If you ride the CTA, you may be greeted by Don, a CRED alumnus and bus driver. Always warm and welcoming with a gentle smile, Don uses his role to build connections with the Chicago residents he meets. He dreams of running for alderman in his community and prides himself on seeing the humanity of everyone regardless of their situation. Perhaps he has cultivated this mindset because of his personal journey. Don understands that opportunity is not readily available to all, and people are more than their worst decision or lowest point.
Don recently shared that, from an early age, he experienced normalized violence in his South Side neighborhood. The youngest of three boys of a working single mother and widow with very little support, he lost his father at the age of six. Don was propelled into a leading role in his family when his oldest brother moved out of the house. He began to engage in street life as a way of protecting and providing for his family, fully understanding the danger associated with this choice. “It’s not like I hadn’t already seen what’s happening. They were shooting at us before our 8th grade year,” Don said. At 13, his mother sent him to live with his grandmother in a safer and better-resourced neighborhood to attend school in hopes of removing him from harm’s way, but because Don worried about leaving his younger brother unguarded and putting his extended family at risk, he ultimately returned home.
“I kind of pushed away. I stopped coming around my family as much, because of the situations that I was in with people shooting at me. I had to distance myself from some of my family, which wasn’t the right thing to do.”
An important opportunity and turning point occurred years later. Don, now in his early twenties, was deeply involved in the street life without a clear way out and had a few encounters with one of CRED’s most seasoned outreach workers. Like many individuals who enroll in the program, Don was initially hesitant about CRED and its benefits. “You can have a conversation with me. I’m going to hear what you have to offer out of respect. But at the same time, I got to deal with my life and what I feel is right,” Don said.
After multiple touchpoints, Don found common ground with the outreach worker who helped him enroll in the program. “[He said] ‘Come back here tomorrow and I’ll get y ‘all in the program. I’m gonna put a couple dollars in your pocket. Just one week is gonna teach you a lot and help you out a lot.’”
By meeting people where they are, we forge deep bonds with participants positioning us to address their immediate and long-term needs.
Don found himself opening up to CRED staff and fellow participants each day he was in the program. CRED relieved many of the stressors and dysregulated emotions Don experienced. “It was just a different atmosphere.” Don and his peers took part in cognitive behavioral therapy, life coaching, and job coaching in an environment where they never had to look over their shoulders. CRED’s licensed therapists worked directly with young men and women, individually and in groups, to help them process trauma.
They are taught cognitive behavioral intervention (CBI) to help illuminate the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and actions, and to build self-regulation habits that provide a foundation for living safely and working consistently. Upon graduating from CRED in 2023, Don accepted a position working for the CTA.
Don’s real-life experience helped him truly understand the tools he learned at CRED, including accountability and emotional intelligence. “It’s not what happens, but the way I react to situations at work.” Despite ups and downs along his path he is in the process of using what he learned through CRED to clean up his credit which has helped him to secure his first apartment. His next goal is to purchase his first home.
Don practices gratitude for what he’s built for himself and his community and he continues to uplift others through both his personal endeavors and through his work. He believes that, even at a small scale, supporting your community helps you be a part of something bigger.
“People say life is like chess, but in chess, you start with the same, equal pieces. That’s not life- you gotta have a network to even have pieces to play. Believe it or not, people love getting on my bus now because I talk to everybody like they are human, no matter what. I’m doing my duties as a human, as a citizen that’s working in our community. When people start thinking about it, we’re all a community. When we start knowing we’re together, that’s what makes a community- people.”
From all of us at CRED, thank you for being a part of our community. Together, we are walking alongside bright and tenacious individuals like Don as they transform their lives and, in turn, the peace and vitality of our city.