1. Home
2. News

LISC/Chicago honors South Chicago heroes

  Two inspiring South Chicago couples, Joann Podkul and Kevin Murphy, and Zebedee & Tonya Rivera, were honored last week at the New Communities Program's annual Community Heroes Celebration sponsored by LISC/Chicago.

Joann & Kevin

When Joann Podkul and Kevin Murphy led “From Pollution to Solution,” a bus tour of South Chicago on May 16, 2009 for the Bold Plans, Big Dreams Community Showcase, it in many ways represented a satisfying crescendo of the couple’s tireless community work. For starters, the tour was an outgrowth of a comprehensive environmental tour of the Lake Calumet region created by the couple for South Chicago’s first annual Green Summit in 2008.

Podkul, an educator who has lived in South Chicago for 70 years, and Murphy, an author who has been in the community for a quarter century, worked with South Chicago’s NCP partner, Claretian Associates, to launch the summit, just the latest project for the two to promote a greener future for South Chicago. Podkul founded and was the director of the Bowen Environmental Studies Team High School, both have served on a slew of local environmental groups, and in 2007 they founded the Calumet Stewardship Initiative. “Our role is to help everyone network a bit better and work together,” Murphy says. 

Tonya & Zebedee

You wish you had neighbors like Zebedee and Tonya Rivera. Since moving to South Chicago in 2005, the young couple has become a powerhouse to support a better community, involved in everything from sitting on the transitional advisory council to open new public schools in the neighborhood to helping to organize community tours.

Tonya, a former teacher who is now a CPS instructional coach, and Zebedee, an artist, have worked with local youth to paint a mural of their hopes for the future on the wooden fence that lines their property. They sponsor a community garden on an empty lot next to their house, are active in the local block club, and even put up a haunted house for kids around Halloween. “They’re just a wonderful family for South Chicago,” says Jackie Samuels, the NCP director at Claretian Associates. A bit bemused by the attention, Zebedee is more modest. “We just want to be involved in the community,” he says. “Isn’t that what neighbors are supposed to do?”