St. Christopher's Hospital for Children Back to School

Student Interns:

Sydney Churchill, Danielle Ireland

Sydney Churchill

This illustration represents learning about the impact of the Back-to-School Carnival at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. It is meant to demonstrate how someone on the outside may see only a carnival and not think much of the potential impact of the event (as symbolized by the black and white tent). However, the event not only distributes school supplies but perhaps equally important, provides a fun, joyful, and free event for the community of children and families that St. Chris serves. The impact of the event is represented by the colors in the doorway of the carnival tent.

Danielle Ireland

Q: What do you want people who don’t know about your community to learn about it?

A: Sometimes when people think about my community in Kensington, they only think about the drugs, poverty, and violence. I want people to realize that in addition to that, there are a lot of kids in the community, and they want to play sports and do after school activities like other kids. However, these kids don’t have safe places to do these things.

Q: What’s great about your community?

A: I think what is great about my community is the reliance of the people. Most of the people that live here have lived here their whole life, and because of that, the people here become family to one another.

Q: Will you share a favorite memory of living in this community?

A: My favorite memory living in the community was when I had my baby at St. Chris.

Q:What are the resources and strengths of your community?

A: I think that the safe places and clinics for people to used drugs in the community is a strength because the people are going to do drugs either way, so it is better to have them do it in a place where there are people to help them and where violence won’t happen.

Q: How have the events of the past month affected your community?

A: In the past month, there has been a lot of gun violence in Philly. As a parent, it has made me very scared, and I have seen people in the community becoming more scared as well.

Q: How has covid-19 affected your community?

A: Covid-19 has definitely made a negative impact in the community. It was hard for people to get vaccinated. It was really hard on the kids with not being able to go to school or to do after-school activities. Often in this community, when kids aren’t able to get involved in after-school activities, then they start to get involved in violence.

Q: What does cardiovascular health mean to you?

A: That is when my doctor tells me to eat right and exercise. It can be tough though in this community to find healthy food. As a working mom, it is also hard to find time to exercise, but I try to do my best.

Q: What resources in your community promote heart health/stress?

A: I don’t know a lot about resources for that. I do know about the Common Market to help people to get healthy food.