St. John is also home of the Nottingham School, grades K -3. The school will be open to those interested in seeing the new look and talking with staff about the vision for the school. St John is located on Nottingham Road at Lakeshore Blvd, across from Wildwood Park. For more information call 216-531-8204 or visit their website.
By Erin Randel
What would happen if you combined three stylish alumnae of John F. Kennedy High School, a love of sewing, and a love for their community? Something powerful—Oh Sew Powerful, Inc.
Paula Coggins, Suszanne Clay, and Nadine Matlock met as schoolgirls in the Lee-Harvard area and became friends through sewing classes at JFK. Yearbook pages show these members of the class of 1974 proudly modeling their creations from basic, intermediate, and advanced sewing classes, including a tailoring course that focused on winter coats and evening gowns.
“It was just a fluke that we had all these classes. All three of us were in college prep,” says Coggins. “Back then, if you wanted sewing as a vocation, you went to Jane Addams.” Friends who graduated from that program found career opportunities in New York’s fashion industry, and with Bobbie Brooks and Richman Brothers in Cleveland.
Sewists are still needed by local employers, but after fulfilling careers in accounting and education, these three friends find that working with textiles is empowering, and provides a green, creative outlet that is often overlooked in our new ‘buy it now’ culture. Plus, it keeps you busy.
They reconnected with that truth during the early months of the pandemic. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” says Coggins, with a laugh. The healing and peace they experienced while creating led them to found Oh Sew Powerful in August, 2020.
The nonprofit holds classes in 
person and online to spark creativity. They encourage their students, from elementary schoolers to senior citizens, to see the possibilities in all kinds of materials.
“We want to broaden horizons.”
Their interest in mending and repurposing led them to Circular Cleveland, “a 30-month initiative to develop and implement circular economy strategies and programs in Cleveland. A circular economy is a comprehensive and sustainable approach to provide community-wide benefits by designing waste and pollution out of our economic system, keeping products and materials in use as long as possible, protecting and regenerating natural systems, and creating new jobs.”
sustainablecleveland.org/circular_cleveland
Small grants allowed Oh Sew
Powerful to teach classes, and build skills to allow their community members to repair the fabric of their lives, along with their environment.
Fast Fashion = Vast Waste
In 1970, the U.S. generated 2,040 tons of new textiles, less than 3% of which were recycled. The rest was landfilled.
As of 2018, more than 17,000 tons of new textiles were produced for the U.S. annually, and only 14% were recycled. That’s over 11,300 tons of fabric, primarily discarded clothing, sheets, and towels, that ended up in landfills.
To learn more and to sign up for an upcoming class, follow Oh Sew Powerful on Facebook, call 216-926-3391, or visit their website:
By Wally Espada,
Cleveland Job Corps Center
Your mind believes what you tell it, so always tell it positive things.
This thought inspired the Friendship Wall in one of our dormitories at Cleveland Job Corps Center back when COVID-19 showed up.
Most students went back home and connected to the program virtually, while 16 students remained at the Center with no idea at the time that they would be there for over a year and a half without ever leaving.
Staff had to find a way of helping our students maintain a “sound mind and a positive attitude” as we were about to cross over an uncharted path through the onset of this COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020.
That is when I, Ms. Wally Espada, a Residential Counselor at the time, envisioned a “chalkboard” where our students and staff could express “shout-outs” to everyone who was trying to do things right.
To stay positive amidst the unknown outcome of this lurking menace named COVID-19 was not easy. We were tasked with trying to keep going; to hold on; to let go of all the fears within, and to find a happy place within our Center that would help our students flow with the circumstances that changed life as we knew it prior to COVID-19.
We were trying to stay afloat, to meet each new day and each new challenge, stay safe and healthy, and keep balanced as we learned new ways to do things.
Seeing our students struggle, Residential Counselor, Ms. Janelle Saldana, embraced the vision and helped us bring our wall to fruition.
We were in this together for the long run. Writing on this wall became our daily inspiration.
Your mind believes what you tell it, so always tell it positive things.
Fast forward to when we were able to open our Center again, and all other students returned. They were received with a welcoming Friendship Wall that became a reminder: “never forget how far we have come.” A reminder of all the times we pushed on, even when we felt we couldn’t, with so many CDC restrictions: wearing masks, social distancing, sanitizing, no fraternizing, and no leaving the Center.
The wall, which is completely covered with positive affirmations, is a constant reminder of our struggles, and how we overcame them.
Today, as we are getting ready to receive yet more students at the Center, we pass the torch to Ms. Veronica Brazil, another residential counselor, who has graciously accepted the challenge, by popular demand of our students, to replicate our Friendship Wall in another dormitory.
All 16 students who created our Friendship Wall have since graduated and moved on to independent living outside of our Center. They pioneered this project and SUCCEEDED.
Today, the Cleveland Job Corps Center is on the move and accepting applications for enrollment.
https://www.jobcorps.gov/center/cleveland-job-corps-center
If you are looking for a better quality of life and willing to dedicate yourself to our life-changing program, Cleveland Job Corps is the place for you!
Careers begin here.
“Your only limit is your mind” … out of the mouths of our youth!
Greater Collinwood Development Corporation prompts our Collinwood neighbors to learn about and engage with National Black History Month, February 2022. Below is a short round-up of resources that can deepen our understanding of Black history in the United States, elevating the work of Black Americans and supporting Black-owned businesses in Cleveland and in Collinwood.
Explore AfricanAmericanHistoryMonth.gov
Explore all things related to African American history at https://blackhistorymonth.gov/ a collaborative project website operated by The Library of Congress. Plan lesson content, share materials or simply educate yourself about Black history in the United States. Presented by The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institute, and the United States Holocaust Museum.
Shop Black-Owned Businesses
We know that shopping small and shopping local contributes to intergenerational wealth, creativity, neighborhood wealth, and equity. Greater Collinwood encourages you to take the next step in supporting our neighbors’ work by exploring these two maps during Black History Month and making a pledge to patronize these businesses year-round. One map features Black-owned businesses in Collinwood, and the other features Black-owned restaurants across Cleveland. Please feel free to email ksierra@greatercollinwood.org ksierra@greatercollinwood.org for updates to either map.
(Shop Small! Black-Owned Businesses in Collinwood, Cleveland Area Black-Owned Restaurants)
View “Emergence” – New Work by Cedric Michael Cox, On Display Now at Framed
Located in the heart of Waterloo Arts District, Framed Gallery is an exclusive African American art gallery displaying emerging, mid-career, and established artists creating contemporary work in a variety of mediums. On display now through March 6 is a new solo exhibit, “Emergence” by Cedric Michael Cox. Cox is best known for his paintings and drawings that merge into surrealism and representational abstraction. To learn more, visit Framed Gallery online and visit the gallery during posted business hours.
Interact with New York Time’s “The 1619 Project”
“In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.” This is the opening of “The 1619 Project,” an ongoing initiative from the New York Times that began August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. The project features multimedia contributions such as “The 1619 Podcast,” photo essays, Smithsonian highlights, reader responses, and more. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. To interact with this ongoing project and to learn more, please visit The 1619 Project website.
Engage with Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem “The Hill We Climb”
Los Angeles Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, now the first US National Youth Poet Laureate, recited her work, “The Hill We Climb,” at the Presidential Inauguration, January 20, 2021. Gorman is just 22 years old, a Harvard graduate and the youngest poet to be presented with this honorable task. Within hours, educator Kate Stevens developed a lesson plan to discuss the inaugural poem for grades 6-12. The lesson plan offers lots of analysis prompts that can be also adapted for adult journaling and creative writing. View “The Hill We Climb” and the full lesson plan on the PBS website. https://www.pbs.org/
Engage with American Scholar bell hooks
Best known for intersectional feminist theory, American Scholar bell hooks’ work ” Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism” (1981) examines the intersection of race and sex. Hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, September 25, 1952, spent much of her career articulating the interconnectedness of race, gender, sexual identity, class, and the impact of media on the Black American psyche. Later in life, Hooks articulated an ethic of love in which, “A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.” To engage with and uplift her work today is to strive for a more just society. Request Ain’t I a Woman?, and others at Cleveland Public Library.
Brush Up on African American Lit at Cleveland Public Library
Visit Cleveland Public Library at Collinwood Branch, E. 152nd St or Memorial Nottingham Branch, Lake Shore Blvd to request any of the following titles and for additional recommendations:
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the New Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander, 2010)
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi, 2019)
All About Love (bell hooks, 1999)
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
(Richard Rothstein, 2017)
March: Book One (John Lewis, 2013)
Sister Outsider (Audre Lorde, 1984)
The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, 1963)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937)
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, 1970)
Citizen: An American Lyric (Claudia Rankine, 2014)
Got a tip for us for resources to include and to highlight on social media during Black History Month? Contact ksierra@greatercollinwood.org to share your tips!
By GCDC
