Sherri Allen-Reeves

Making

As associate director of Matthew House Chicago, Sherri Allen-Reeves is living her faith out loud as she provides supports services to thousands of homeless and disenfranchised people. Helping the homeless has been Sherri’s passion and purpose for more than thirty-five years. She has facilitated hundreds of life-skills, vision-board, and public-speaking workshops and is herself founder of Renaissance Bronzeville Toastmasters Club. She is a trained and expert coach in communication skills, a life skill that helps people transform their lives.

In keeping with her commitment to helping others change their lives, Sherri is a member of the Rotary Club of Chicago South East, an organization whose mission is to provide service to others; promote integrity; and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace. The Chicago South East club is working with other Rotary clubs to improve lives in Africa. Sherri and her daughters recently traveled to Africa with the club to participate in service projects and to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new library that Rotarians built in Sierra Leone.

She Recalls A Transformational Journey

“It was 10 p.m. when we landed in Accra. Going through customs was an adventure of its own. There were multiple checkpoints within the airport and additional stops after retrieving your luggage,” she said.

She and her group had not traveled to Africa before, and they’d included a bit of sightseeing into their service schedule.

“One of our fellow Rotarians lives in Ghana, so she met us at the airport and had drivers waiting for us. As we began to approach the exit doors, you could feel the heat and a smell in the air, something I had never smelled before; I can only call the scent ‘Africa.’ There was a sea of people who looked like me, my cousins, neighbors, and people on the block. The smiles on their faces, the way the faces glistened with sweat, everywhere you looked were beautiful Black people.”

Lifelong Dream Fulfilled

Sherri says she has always felt a connection to Africa and that making the trip was fulfilling a lifelong dream. Although her daughters, Lacie and Crystal, had been to Ghana before, this was their first time to travel there with their mother. “Two generations touching the land of our ancestors at the same time; I am sure we were fulfilling their dreams,” says Sherri.

Following the Rotarian creed of Service Above Self, Sherri and her daughters worked a packed schedule. In Subinso, they met Rotarians from Detroit and Canada.

“The Detroit and Canada clubs have built a clinic and plan to expand it with a maternity center,” says Sherri. “We were there to help distribute mosquito nets, eyeglasses, and Days for Girls (hygiene) Kits. We were able to break bread and share stories of their many travels to Subinso and all the service they have done there.”

She visited places that stirred deep emotions in her. She recalls seeing the Cape Coast Slave Dungeons (Castles): “Some call them a castle, but that was not what I felt there; the walls and floors still have the stench of the enslaved Africans. As I touched the walls, it was as if I could feel the pain and hear the cries of my ancestors. It wasn’t easy to grasp that enslaved Africans were captured and taken from their home through doors like these up and down the Atlantic Ocean. Yet, looking through the ‘Door of No Return,’ I felt what I believe could be only a snippet of their anguish. I had to remind myself: Breathe, Sherri. Breathe.’”

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