CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The City of Chicago is spearheading a new program that could bring beauty to dozens of vacant lots and peace to some young men who have been touched by gun violence.The project is called “Grounds for Peace.” It’s a partnership among the Heartland Alliance, the Urban Growers Collective, and the city that employs young men at risk of being involved in gun violence to beautify vacant city lots. The men are part of the READI program at the Heartland Alliance.
"These are individuals who are receiving therapy on a daily basis and also engaging in work activities and they are actual employees of Heartland Alliance, as well," said Heartland’s Career Pathways Director Miguel Angel Cambray. "We are going to work with the City of Chicago, Urban Growers, and Heartland Alliance to try and figure out how to renovate 50-52 city lots across the city to try and create community spaces and safe havens."
Erika Hill, co-founder of the Growers Collective, said the community and the workers benefit.
"They are coming into the community to clean up, grow flowers, maintain a space in a different way and we look at this as restorative justice," she said.
A local minister asked if the lots in the program were chosen with public input. Mayor Lightfoot was told they were chosen according to crime figures and number of lots in a neighborhood. She told the minister, "clearly we didn't do that, but we will do that going forward."Some 50 lots will be transformed and maintained. Some residents said they’ll wait and see.