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City to offer first guided tour to educate on home safety In order to better inform the public, the City of Syracuse’s Division of Code Enforcement is offering a Healthy Housing 101 training by showing just what a code violation looks like. To do this, two code inspectors will offer guided tours through a Greater Syracuse Land Bank property in …

Former inmate Rashawn Sullivan teaches others how to avoid same fate Since being released from the Cayuga Correctional Facility in 2015, Syracuse South Sider Rashawn Sullivan has emerged as a powerful role model to both the youth and the adults of his community. “Street life is addicting,” Sullivan said, in a recent interview. “I’m now someone who goes into the …

Officer Containa Black made the shift from policing the streets to monitoring hallways A simple question marked the start of a spring school day for Officer Containa Black at the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central: “OK, what’s wrong?” Black had noticed that one of her students was having a bad day. As students moved through the metal detectors, just …

The Stand’s Summer print issue features Charles Rivers on the cover, who after serving 19 years, 9 months and 4 days in prison, returned to Syracuse in 2012. He now runs PEACE, Inc.’s South Side center and has helped parolees reunite with their families in Syracuse under a $95,000 pilot grant. Currently, PEACE is waiting to see if the grant …

Blue Courage encourages police to deal with stress Officer Kristie Froio stumbled through the woods near Onondaga Creek Boulevard, struggling to see through the bleeding gash near her eye, searching for the patrol partner she’d become separated from. Responding to a call about an outdoor fire, the pair encountered the schizophrenic man who started it. He’d stopped taking his medication …

South Side paper’s efforts featured at International Journalism Festival The Stand is huge in Italy. Really, it is. The reporters, academics and industry professionals who met in Perugia, Italy, in April for the International Journalism Festival were full of praise for The Stand and its approach to community journalism. Many people who attended the festival are interested in finding ways …

Joan Hillsman wins grant for her program to provide promise for children’s futures Playing the piano helps Raven Ford cope. One Saturday in April at a local church, as she settled behind the keys, the salve was Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles.” “I like music because it helps me to relax when I am having a bad day,” Ford said. …

Ex-offenders face several barriers in their transition back to society: finding jobs, adequate housing or even obtaining photo identification. So when a new grant was announced to support re-entry locally, I met with the director of the agency in charge to discuss a way to share a deeper understanding on what such support looks like for each participant and what …

Event organized to recognize, acknowledge local skills About an hour before hitting the stage, Dontray Sullivan was calm and collected. An aspiring rapper preparing to perform his new song, “Unique,” for the first time, Sullivan went so far as to make a bold prediction. “I’m going to probably have to do it twice because that’s how they’re going to want …

Charles Rivers and Karen Loftin oversee $95,000 grant to reunite families By lunch time one day last year, Charles Rivers had gone from being a supervised parolee to a welcomed professional in the same office building where hours before one individual held the power to revoke his freedom. “As a parolee, you look at parole as an adversary,” Rivers said. …