Student-Athletes Combine Forces for a Cause

Parker’s Girls and Boys Varsity Basketball teams recently collaborated to help those in need have a better chance for a home.

Student-athletes met at the Chicago Furniture Bank facility at 48th and Whipple to donate their time and energy to organize donated kitchenware and assemble full household sets of plates, cups, cutlery, pots, pans and more for CFB’s clients.

When senior Captain Quinn Kass asked coach Reilly Bruce ’14 about her day job earlier in the season, Bruce told her about the CFB. “From there we quickly realized it would be the perfect place to hold a community engagement event with the two varsity teams.” Bruce said.

She continued, “I have been working at the Chicago Furniture Bank along with coaching at Parker for the last five years. It was very special for me to blend these two incredibly important things together. The student-athletes were super-engaged and worked hard packing more than 50 kitchenware boxes in two hours at the Bank.”

The CFB currently furnishes 15 to 20 homes every day, and Bruce hopes to see this partnership grow in the future with multiple teams participating throughout the year.

Co-founded by Parker graduate Griffin Amdur ’14, the CFB is a nonprofit organization with a mission to “…provide dignity, stability and comfort to Chicagoans that face poverty by allowing clients to handpick an entire home's worth of furniture.” More on the CFB is available here.

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