How The "Tiny WPA" Is Transforming Neighborhoods, With Help From Teenage Girls

Adele Peters wrote this story for FastCompany.com. It's a great example of resilience-building in a community and individuals. 

On a hot summer afternoon in a rough neighborhood in South Chicago, a group of local teenage girls picked up power tools for the first time and started to transform a vacant lot into a new playground. As they worked, others in the community came up to help--everyone from gang members to cops--until the playground was ready for play.

The project was part of the Tiny WPA program from the organization Public Workshop, which looks for ways that youth can make a unique contribution to the design of their neighborhoods, not just by doing a little volunteer work, but by doing something meaningful that adults might not necessarily be able to. Because the girls were from the community (and because they were female, and seen as non-threatening by gang members), they inspired the whole neighborhood to take action.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3023330/how-the-tiny-wpa-is-transforming-neighborhoods-with-help-from-teenage-girls