What is CHEETA:
Community Hope through Education Empowerment Training and Action (Cheeta) is an internship through Portland Housing Authorities, that allows students from low-income communities to come together and take initiative to make a change. This year Cheeta participants were from Riverton Park and Kennedy Park. The students all came together for a two-day orientation/ training on how to become leaders in their communities.
 
The Riverton Park Cheeta project consisted of two different projects- the environmentalist who focused on changing the way the RP environment looks, and the ballers who focused on the basketball court- Both projects were successful
 
Environmentalist:
The primary goal of the environmentalist was to plant trees, flowers, and pick up trash, in an effort to make RP feel more welcoming. They noticed that people effortlessly throw their trash on the ground, which causes the community to not look good. This has been an ongoing issue, so the environmentalist decided to do a trash pick-up. During this trash pick up about 20 members of the community participated, and they saw success.
 
“Ballers”:
The primary goal of the “ballers” was to make the basketball court in RP look better. Oftentimes, people break the nets and the paint on the ground fades. The ballers wanted to incorporate alternative nets like chain nets, but that wasn’t approved. They were able to successfully paint the ground and incorporate nets, making the basketball court look much better. 

On June 30th we started CHEETA 2022! Students from various neighborhoods met at the Sagamore Village Community Center to participate in team building activities, learn about program expectations, the history of CHEETA, and how to approach addressing community issues. During this time we had earnest conversations about what it means to be a leader, being adaptable, building better communication skills, and much more. We also discussed different types of service action such as direct service, indirect service, and advocacy work. Finally, we discussed social justice and strategies for challenging systemic issues. Since then teams have been in their separate neighborhoods working hard to address the community issues they have identified. The Riverton Park students have separated into two groups, "The Environmentalists" and "The Ballers", and will be addressing trash and recycling and infrastructure/beautification issues respectively. Meanwhile, in Kennedy Park, students have chosen to address a lack of youth programming and are working on planning more events for kids in the neighborhood. While working to address these issues students are continuing to practice goal setting and a variety of skills that will be beneficial to them in their future academic or career pursuits.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for blog posts from the CHEETA students themselves!