Two years after graduating from Columbia, Obama moved from New York to Chicago when he was hired as director of the
Developing Communities Project, a faith-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in
Roseland,
West Pullman, and
Riverdale on Chicago's
South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in
Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the
Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in
Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his
paternal relatives for the first time.