Buffalo Grove high school—that was where we kind of cut our teeth,” Herman said.

After several years, he said, he knew the organization wasn’t reaching nearly as many students as it could. Students at schools south of Buffalo Grove and Wheeling were struggling, as well, and Herman said he knew GWAYO needed to expand to Elk Grove Village on the school district’s southern end.

Since it’s inception, 50 students have completed Dream Makers, the organization’s after-school program, which focuses on improving performance in core subjects by helping students with their study skills.

“[GWAYO workers] are going to help you get done with your homework first,” Herman said. “Then, they’re going to help you take better notes; they’re going to help you prepare for a class.”

GWAYO works with counselors and social workers at the District 214 high schools to identify students who might benefit from participating in Dream Makers. Participants spend about 90 minutes at GWAYO three days a week, both during the academic year and over the summer.

Students are even picked up at their school in a GWAYO van and dropped off at home.

While GWAYO helps students from across District 214, the bulk of the students still come from Wheeling and Buffalo Grove high schools, Herman said. Of the 2,200 students at Wheeling High School, about 400 live in poverty, he said. Buffalo Grove High School has about 250 poverty-level students.

“This is meant to supplement what the students are doing, not replace it,” Herman said.

Half of GWAYO’s funding comes from government sources—federal, state and county—while the other half is generated privately through donations and sales at the year-old GWAYO resale shop, Herman said.

This year, the organization also received supplemental funding through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The $700,000 in stimulus money will pay for summer Ready 4 Work programs this year and next, in which students will receive academic help as well as paid work experience.

Prospect Heights resident Deanna McMiller, a junior at Wheeling High School, has been coming to GWAYO three days a week since sixth grade. In addition to studying, she is working two jobs this summer—one at Old Country Buffet, the other as an intern at a local nursing home—thanks to the program.

“It’s fun,” she said of GWAYO.

Herman said that, if possible, GWAYO hopes to reach students before they go to high school, like McMiller. The organization won’t accept a student who has passed the mid-point of his or her junior year in high school.

He explained that the after-school program can be demanding and require a large amount of accountability on the part of the student.

“If that investment of time is worth it, then this program is for you,” Herman said. “This is not a drop-in program.”

He told of two girls who started at GWAYO as high school sophomores around their 16th birthdays. They were from Venezuela, and their parents had sent them to live with relatives in Wheeling and earn their high school diplomas in America.

Neither spoke English, but they learned. During their time with GWAYO, they set goals: one wanted to be a teacher, the other wanted to be a social worker. After three years in the program, one attended DePaul University, and the other attended Loyola University.

“Both accomplished their goals,” Herman said, explaining that one is now a teacher in Mundelein, and the other is a social worker in Lake County.

Of the students who have come through GWAYO, 11 have earned their bachelor’s degrees, and 33 are working to finish college. Those two groups account for 88 percent of the GWAYO graduates. Only six, Herman said, have stopped attending classes.

Herman is looking for more success stories like that of the Venezuelan girls. He is currently in the process of expanding the organization into a Prospect Heights storefront it would share with Omni Youth Services, another non-profit outreach organization.

One of those success stories could be that of Pedro Naves, a Wheeling resident who has been coming to GWAYO for four years. During the summer, he worked at the GWAYO resale shop stocking shelves, and this fall, he will be a freshman at Harper College in Palatine, where he will pursue an automotive degree. He said he will be attending the school on a $5,000 scholarship.

In a way, Naves is an example of the philosophy at GWAYO.

“The significance is felt not so much in, ‘Will this kid finish high school?’” Herman said. “It’s what this kid will do after high school.”

Story and photos by Jeff Danna
Triblocal Staff Reporter