Chocolate Ice Cream

Several members of the Project HOME community participated in “100% Philadelphia,” a theater piece that was part of the Philadelphia Fringe Arts Festival.  One hundred different Philadelphians, representing the overall demographics of the city, shared their stories.  One of the participants was our very own Helen Brown, community organizer in the St. Elizabeth’s/Diamond Street neighborhood.  She recounts a little of her personal history, including how she originally got connected to Project HOME.

I eat chocolate ice cream every night.  It’s how I got my job – I’m a community organizer for Project HOME.  Sister Mary had offered me the job several times, and it’s right across the street from where I live, but I kept turning it down.  Then one night we ate ice cream together and I finally accepted the job.  That was nineteen years ago.

When I get home after work, I go right up to the second floor room that’s my woman cave, a lounge with a black leather chair.  I’ll just sit there and reflect for ten or fifteen minutes.

In 1989, after one of my sons died of AIDS, I was sitting outside watching the kids fighting and bickering on the street.  I told them to go do something useful and they said they wanted to start a drill team, so I helped them do it.  Then it was sixteen kids, and now I have 50 kids from ten years old through their teens.  It runs after school.  I choreograph and the older kids who used to be on the team will come and choreograph and help run it, too.  We go to competitions in New Orleans, Harrisburg, and Connecticut, and have been state champions four times.

My favorite spot in the city is right here.  There are bad areas throughout cities and people consider this a bad area, too, but I wouldn’t want to move nowhere else.