RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, VAMOS was founded in 2001 as S.O.L., Summer of Learning, a student-led organization, by Claudette Soto, whom at the time was an undergrad at the Illinois Institute of Technology majoring in Architecture and minoring in Structural Engineering. S.O.L. was founded in order to honor the memory of a gifted young man named Juan Manuel Flores, a student from Curie High School that resided in the Back of the Yards community; and,
WHEREAS, in 2002, S.O.L was renamed VAMOS (Volunteer and Mentor One Summer "In Memory of Juan"]. During the spring of 2016, VAMOS was relaunched by the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) student organization LIFE&HACE and their dedicated student volunteers; and,
WHEREAS, the VAMOS Summer Program objective is two-fold: to provide a safe haven for students and to help encourage and support their transition to a higher education; and,
WHERAS, the students participating in this program are children of under-represented demographics within higher education, often the first in their families to potentially graduate from high school and college; and,
WHEREAS, the Mentors who share their same life and cultural experiences have been strategically selected to participate in this program with the goal of supporting students and serving as minority role models; and,
WHEREAS, the VAMOS program strives to expose African-American & Latino students from Back of the Yards, Gage Park, Chicago Lawn, and Brighton Park to higher education and instructional themes that will impact and transform their lives; and,
WHEREAS, students are exposed to an IIT-student created STEAM curriculum which is critical for this group, as they are often excluded or not afforded the same opportunity to access this type of curriculum; and,
WHEREAS, VAMOS partners with IIT Departments and professors for lectures and labs in order to facilitate not only for the introduction of STEAM fields to our middle school students but to establish relationships between the...
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