New Communities Program News and Articles

Crowdfunding for community development? Yes!

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:48:31 CST

[Articles]

Editor's note: Five of LISC's partners had successfully funded their Seed Chicago Kickstarter campaigns as they approached their funding deadlines on May 16, raising more than $48,900 for community improvement projects. View the results.

When World Business Chicago launched its Seed Chicago campaign in early April on the “crowdfunding” website called Kickstarter, it was a bold enough idea that the national news site Atlantic Cities asked, “Could Kickstarter Work as a Tool for Neighborhood Economic Development?”

It’s still early, but the answer looks like: “Yes.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel picks up lunch from The Tamalespaceship food truck in Pilsen, one of the first 11 projects to be posted for funding consideration via Seed Chicago.

Photo: Patrick Pyszka, City of Chicago

It took only four days for Teamwork Englewood to fully fund its $5,500 project to teach 15 youth how to build a simple computer (called Raspberry Pi) and code a website. Blowing past the initial goal so quickly, project leader Demond Drummer of Teamwork Englewood asked supporters for “stretch goals,” then doubled the planned summer program to 30 youth. Donations topped $9,000 last week, closing on the new goal of $10,000.

The second of 11 first-wave projects was fully funded a couple of weeks later. That one, called Global Gardens Bees ‘n Seeds, will add beehives and a seed-saving garden to an Albany Park farm where refugees from Bhutan and Burma are growing food for their families. More than $5,000 has been raised so far.

But it’s not a slam-dunk for every project.

The urban-farming-and-job-training organization Growing Home Inc. has attracted more than 170 backers. But it still needs $11,000 to reach its $20,000 goal. And some of the for-profit participants, who were recruited into the program through the micro-lending organization Accion Chicago, set ambitious fundraising goals. A hair-braiding school in Englewood, for instance, hopes to raise $32,000, and the Tamalespaceship food truck business needs $34,000 to build out a storefront restaurant in Pilsen.

Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing approach. If you reach your goal, all backers’ credit cards are charged. If you don’t, no one is charged.

“You have to have a great idea, first,” says LISC Program Officer Dionne Baux, who helped surface the first round of nonprofit participants from within LISC’s Neighborhood Network. “But you also have to set your fundraising goal to a level you can reach, and you have to really promote the project to all of your networks of supporters.”

World Business Chicago will soon announce an "open call" for new projects.

Photo: Patrick Pyszka, City of Chicago

Another hurdle is that Kickstarter accepts donations only through the Internet. To back a project, one must first register on Kickstarter, and then create or link to an existing Amazon Payments account. This could be a significant barrier, Baux said, in neighborhoods with lower Internet usage and income levels.

Still, World Business Chicago (WBC) is excited about the potential of Kickstarter to “catalyze reinvestment, grow small businesses and spur employment growth.” On April 15, Mayor Rahm Emanuel engaged in a roundtable discussion with leaders of all 11 inaugural projects, noting that “we as a city will only be as strong as our neighborhoods are strong.”

Seed Chicago is an opportunity to highlight “the best of what Chicago has to offer,” said Julia Stasch, vice president of U.S. programs for the MacArthur Foundation. By learning from this initial group of projects and recruiting more, the project could generate $1 million in investment annually and create 250 jobs, Stasch said.

And that would provide a very clear answer to the question of whether crowdfunding can spur development of Chicago neighborhoods.

World Business Chicago will soon announce an “open call” for new projects, and it’s already soliciting ideas from interested individuals and organizations.

Neighborhood network eyes ACA push

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:02:18 CST

[Articles]

LISC Chicago’s Neighborhood Network is gearing up for a tidal wave of change around health care as implementation begins this year on the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

At a “Healthy Wednesday” session on April 3, more than 65 organizers, financial counselors and health care practitioners got a quick course on how the landmark program will roll out, and what it will take to enroll thousands of newly eligible individuals.

Data from Illinois Health Matters show that the African American and Latino communities where LISC Neighborhood Network partners are concentrated have faced the biggest deficits in health insurance to date -- and have the most to gain from Affordable Care Act implementation.

Photo: Courtesy Illinois Health Matters

“This is the first of many conversations we’ll have about ACA and how we are going to plug into this massive thing,” said LISC Program Officer Dominique Williams. “It’s a huge opportunity for our neighborhoods.”

The ACA law makes 730,000 people in Cook County eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage or subsidized health insurance. Another 130,000 will be able to buy insurance without a subsidy on the state’s new health insurance web portal, nicknamed ABE for Applications for Benefits Eligibility.

“I’ve been in this field for 24 years, and this is the biggest change in all that time,” said Stephanie Altman, programs and policy director for Health and Disabilities Advocates, which is helping train organizations for new ACA-related roles. “It’s a big enrollment challenge, more than the AllKids program [health coverage for low-income children]; it comes close to the scale of Medicare Part D enrollment.”

Central to meeting that challenge will be networks of trained helpers who will educate consumers about their choices and connect them to the ABE portal, which launches October 1. The portal will determine each person’s eligibility category based on information that the enrollee enters into the system.

Three types of helpers will be used: Navigators, In-Person Assistors and Certified Applications Counselors. Some of them will be hired by community-based organizations, with federal and state funding.

Illinois Health Matters has broken down profiles of uninsured adults and what they'll be eligible for under the ACA in communities across Chicago.

Photo: Courtesy Illinois Health Matters

Illinois was awarded $115.8 million by the federal government on April 8 to support its health insurance marketplace. “A large portion of this federal funding will pay for outreach activities and consumer assistance” according to Stephani Becker, project director for Illinois Health Matters, who also participated in the April 3 workshop.

On the Illinois Health Matters blog, she referenced research from Enroll America that shows 78 percent of the uninsured don’t know about the new health insurance exchanges, and 83 percent who could be eligible for the new Medicaid expansion don’t know about it.

A “tremendous amount of work needs to get done to tell people about the new options and enroll them into a plan,” Becker wrote.

LISC partners likely to be involved in ACA promotion and enrollment are its Centers for Working Families, where financial counselors can help clients understand their enrollment options; LISC lead agencies, many of which are already involved in health programming; and other community-based organizations involved with health care.

See a schedule of deadlines and program milestones on the Illinois Health Matters blog. For details on program eligibility and categories, download the April 3 presentation by Health and Disability Advocates’ Stephanie Altman and Stefani Becker.

Illinois Matters features an online mapping tool at http://visualizingreform.illinoishealthmatters.org/uninsured

Photo: Courtesy Illinois Health Matters

For more information on LISC Chicago’s Healthy Communities campaign, contact Program Officer Dominique Williams, dwilliams@lisc.org or (312) 422-9571.

LISC Chicago’s health work is funded in part by the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute.

Two communities plan “all-in” safety initiatives

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:56:33 CST

[Articles]

For years, the gang killings and other violent crimes have taken their toll, undercutting the hard work of building stronger communities. The headlines blare about the baby Jonylah Watkins, shot in her father’s lap, and the teenager Hadiya Pendleton, killed in a neighborhood park, but every week there are other stories that do just as much damage.

The victims are not just the innocents or the gang-involved criminals who have been shot and killed, but all the students and parents and business owners who live with the fear of gunshots and gang warfare, who go about daily life in the shadows of violence.

The 14th annual Ecumenical Easter Service, scheduled for this Saturday, March 30, will begin with an anti-violence procession led by the South Chicago CeaseFire staff from Claretian Associates. For more information, please click here.

Photo: Claretian Associates

Despite a steady decline in overall crime, the murder rate rose in 2012, to 510 homicides, most of them in poor South and West Side neighborhoods. And that’s just the surface layer. Underneath are thousands of non-fatal shootings and stabbings, and tens of thousands of other violent crimes, often highly concentrated in “hot spots” like the 87th Street corridor in South Chicago, or 13th Street in North Lawndale.

The violence is corrosive. “We had group interviews with 40 youth and what I heard was that everybody in our group had had someone in their family killed,” said Tracie Worthy, NCP manager at Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LCDC). “Six had dropped out of school, and that was because of a death of a father or uncle or cousin. They didn’t know where to get support, so they sunk into depression.”

A neighborhood-led response
Starting this spring, LISC Chicago and its neighborhood partners will launch an all-in, all-at-once approach to reducing violent crime, hoping to turn the tide in North Lawndale and South Chicago.

With seed funding from Allstate Insurance, the Neighborhood Safety Initiative (NSI) will activate multiple networks – everything from block clubs and job counselors, to Chicago Police Department bike cops and City of Chicago departments – to change the culture in those neighborhoods.

This graphic captures the virtuous cycle that LISC Chicago and its partners believe the Neighborhood Safety Initiative will set in motion in North Lawndale and South Chicago.

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“We’ve been building up to this for years,” said Keri Blackwell, LISC Chicago’s deputy director for programs and its liaison to the Chicago Police Department. “This is more than organizing basketball games on the streets, or beefing up youth programs. It’s an attempt to create true collaboration among all the groups affected by crime, to build up the community’s capacity, and to provide a framework for accountability.”

NSI will not be a quick fix, added Blackwell, which is why LISC has committed to at least three years of support to the two communities, and to other neighborhoods as additional resources are raised. NSI will activate and strengthen the neighborhood networks and employ best practices that show promise for crime reduction. But it will also add other elements typically lacking in such efforts, including strong local leadership, police involvement from commanders to beat cops, and additional support from both local and citywide advisory boards.

“This is an important step in addressing the violence issue,” said Victoria Dinges, vice president corporate relations - public social responsibility of Allstate Insurance. “What’s promising is that NSI will build on LISC’s existing networks and expand them to new partners.”

Safe South Chicago
Much of the NSI structure has been roughed in already in South Chicago, where the LISC lead agency, Claretian Associates, has been working with neighborhood partners and 4th District Cmdr. Berscott Ruiz to develop strategies that will be implemented this summer and fall.

B-Ball on the Block attracts big crowds with sports, arts, food--and safety provided by a visible police presence.

Photo: Courtesy Lawndale Christian Development Corp.

The former steel-mill neighborhood is home turf for two major gangs – the Latin Kings and Black P Stones – and at least five smaller gang factions that together have created a brutal street culture of drug trafficking, boundary skirmishes and retaliatory shootings.

There were 14 homicides in South Chicago in 2012, up from four in 2011. A police gang audit identified about 175 active gang members. The department and community leaders believe that 80 percent of violent crime stems from the gang culture.

Claretian and its neighborhood partners have been working closely with the 4th District since 2009, when three youth were gunned down while walking home from school. The South Chicago Chamber of Commerce has organized businesses to help stem burglaries on Commercial Avenue, and block clubs were mobilized to stop a “Brick Squad” of youth who were breaking into cars.

“It’s not the gangs alone,” said Angela Hurlock, Claretian’s executive director. “It is also the lack of education and jobs, and the kids at Bowen High School not finishing school, so they can’t get jobs.”

Photo:

The 4th District’s executive officer, Capt. Ruth Wedster, noted a “new dynamic” of very young offenders, from 10 to 15 years old. More than 70 percent of the 2012 violent-crime arrests in a South Chicago target area were of individuals aged 21 or under. The burglary crew that broke the window at Radio Shack included a 9-year-old boy.

Reducing those types of crimes requires more than enforcement. That’s why the local police have “adopted” a group of children from the nearby Trumbull Park Homes housing development, and why the community organized a “Nosey Neighbors” campaign that engages residents in safety-oriented activities such as music fests and block parties. It all contributes to building a culture of trust, and one that encourages residents to report crime to police. “It makes a big difference to the CPD if the community wants the help from us,” said Cmdr. Ruiz.

Culture shifts
The Chicago Police already combine sophisticated intelligence gathering with special enforcement teams to address violence and retaliatory shootings. They also use “call-ins” to bring known gang offenders into meetings with law enforcement and neighborhood leaders to urge a stop to the violence. Supportive services are offered to help offenders stay out of trouble, and aggressive enforcement is promised if they don’t.

But that hasn’t been enough. Crime researchers, police and community leaders all agree that major culture shifts are required to rebuild the community structures and norms – known as collective efficacy – that will help youth resist the gang culture and lead to sustained reductions in crime.

A huge challenge is convincing residents to call police when they witness criminal activity. “Neighbors will say ‘Why should I call when the drug dealing is right out in the open; the police must know where it is,’ ” said LCDC’s Tracie Worthy. “But if you don’t call, the police won’t come. And when you go to a CAPS meeting and complain, the first thing the police will do is look up the calls for service and show you that they didn’t receive any.”

10th District Cmdr. Maria Peña greets a group of boys, while other police officers hang out, at a North Lawndale street event last summer.

Photo: Courtesy LCDC

One reason people don’t get involved is gang intimidation around “being a snitch.” One crime hot spot in North Lawndale is the 1300-block of South Christiana, but when police organized a meeting to address the issue, attendance was sparse. “It takes a lot of meetings with people to get their trust,” said Kim Jackson, executive director of LCDC. “We have an opportunity to shape this whole conversation and how things should go, but it’s going to take some work.”

Building better relationships between police and neighbors will get a boost this year as the department trains all 12,500 of its sworn officers in “police legitimacy and procedural justice,” which stresses respectful treatment of residents and better explanations of why a traffic stop or other enforcement action is being taken.

The program has support from the very top – Police Supt. Garry McCarthy – but both neighborhood leaders and police officials recognize that it will take years of culture change to build trusting and effective relationships.

Jobs, youth, counseling
The Neighborhood Safety Initiative is a complex undertaking that will require participation across dozens of organizations and sectors of society. Among the big drivers:

Jobs – Many crimes are committed because residents need money to survive and don’t have the training or life skills for traditional work. So a big need is for transitional employment programs that connect participants to education or skills programs.
Youth – Young people in low-income communities are exposed to gangs from an early age and may see them as a supportive structure that offers opportunities to be protected, earn money and gain prestige. Counteracting that force will require equally strong youth programs that provide positive alternatives to gang recruitment.
Trauma – Urban violence, like war, can create Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and living in poverty can cause “Adverse Childhood Experiences” that have lasting negative effects. In both cases, mental-health services can be a big help, but they must be available locally and be trusted by those who need them.
Research – A wealth of best-practice research is available to inform the NSI work, but community leaders may not be familiar with what would work locally. NSI will engage professional researchers to help create and fine-tune local strategies.
Support – Neighborhoods and individuals can better address crime issues if they face fewer every day pressures of broken-down housing, inadequate schools or poor health. Programs that solve these problems are critical to reaching safety goals.

North Lawndale youth wear T-shirts that promote peace, unity and respect.

Photo: Courtesy LCDC

“This is going to take a tremendous amount of effort, over a period of years,” said LISC’s Keri Blackwell. “But what has been done so far has not been enough. We’ve got to build real long-term collaboration and make better use of existing resources to change the course of these neighborhoods. And the really promising thing is that we’ve got the right people at the table to get this done.”

Fired up, ready to go: LISC Chicago’s neighborhood network

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 00:03:08 CST

[Articles]

Leverage and results – smart investors insist on both.

You invest in organizations that know their business and apply every dollar to maximum advantage. You invest in those that deliver a reliable and measureable result.

In the complex business of urban community development, no vehicle matches the leverage and impact of every dollar invested quite like LISC Chicago.

LISC Chicago brings together the community development community annually to celebrate the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

For 33 years LISC has been Chicago’s indispensible intermediary between funders seeking to improve the quality of life in the city’s at-risk neighborhoods and the community-based organizations and developers that know how to get things done there.

During the last 12 years, thanks to an extraordinary investment by the MacArthur Foundation, NCP has woven a network of working relationships and best-practice methods and has become a national “how-to” model for comprehensive community development.

Comprehensive? One lesson learned early on is that real estate investment, be it subsidized housing or shiny new stores, does not, by itself, “turn around” troubled neighborhoods. Of course it doesn’t.

Not when residents lack the skills and education needed to join the post-industrial workforce; not when there’s no fresh produce at the corner liquor-and-Lottery store; not when there’s no safe place for children to play or medical clinics to treat chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes.

A truly healthy neighborhood is composed of many things. That’s why struggling communities, more than anything, seek a partner possessing the technical capacity, managerial flexibility and financial backing to help neighborhoods help themselves.

Stabilizing and improving neighborhood housing remains a key cornerstone for LISC Chicago, most recently through its involvement in the city's Micro-Market Recovery Program, designed to mitigate against the ill effects of foreclosures.

Photo: Gordon Walek

As we broaden our effort beyond the initial NCP neighborhoods, we’re strengthening this platform and expanding our NCP Network. We believe it’s the best model yet devised for enabling entire neighborhoods, and the individuals who live in them, to gain control of their future.

Then again, we’re always looking for additional partners … and for our existing partners to step up with new ideas and wherewithal.

New ideas? Consider the energy generated by just this sampling of programs we launched and/or fine-tuned during 2012:

Smart Communities – So far more than 550 households and 46 businesses have adopted broadband Internet, and more than 2,000 adults have received digital skills training, as part of this partnership with the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology.

Using a one-time, $7 million federal stimulus grant and the skills and hardware contributed by our many tech-savvy partners, Smart Communities has delivered more than 1,000 netbook and desktop computers to help bridge the digital divide; we also helped five neighborhoods create Internet “portals.” These feature local businesses, neighborhood news and timely listings of community activities and resources. Take a look at www.pilsenportal.org for one shining example.

LISC Chicago has helped bring about 21st century skills and workplaces through efforts like its quiet brokering of the Green Exchange development in Logan Square.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Measureable results? New survey research from the universities of Illinois and Iowa found that residents of our five Smart Communities are taking to the Internet at a rate 15 percent faster than other neighborhoods.

"This is about redeveloping the skill set of Chicagoans and bringing us up to the level of other cities,” says John Tolva, the city’s chief technology officer. But more needs to be done, he admits, especially with expiration of the federal startup grant.

So the MacArthur Foundation has stepped up once more by supporting one full-time tech leader in each of the five Smart Communities during 2013. McCormick Tribune Foundation is also getting involved, as is Comcast. Who’s next?

Centers for Working Families – Innovation has been a constant at our 13 Centers for Working Families, where in 2012 more than 12,000 Chicagoans received some combination of job placement, public benefits counseling and one-on-one financial advice.

A new partnership with Citibank, for instance, is issuing Banamex USA secured credit cards as a credit-building tool. This might sound counterintuitive, but timely card payments have helped the previously un-scored reach credit ratings in the 740-760 range in just three months.

Through Kennedy-King College and LISC's Centers for Working Familes, Army vet Terrence Prayer's now employed as an IT professional at Allscripts, a provider of health records systems, in the Merchandise Mart.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

Next up in 2013 – expansion of CWF’s partnership with the City Colleges of Chicago as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s effort to reconnect graduates with our region’s growth industries. The idea isn’t to supplant college placement services but to ensure CCC students have the skills and supports needed to meet basic needs, focus on their studies, and begin climbing a career ladder.

The new partnership is being piloted with great success at the Kennedy-King campus in Englewood, where the CWF staffed by Metropolitan Family Services coaches students in the fundamentals of job-hunting – from what to wear, to what to say at that first interview.

“Suddenly I’m somebody,” exulted Terence Prayer, a Kennedy-King student who won admission to an Allscripts trainee program, one of several college-to-career arrangements negotiated by the Emanuel administration.

The once-homeless Prayer remembers how he was provided a suit coat and collared shirt – plus some intensive interview prepping – by CWF counselors. “They held our hand step-by-step, right down to the wording of my [resume] cover letter. It all came together. They give you a base, a base you can build on.”

Youth Sports Programming – Keeping kids positively engaged in organized sports doesn’t just help them stay healthy … it can help them stay alive. That’s just the sad reality in a city that endured more than 500 homicides in 2012. The dead are mostly young, mostly black or Hispanic, and mostly shot either because of gang rivalries or because they simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In addition to its namesake attraction, Hoops in the 'Hood provides young people the opportunity to participate in soccer, face-painting, chess-playing and other peaceable activities.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

One place and time where nobody gets shot are the Friday afternoon basketball tournaments called Hoops in the 'Hood, held in public spaces under the auspices of the city, LISC Chicago, our local partners and State Farm Insurance.

Now entering its seventh season, Hoops is going strong in 12 neighborhoods with the potential to expand to more. By roping off a local street or schoolyard, a Hoops gathering, which usually includes a refreshment table and even a local arts-and-crafts bazaar, lets neighbors regain control over streets too often monopolized by gangs. The kids are safe and the only mind-altering stuff being pushed is sportsmanship and mutual respect.

Measuring community-wide impact of such programming is tricky. But consider this: according to a LISC analysis of police data, the number of crimes reported in the vicinity of a regular Hoops site in East Garfield Park has been cut in half during basketball games over a recent three summers. A coincidence? We think not.

Not everyone plays basketball, so LISC has partnered with the city, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, the cyclists at Active Transportation Alliance and World Sport Chicago on a PlayStreets program featuring dancing, jump rope, giant chessboards and other ways get folks outdoors, moving and socializing.

More than 50 such events were scheduled last fall, with more in the works this spring. Also, with the National Football League, we’re supporting a Grassroots Program that has rebuilt 10 community football fields in the city and close-in suburbs.

Driver Sacha McLeod and helper Joel Casey are ready to weigh fruits and veggies aboard the Fresh Moves mobile produce market. LISC's health advisory committee has called for more traveling grocers.

Photo: John McCarron

“Just the idea of parents and kids being in a public play space is a very big deal,” says Rob Castañeda, whose Hoops affiliate in Little Village, called Beyond the Ball, has turned dozens of teenagers toward school and career and away from street life. The challenge, he points out, now that we know what works, is to “bring it to other blocks.”

Neighborhood Health and Safety Initiatives -- During 2012, and into 2013, LISC Chicago organized a series of neighborhood assemblies with Dr. Bechara Choucair, commissionerof the Chicago Department of Public Health.

More than 50 community leaders have relayed health-related concerns and suggestions, ranging from violence suppression techniques, to elimination of “food deserts,” to changes in city regulations that prohibit, for instance, the transport of organic compost from one community garden to another.

“We cannot move the needle on our own,” Dr. Choucair told a recent gathering in the North Park neighborhood. “We have to be working with community partners, and a key strategy is working with the LISC New Communities.”

No health issue stirred the city in 2012 – or prompted more discussion at meetings with Dr. Choucair – than youth violence. A major new LISC effort in 2013 will be the Neighborhood Safety Initiative, a three-year pilot with the Chicago Police in two communities. Initial funding is from Allstate Insurance. The idea is to use LISC’s Neighborhood Network in an intensive effort to spur community cooperation with, and dispel mistrust of, the police as they work to prevent and solve violent crimes.

Real Estate Development -- And while real estate investment doesn't by itself "turn around" troubled neighborhoods, it's a key ingredient in many redevelopment efforts. In 2012, LISC Chicago completed $4.67 million in real estate lending, incluiding $640,000 for the 72-unit historic Strand Hotel in Woodlawn; $300,000 for development of LGBT housing in a former police station on the North Side; and $382,000 for new veterans housing in Auburn Gresham.

Thirteen neighborhood teens from seventh through 10th grades tended to the Junior Green Youth Farm last summer, an initiative of LISC Chicago's Elev8 program at Reavis Elementary School.

Photo: Gordon Walek
On to 2013!
The above is but a slice of what LISC Chicago was doing in 2012 … and what we’re planning for the remainder of 2013. Suffice it to say, our Neighborhood Network is in place; it has been tested, it works and it is ready to leverage new investments to deliver measureable results.

“For neighborhoods and cities to remain strong,” urges Lori Healey, chair of LISC Chicago’s Board of Advisors, “they must constantly innovate. That innovation often comes from the grassroots. Strong neighborhood networks are often the first to recognize problems, spot opportunities and forge creative solutions.”

It’s what we do.

New pillars support Woodlawn renewal

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:47:09 CST

[Articles]

Woodlawn is rising again … though the challenges, like gravity, seem never to go away.

Its comeback slowed by the Great Recession, its people saddened by the death of a beloved leader, the storied South Side neighborhood is rallying around an ambitious housing development and other locally driven plans for safer streets and better schools.

To see a larger, more readable version of this chart, please click here.

Photo:

There’s a new thrust, too, coming from a native son determined to see his father’s vision come true.

But the Rev. Dr. Byron T. Brazier goes about the work a bit differently than did his father, Bishop Arthur M. Brazier, who built Apostolic Church of God into one of the city’s largest and most influential congregations.

Perhaps that’s because Byron Brazier, before returning to help his father manage the 22,000-member church in the late ’90s, first honed considerable management skills working for Johnson & Johnson, IBM Corporation and then his own consulting firm.

Bishop Brazier, who passed in October of 2010, had woven a network of intensely personal relationships that stretched from movers and shakers such as former Mayor Richard M. Daley, to the bus drivers and beat cops on 63^rd Street. In the ’60s he founded The Woodlawn Organization (TWO) to fight urban renewal abuses. Later he worked with the city and the University of Chicago on a succession of community redevelopment efforts and was closely involved with LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program (NCP).

Byron Brazier shares his father’s fire, though he also brings a gift for organization that might be just what Woodlawn needs at this stage of its redevelopment. Dr. Brazier chairs the Network of Woodlawn, or NOW, which has succeeded the NCP/Woodlawn coordinating team as the neighborhood’s NCP flagship.

“You can’t pitch a program into a community if there’s no catcher,” Dr. Brazier says of the need for any struggling neighborhood to have a central node for community input and a point of entry outside investment. “So when you go to Woodlawn, you know whom to talk to.”

The four pillars
But it’s not that simple.

The Network of Woodlawn's Wesley Walker and the University of Chicago's Will Towns foresee continued renewed growth along 63rd Street.

Photo: John McCarron

Not when one-third of Woodlawn children still live in what’s officially described as “deep” poverty and when nine of its elementary schools face sanctions for missing state targets on standardized tests.

Not when gun-related youth violence continues to weigh on all aspects of life, what with 42 murders in the neighborhood last year compared to 36 in 2011 … and another three just in the first month of 2013.

Not when many longtime homeowners view with some suspicion the subsidized housing being built and rehabbed hereabouts – the source, they claim, of many of the neighborhood’s problems.

So complex are the challenges that Dr. Brazier and his NOW board determined early on that the typical soup-to-nuts organizational format wouldn’t work for this new community development corporation. In order to attract more outside investment – public investment, private investment, philanthropic investment – and to better manage those investments, NOW is being set up as an umbrella overseeing four distinct non-profit subsidiaries, each with discreet but mutually supporting budgets, goals and strategies.

The four “pillars” of NOW are:

Bill Eager of the Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc., says partnerships are remaking Woodlawn.

Photo: John McCarron
Education – Centered on the Woodlawn Children’s Promise Community, a joint effort with the U. of C. and others to upgrade the neighborhood’s so-so public schools. Children’s Promise will encompass all stages of human development, from pre-natal nurturing to post-graduate career placement, all modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City.

Public safety – Centered on the Woodlawn Public Safety Alliance, created last year as an antidote to increasing youth violence. Most shootings occur south of 63^rd Street and west of Cottage Grove Avenue, but the shadow of violence threatens to erode the entire community’s sense of wellbeing.

Health & Human Services – A broad, multi-partner effort to deal with challenges ranging from asthma (the leading cause of school non-attendance) to binge drinking to the unavailability of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Community Development – Centered on a new Woodlawn Partnership for Economic Development, the effort aims to “incubate, initiate and coordinate” a stable economic foundation for the community. Consultants are doing an inventory and outlining possibilities that build on the 2005 NCP quality-of-life plan.

Beneath the pillars
It’s all very ambitious, to be sure, but Dr. Brazier has chosen well the person who’ll be coordinating the effort full-time. Wesley Walker, once a program officer for LISC Chicago, has returned from a tour of community development work in the Twin Cities to take over as Network of Woodlawn’s executive director.

A decade ago Walker helped roll out NCP. Now, he suggests, Woodlawn’s new approach may prove a viable model for other local NCP affiliates as they move into the looser-but-wider New Communities network.

POAH's Felicia Dawson helps families return to Woodlawn Park.

Photo: John McCarron

The danger, of course, is the complexity of administering five distinct organizations – NOW plus the pillars – whose partners and constituencies are sure to overlap. But Walker, like Dr. Brazier, predicts the benefits will outweigh any difficulties.

For one thing, both argue, grant-makers generally prefer to support issue-specific programs with defined goals and measured outcomes, as opposed to umbrella groups like NOW with a more comprehensive outlook. For another, NOW is setting up to provide “back office” support to all four subsidiaries, minimizing bureaucratic drag.

The NOW experiment is being watched closely, to be sure, by several funders and partners including LISC Chicago’s Executive Director Susana Vasquez. She might have preferred a simpler organizational model but respects the local vision to not only continue promoting comprehensive planning, but to begin building the organizational infrastructure for comprehensive implementation.

“Other neighborhoods like Humboldt Park have several nonprofit organizations that take on the tasks of the pillars model,” says Vasquez. “No one organization can serve all the needs for a community. There is value to building that infrastructure and, from the start, thinking of back office issues and programmatic coordination.”

Well-connected
Byron Brazier is a close confidante of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Dr. Brazier co-chaired the mayor’s transition committee and is an Emanuel appointee to the Public Building Commission. He also chairs the aforementioned Children’s Promise Community and is on the board of several influential civic groups such as Metropolis Strategies and the Metropolitan Planning Council.

The Rev. Dr. Byron T. Brazier has followed in the considerable footsteps of his father, Bishop Arthur M. Brazier, while bringing his own business background to his role as chair of the Network of Woodlawn.

Photo: John McCarron

Not that Dr. Brazier is a fan of everything coming down the pipe from City Hall. He doesn’t hide his skepticism, for instance, about a forthcoming city concept plan to convert many of the vacant lots in west Woodlawn and nearby Washington Park into community gardens, ball fields and other open space amenities.

Byron Brazier has a larger vision for Woodlawn. Granted it may never regain the 81,000 folks who called it home back in 1960, before white flight and a half-century of neglect reduced that number by two-thirds. But its location – on the lakefront, next to one of the world’s great universities, bracketed by first class parks and public transit – makes it a natural for what he sees as an inevitable next wave of real estate development.

“We’re not about managing people in their poverty,” said the 62-year-old doctor of ministry from the prestigious McCormick Theological Seminary. “We have the poor. Now we need to balance with the middle class. Everyone wins.”

Then again, other leaders who had input to the city’s forthcoming Green & Healthy land use plan for the mid-South Side – including Ald. Willie Cochran (20^th) and the U. of C.-affiliated Southeast Chicago Commission – are sure to seek Dr. Brazier’s support, especially on the plan’s call for commercial redevelopment of transit “nodes” such as 63^rd and Cottage Grove.

Choice development
The embodiment of Dr. Brazier’s more densely populated vision is rising along both sides of Cottage Grove north of 63^rd Street. Where a worn-out warren of low-income housing known as Grove Parc once stood, now rises Woodlawn Park, a stylish, post-modern mix of affordable apartments and town houses.

The developer is the Boston-based non-profit POAH (for Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc.) and its work is underwritten not just by federal rent subsidies and tax credits but by an innovative companion grant called the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. The idea behind HUD’s first-ever Choice grant is to amplify the impact of Woodlawn Park by leveraging ripples of revitalization across the entire neighborhood.

Woodlawn Park, a stylish, post-modern mix of affordable apartments and town houses, now rises where the rundown Grove Parc once stood.

Photo: Gordon Walek

One example of that: a homebuyer support program that aims to bring 80 middle-class families into the mix. All of Grove Parc’s original 504 subsidized apartments will be replaced. Many are located in existing but newly rehabbed apartment buildings not far from the LEED-certified new construction along Cottage Grove.

Other initiatives funded in part by the $32.5 million Choice grant include plans for a Center for Working Families satellite managed by Metropolitan Family Services, plus support for the Network of Woodlawn along with its education and public safety initiatives.

“What the Choice grant did was force us out of our silos,” said Felicia Dawson, who manages tenant relations for POAH at Woodlawn Park. “We’ve got the social services working hand-in-glove with property management, the youth programs working with the schools, the university with the community.”

Dawson has her hands full, however, diffusing the fears of some longtime residents, especially homeowners, leery of so many rent-subsidized families moving nearby.

“We’re infuriated,” said Corey Howard, a homeowner and block club president of 6100 S. St. Lawrence Avenue. “You’ve got thousands coming here on Section 8 or on [rent] vouchers, lots of 18-year-old kids raising kids, so the market-rate renters are going someplace else, … and the owners, they’re losing their investment.”

POAH’s Dawson begs to differ, arguing that the rehab and re-occupation of West Woodlawn’s foreclosed and vacant walk-ups is stabilizing an at-risk neighborhood.

Maroon magic
Less obvious but no less real, Dawson said, has been a coming together of east and west Woodlawn. Too often they were “like the Hatfields and McCoys,” with folks west of Cottage feeling they were passed over in favor of the more well-endowed east.

Bill Eager, POAH vice-president for Chicago operations, lays much of the program’s success to President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago and his vice president for civic engagement, Derek Douglas.

“We’ve got the social services working hand-in-glove with property management, the youth programs working with the schools, the university with the community,” said Felicia Dawson, who manages tenant relations for POAH at Woodlawn Park.

Photo: Gordon Walek

For instance, the university was quick to chime in with $1 million in support of the recently announced Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program. Coupled with a $2 million state grant, the plan is to connect Woodlawn and other mid-South neighborhoods into a college-centric broadband network that eventually will serve nearly 80,000 households.

Eager also welcomes the school’s encouragement of employees to rent market-rate units at Woodlawn Park or, better yet, buy Woodlawn two- or three-flats through the school’s Employer Assisted Housing program. The university is also a mainstay of the Children’s Promise school program and is expected soon to announce construction of a charter school on 63^rd Street.

“There’s nothing but opportunity on these blocks,” said Will Towns, who recently left the city’s program to rehab foreclosed homes to help the U. of C. do redevelopment near the campus. “Look at the quality of the housing stock. Look at the amenities nearby. Opportunities are everywhere, only now we have the community partners to get things done.”

To one degree or another, LISC Chicago has seeded much of what’s happening in Woodlawn. From its 10-year backing of NOW and its NCP antecedents to predevelopment loans on Woodlawn Park; from loans and equity investments on some 500 homes elsewhere in the neighborhood to its technical and financial support of the Choice Neighborhoods and Children’s Promise applications, LISC has been there.

It may well be, though, as the New Communities platform expands across the city to become a wider network of tools and relationships, that Network of Woodlawn is, in a way, paying it back by becoming a viable model for NCP’s next phase. Not the only model, perhaps, but one capable of making real the dreams of an earlier generation of community leaders, beginning with those of the late Bishop Arthur Brazier.

More information: Wesley Walker, NOW, wwalker@ncpwoodlawn.org

CNDA 2013: Engaged, healthy and strong

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 23:43:10 CST

[Articles]

Chicago and its neighborhoods have reached an “inflection point” where problems once considered too difficult to address are being analyzed with an eye toward investments critical to their solution.

So while Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised the winning brick-and-mortar projects saluted at the 19th annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards, he also challenged the audience of community development practitioners and funders to do even more.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised the winners at the 19th annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards--and challenged community builders to do more to improve their neighborhoods.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

Most of all, the mayor urged the 1,500 who came to the Chicago Hilton & Towers on Feb. 13 to reach out to young people “whose optimism and youthfulness have been taken from them.”

For the city to succeed, the mayor said, these disaffected teenagers and young adults need to “see themselves as sharing in the success of our global city.”

Emanuel did not specifically address the wave of lethal violence that has shaken neighborhoods on the West and South sides, nor did he elaborate on the painful proposal – released earlier that day – to close more than 120 underutilized schools. But as he spoke of “hard decisions,” of “investing in the right things” and of “bridging the difference” between blunted aspirations in the neighborhoods compared to the energy building downtown, the context was broadly appreciated.

Earlier in the evening Susana Vasquez, executive director of LISC Chicago, which hosts the event, also called for “stretching ourselves.”

“What will make us stronger as a city in the months and years ahead is stretching ourselves to build new relationships with people and parts of the city that are not as familiar, and forging new coalitions," said Vasquez. "That's how we are going to break through on some of these toughest issues: by continuing to push ourselves to build trust."

Julia Stasch, Vice President of US Programs at the MacArthur Foundation, received the Richard M. Daley Friend of the Neighborhoods Award.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

In the same vein, Lori Healey, board chair of LISC Chicago and of this year’s CNDA, called on the community development faithful to “take a closer look at the emerging challenges and opportunities facing Chicago.”

Healthy & Strong
Before the awards ceremony, which is held annually to celebrate outstanding projects and achievements in the city’s neighborhoods, a panel of health experts discussed what it takes achieve “Healthy neighborhoods/Strong city” – this year’s CNDA theme. But upfront it was made achingly clear that some neighborhoods are a lot healthier than others.

Dr. Steve Whitman, director of the Sinai Urban Health Institute, cited a string of data points showing that Chicago has work to do, especially in neighborhoods of color:

Life expectancy among blacks in Chicago is eight years less than for whites (71 years vs. 79) with, for instance, residents of affluent Lakeview outliving those in West Garfield Park by 14 years on average, or 83 vs. 69 years.
The infant mortality rate among Chicago blacks is roughly three times that for whites.
Diabetes has reached epidemic levels in minority neighborhoods such as Humboldt Park, where it now afflicts 21 percent of the population, versus “only” 8 percent citywide … which is bad enough.

"That's how we are going to break through on some of these toughest issues: by continuing to push ourselves to build trust," said Susana Vasquez, executive director of LISC Chicago.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

Panelist Jeff Bartow, executive director of the Southwest Organizing Project, said the Great Recession and epidemic of home foreclosures has forced people to make dreadful trade-offs. “Should I buy my diabetes medicine or pay my mortgage. What kind of choices are those?”

Dr. Stephanie Whyte, chief health officer for the Chicago Public Schools, made the point that health and learning are directly linked. Fewer than 10 percent of CPS students have had their vision checked before kindergarten, she said. Sexually-transmitted infections are so rampant among 13- to 24-year-olds that Cook County ranks first in the nation for gonorrhea and syphilis, second for chlamydia.

Mike Tomas, executive director of the Garfield Park Community Council, said access to quality food, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, is a key to tackling the twin problems of obesity and diabetes. One innovation: a Garfield Park Garden Network of more than 30 community gardens plus a year-round greenhouse funded by Kraft Foods.

In summary, moderator Dr. Cheryl Whitaker, chair of the Illinois Health Information Exchange Authority, urged everyone at the Forum to “get more involved … to engage locally with our elected officials … get involved at the local level on the streets we live on.”

Neighborhood winners

Panelist Jeff Bartow, executive director of the Southwest Organizing Project, talked about the epidemic of foreclosures in his part of the city and others.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

The people and projects honored as 2012’s best all exemplified, in one way or another, the dynamic process of getting engaged, getting healthy and getting strong.

The winners were:

The Chicago Community Trust Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year Award
Growing Home Inc. for Urban Farms in Englewood
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Outstanding Non-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project
Lawndale Christian Health Center for Lawndale Christian Health and Fitness Center
The Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Award
5T Management and Community Investment Corporation for 5800 S. Michigan

“People like us need to get more involved … to engage locally with our elected officials … get involved at the local level on the streets we live on," said Dr. Cheryl R. Whitaker, chair of the Illinois Health Information Exchange Authority.

Photo: Eric Young Smith
The Outstanding For-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project Award
Baum Development for the Green Exchange
Special Recognition Award
Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center
The Richard H. Driehaus Awards for Architectural Excellence in Community Design
First Place – Urbanworks, Ltd. For La Casa Student Housing
Second Place – Pappageorge Haymes Partners/Koo and Associates, Ltd. For Park Douglas
Third Place – JGMA for the UNO Soccer Academy
The PrivateBank Norman Bobins Leadership Award
Modesto Tico Valle, Center on Halsted
The Richard M. Daley Friend of the Neighborhood Award
Julia M. Stasch, vice president of US programs, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

A safe place to play

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:43:52 CST

[Articles]

At first glance, there’s no confusing the kids and adults exercising in the middle of the closed-off streets with, say, the buff and cut human specimens seen in advertisements for health clubs and spas.

No, these streets – in Pilsen, Little Village, Brighton Park, Woodlawn, Chicago Lawn and South Chicago, closed off to traffic at intervals through the PlayStreets program – and these people, are a million figurative miles from the Ballys, the East Bank Clubs, perhaps even the Ys.

A simple jump rope provided plenty of physical activity to these young people at a PlayStreets event in Chicago Lawn last fall.

Photo: Tony Giron for Active Transportation Alliance

But their purpose is fundamentally the same – to get the body parts moving, the heart rate up, the pounds off. Oh, and for the neighborhood folks, to avoid getting shot in the process.

PlayStreets, a strategy begun last summer and spearheaded by Chicago’s Department of Public Health, periodically closed off city streets for three-hour intervals in designated neighborhoods so residents – kids and adults – would have safe places to play outside. LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program agencies and partners in those neighborhoods, such as Gads Hill Center in Pilsen, plus the Active Transportation Alliance and World Sport Chicago, developed the programming and helped turn out the crowds.

The activities – ranging from exercise and Zumba classes to hula hoop contests, basketball games and matches with giant chess pieces – are ostensibly designed to address the obesity epidemic that’s wreaking all kinds of health problems in poor and rich neighborhoods alike. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL) is the sole funder of this public health initiative.

Recently, PlayStreets organizers gathered to analyze the 48 PlayStreets sessions that occurred last summer and fall and discuss plans for additional street closings when activities resume this spring.

A stranger might not think the process of shutting a few blocks down to traffic and getting kids and their parents to shake a leg would be all that big a deal. But in Chicago, it is.

“Just the idea of parents and kids being in a public play space is a very big deal,” said Rob Castañeda, executive director of Beyond the Ball, a Little Village-based organization that builds stronger communities through youth engagement in sports and play.

Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Bechara Choucair, Beyond the Ball's Rob Castaneda, and Claretian Associates' Jackie Samuel and Graciela Robledo at a PlayStreets event in Pilsen last September.

Photo: Gordon Walek

And it’s not necessarily because people would rather be inside, watching TV and eating snacks. In many neighborhoods, safe public play spaces just aren’t available. Some communities, such as Little Village, have very little park space. And in those that have parks, getting there often involves crossing gang boundaries and other urban barriers that threaten physical safety and well-being.

“Some of our neighborhoods have the highest crime rates in the world,” said Castañeda. “When you talk about public health in our city, to say that it’s about exercise is only a small part of the picture.”

For Jackie Samuel, the New Communities Program director at Claretian Associates who helped organize activities in South Chicago, PlayStreets is about “giving people permission” to come out and play.

“My target was adults,” she said. “If they’re not out there, that’s really important. It’s a no-brainer for kids to be out there, but they need their parents to approve.”

In other words, this program is about way more than exercise. It’s about safety and social cohesion and opening streets to the residents who live on them. And implementing such a program is, well, complicated.

In South Chicago, for example, Samuel helped organize PlayStreets events in four “zones” (i.e. areas of gang turf). For purposes of consistency and predictability, it would have been easier to have the events on the same block in the same zone every week. But that would have precluded people from other zones who feared crossing those gang boundaries from participating.

At PlayStreets events, even cerebral games like chess take on a physical fitness dimension, as these youngsters in Pilsen demonstrate.

Photo: Gordon Walek

“I’m trying to blend the borders,” said Samuel, to open the neighborhood up to everyone. “But that takes time. Jobs or sports are the only ways to cross those borders.”

Castañeda agreed. “How,” he asked, “do we take the culture in this place and bring it to other blocks?’

That’s just one of the challenges that PlayStreets will face when it resumes with Spring-PlayStreets, scheduled from March 25-29 during Chicago Public Schools spring break. The single-day events will feature at least three hours of continuous physical activity, including sports, play games and other group activities identified by the neighborhood-based partners. Up to six PlayStreets events will be scheduled.

The PlayStreets events last fall attracted 2,900 youngsters and 800 adults. According to data gathered by the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago (CLOCC), 44 percent of the kids were “rigorously active” during their PlayStreets experience, as were 30 percent of the adults. Seventy percent of all participants were active as opposed to sedentary.

“It was purposeful,” said Samuel. “We got people who ordinarily don’t participate in these things.”

The question now for the PlayStreets organizers is how to get even more people out for future events.

Ryan Priester, NCP organizer with the Network of Woodlawn, who worked on PlayStreets in that neighborhood (and scheduled events in schools and a parking lot, as opposed to shutting down streets), recommended enlisting the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Park District as organizers, hosts and providers.

“Families have made it clear they need this to continue,” he said. “This is our [Woodlawn’s] first venture into athletic mentoring for kids. We need something year-round and we need long-term commitments. Because what happens when this stops?”

NCP groups gain voice in school closings

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:57:52 CST

[Articles]

Spurred in part by the threat of school closings, groups in neighborhoods served by NCP are organizing like never before to influence district decision-making.

Chicago plans to drastically reduce the number of its schools this year in the wake of a budget crisis and dwindling enrollment. Four NCP neighborhoods – Bronzeville, Englewood, Humboldt Park and North Lawndale – have formed Community Action Councils to provide input on school closings and other actions at the district's urging.

Logan Square Neighborhood Association has formed the Logan Square School Facilities Council to protest replacement of neighborhood schools with those that have selective or lottery enrollment. They're especially alarmed about an alderman’s proposal to transform under-enrolled Ames Middle School, into a military academy.

Photo: Juan Francisco Hernandez

At the same time, other NCP neighborhoods not in immediate danger of school closings are organizing to influence the district's 10-year plan for investing in school facilities, due in draft this month. The North River Commission in Albany Park, for instance, wants sufficient seats in a variety of magnet programs.

In recent years, NCP groups have become a growing force in education organizing as well as a stabilizing force in a changing district, observed Chris Brown, LISC Chicago’s NCP director.

"In the past five years, Chicago Public Schools has had five CEOs, rapid turnover of principals and central office staff and two district reorganizations,” he said. “At the same time only one executive director of an NCP lead agency has left."

NCP groups are able to sustain relationships with parents and teachers, consistent programming in schools and the momentum for school improvement, he said. "They are the institutional memory."

Lead agencies from New Communities Program neighborhood provide institutional memory to the education planning process, says Chris Brown, NCP director and former education director at LISC Chicago.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Some wonder, however, how much influence NCP groups will ultimately wield on school closings or other decisions. “You are always hopeful, but you know that CPS has a tendency to do exactly what they want to do,” remarked Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corp. CPS, she noted, initiated the Bronzeville Community Action Council and asked QCDC to participate.

“The good news is that we’ve been at the table together,” Johnson-Gabriel added, explaining that district staff attend council meetings and provide needed data.

NCP groups have already influenced the board's thinking on community decision-making, said Bill Gerstein, special projects manager for the district's Office of Family and Community Engagement.

The idea for Community Action Councils came from observing the intensive, community-wide education planning carried out by two NCP groups – The Resurrection Project, which organized the Pilsen Education Task Force, and the Network of Woodlawn, which launched the Woodlawn Promise Community, said Gerstein.

And when CPS decided to open a new high school in Back of the Yards, the district reached out to an NCP education committee to bring community members into the planning process, said Craig Chico, executive director of Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. “With our NCP education committee, we were bringing all the stakeholders and community residents together, anyway,” he said. “So it was a natural fit.”

School closings

“You are always hopeful, but you know that CPS has a tendency to do exactly what they want to do,” remarked Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corp. “The good news is that we’ve been at the table together.”

Photo: Eric Young Smith

In 2002, the district began closing low-performing and under-enrolled neighborhood schools, often replacing them with magnet or specialty schools that drew students from outside the neighborhood.

These closings were done with little community input, however, other than an emotionally charged, last-minute hearing at CPS’s Clark Street headquarters before the school board made its final decision.

"It was frustrating," said Tracie Worthy, NCP director at
Lawndale Christian Development Corp. "People felt like their opinions and thoughts didn't matter. Somebody else made the decision and you had to react to it."

In 2010, Bob Runcie, a chief district administrator overseeing school closings, decided that the community needed a greater voice in those decisions but also more information. “He noticed a lot of parents didn't know their schools were underperforming and underutilized,” Gerstein said.

Runcie thought that the planning done by Pilsen and Woodlawn seemed like the right model for getting community input. The new Office of Family and Community Engagement, organized under Runcie's leadership, began reaching out to community organizations to form the Community Action Councils. Some of the first organizations they approached were lead NCP agencies, said Gerstein.

“These were community-based organizations deeply embedded in the community that represented the community,” Gerstein explained. “You've got a lot more cohesion [than some other neighborhoods] because they’ve already done the work, they’ve brought a lot of stakeholders to the table, they’ve got a quality-of-life plan,” he added. “What we tried to tease out of them was more specific education plans.”

Prior to the establishment of the Community Action Councils in partnership with LISC, Chicago Public Schools often seemed to be unconcerned about community input, says Tracie Worthy (center), NCP director at Lawndale Christian Development Corp.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Community Action Councils from three NCP neighborhoods were among those who submitted education plans to the board in September and October 2011 (North Lawndale will do so in 2013).

Bronzeville's plan included launching the rigorous International Baccalaureate program at more schools and magnet programs at neighborhood schools in each quadrant of the community. East Humboldt Park's plan covered birth to high school graduation and included all-day preschool, classes for high school credit in middle school, and the option to enroll in college classes during high school.

Changing leadership stalled progress on the plans. Begun during CEO Ron Huberman's tenure, the plans were completed and presented in fall 2011 to his successor, Jean-Claude Brizard. But he never responded to the councils, leaving many frustrated.

But the new Chicago schools chief, CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, already has met with the councils and in early November appointed a nine-person School Utilization Commission, including civic leaders, retired school employees and an elementary school parent to review their proposals.

To provide time for that review, the state legislature agreed to extend the district’s deadline from December 1 to March 31 to report on its plan for school closings, consolidations and other school actions that would go into effect at the end of the current school year.

Budget shortfalls
The district’s push to close an increasing number of neighborhood schools comes in the wake of city budget shortfalls and declining population. Chicago Public Schools has space in its 681 schools for 500,000 students but an enrollment of only 400,000.

Mike Rodriguez (center), executive director at Enlace Chicago in Little Village, said his agency--which doesn't have a formal Community Action Council--has been organizing to transform one of its under-enrolled schools into an early education center.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Bronzeville has 32 under-enrolled schools, according to the district, and soon its Community Action Council will need to recommend which should close or remain open. It will also insist, however, that schools receiving displaced students have adequate resources, such as computer labs and school libraries, said Johnson-Gabriel of QCDC. "You're going to save operating money [by closing a school] so at least some of it should be invested in the receiving site."

North Lawndale Community Action Council, organized by Lawndale Christian Development Corp., found out from the district that all but one of its eight neighborhood schools under-enrolled. The council asked neighborhood principals to write a plan for housing more than one school in a building.

The growing number of charter and other specialty schools with citywide enrollment is also contributing to the shrinking of neighborhood school enrollments, noted Betty Green, a retired principal and nonprofit leader who is North Lawndale Community Action Council's co-chair. In addition to its eight neighborhood schools, North Lawndale has five charter schools, she said.

Enlace Chicago in Little Village, which does not have a community action council, has been organizing to transform one of its under-enrolled schools into an early education center, said Executive Director Mike Rodriguez. The center would include childcare for infants and toddlers, preschool, all-day kindergarten and afterschool programs.

In Albany Park, the North River Commission launched what Executive Director Perry Gunn calls “an unofficial community action council” last spring to set an agenda for improving education in the neighborhood. A chief concern: ensuring the district’s master facilities plan includes sufficient seats in magnet programs, magnet schools and other specialty schools to suit a variety of student interests, including technology and the arts.

“The North River Commission has had CPS officials at meetings in the past, but this has been a very intentional effort on [our] part to be at the table while plans are unfolding,” said Gunn.

Logan Square Neighborhood Association, meanwhile, declined to start a community action council. Instead it organized local school council members to form the Logan Square School Facilities Council. That council is protesting the replacement of under-performing or under-enrolled neighborhood schools with those having selective or lottery enrollment, said Joanna Brown, LSNA's lead education organizer.

North River Commission in Albany Park is working hard to ensure that enough magnet and other specialty schools exist to suit a range of student interests, such as technology and the arts, according to Perry Gunn, executive director.

Photo:

They are alarmed in particular about an alderman’s proposal to transform Ames Middle School, which is at 60 percent of its enrollment capacity, into a military academy.

“The resources are going to specialized schools and schools that have citywide attendance areas. We see a real disinterest in improving neighborhood [schools]," said Brown.

School opening
Back of the Yards doesn’t have any under-enrolled schools to target for closing. Instead, the 30 members of its NCP education committee are working closely with CPS officials on a more desirable task – opening the neighborhood’s first high school in September 2013.

In late October 2012, Southwest Side High School Network Chief Liz Kirby and her deputy sat down in an elementary school conference room with education committee members, who include neighborhood nonprofits, residents and school principals.

Members discussed the school’s proposed curriculum, its admission procedures and especially safety in and around the new school building.

“I think you have some good ideas,” said Kirby, “getting the [police] commander here, even [the man] who places the safe passage workers.”

Later, Kirby said that having the NCP committee in place was a huge advantage in planning the high school. “You get a sense of what the community wants – their needs, their concerns, the resources they bring to developing a new school.”

It also helps city entities to coordinate services, she added. Since the community’s plan calls for park district programs in the school after hours and a strong police presence to ensure safety, “This provides a place for the police department, the park, to work in concert.”

Kirby even invited two members of the education committee to join the five-person team that selected the high school’s first principal.

“It seems like some doors have been opened to us [in] becoming an NCP neighborhood,” remarked Craig Chico of Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, the NCP lead agency. “[It] helped us learn the model of collaboration that that brought so many voices from the community together and made one a louder, stronger voice.”

Purchase pool drives quantity discounts

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:19:28 CST

[Articles]

Photo:

“The more you buy, the more you save” (aka ‘spaving’) has to be one of advertising’s most egregious clichés, encouraging shoppers to buy things in quantity that they may not need in the first place.

But some small businesses in the Chicago Lawn and West Lawn neighborhoods are proving the copywriters right. They’ve formed a pool to purchase basic services – waste hauling, electricity and credit card processing – that’s saving them thousands of dollars and reaping a small profit for Greater Southwest Development Corp., a key NCP partner, which organized the pool last February.

Now Greater Southwest is encouraging other community groups to join the pool, earning a profit for them while helping their local shopkeepers and commercial corridors become more competitive in today’s rough-and-tumble marketplace. Nick Kollias, Greater Southwest's commercial director, explained how at a recent lunch meeting at LISC Chicago, part of the LISC Commercial Corridor Brown Bag Luncheon Series.

Nick Kollias, Greater Southwest's commercial director, explained how the organization has rolled out its shared services at a recent lunch meeting at LISC Chicago, part of the LISC Commercial Corridor Brown Bag Luncheon Series.

Photo: Gordon Walek

"If I understand correctly, I don't have to do the infrastructure, all I have to do is find the businesses that want to participate?" said Roger Sosa, business recruitment manager for new NCP lead agency Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. "That's big."

Greater Southwest currently has 60 small businesses signed up for one or more of its three discounted services – waste hauling, electricity and credit card processing.

But business owners are requesting additional products and services, including insurance, Internet, cable, telephone, office supplies and maintenance services. "That's what we're doing right now," said Kollias. "We're seeing how many more services we can incorporate."

And the model can be replicated throughout every neighborhood in the city, he added.

Greater Southwest started the service pool by pitching the idea to vendors. Waste haulers were difficult to reach directly, so they worked through brokers, who can offer businesses a 10 percent discount on waste disposal without breaking a contract or changing providers, Kollias said. Those able to switch vendors were able to save as much as 42 percent.

Roger Sosa, business recruitment manager for Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, seemed impressed by the shared services model that Greater Southwest has put into place.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Overall, signing up for one or more services saved business owners an average of $2,000 in under a year. “For our businesses on the Southwest Side, that’s a huge amount,” Kollias said. “That can be equal to two months’ rent for them.”

To get a break on credit card processing, Greater Southwest bypassed the 700 “indirect” processors that subcontract with larger processors and therefore charge higher fees. Instead, they approached some of the 11 large processors directly and then “took it a step further,” Kollias explained. “We said, ‘We want wholesale rates.’ ”

Businesses in wealthier neighborhoods can expect to save much more, he added. And offering more services to more businesses will increase the potential profit for a chamber of commerce or community development corporation. Greater Southwest has earned $7,800 so far.

Perry Gunn, executive director of the North River Commission, another new NCP lead agency in Albany Park, wondered how much liability a service pool organizer would face if clients ran into problems with a particular vendor.

Ghian Foreman, Greater Southwest’s executive director, says the only complaint to date regarding service provided through the pool has been from Greater Southwest itself about not getting its garbage picked up on time.

Photo: Gordon Walek

“Zero,” said Ghian Foreman, Greater Southwest’s executive director. “Their contract is with the vendor. But the risk is [that someone says], ‘Perry you introduced me to Nick the garbage man, and he didn’t pick up my garbage.’

“In real life, we had one complaint,” he continued. “It was from [us]. We didn’t get our garbage picked up.”

Dionne Baux, program officer with LISC Chicago, wondered if Greater Southwest’s established relationships with neighborhood business owners were necessary for launching the service pool.

Kollias agreed, explaining that that’s why other chambers of commerce and CDCs need to sell the service pool in their own neighborhoods. “If Greater Southwest goes to Humboldt Park, they’re going to be, ‘Who are you?’ ”

To ease the expansion of the service pool, Greater Southwest has designed a website that other groups can brand with their own logos. Business owners can visit the website for their own neighborhood, upload their bills and chose their service providers. Vendors also can sign-up to provide group discounts.

Dionne Baux, program officer with LISC Chicago, asked whether Greater Southwest’s established relationships with neighborhood business owners were necessary for launching the service pool. Indeed, Kollias responded.

Photo: Gordon Walek

The more the pool expands, the greater the potential benefits, he noted. “It’s one thing to have 50 businesses opt in, and it’s another thing to have 5,000.”

**

This luncheon was sponsored by First Eagle Bank. LISC Chicago holds brown-bag luncheons for commercial corridor managers every other month on a range of topics at 135 S. LaSalle St., 22nd floor.

For more information about future brown bags, contact Jake Ament at jament@lisc.org, or (312) 422-9573.

For more information on joining Greater Southwest Development Corp. service pool, contact Nick Kollias at n.kollias@greatersouthwest.org or (773) 362-3371.

Planting seeds toward a 'Healthy Chicago'

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 09:46:44 CST

[Articles]

Too many folks with acute mental health problems are spending long hours, sometimes days, in the Swedish Covenant Hospital emergency room waiting for admission to a state facility.

Meanwhile, the North River neighborhood’s network of community gardens is prohibited by city ordinance from transporting essential organic compost from one site to another.

And cutbacks in funding for CeaseFire and other violence prevention programs are crimping reach-out-to-youth activities in the neighborhood.

Commissioner Bechara Choucair, M.D., of the Chicago Department of Public Health, has held a series of meetings this fall and winter with leaders of the NCP network.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Public health problems – they come in all shapes and sizes in the North River/Albany Park neighborhood. And until recently, it was difficult for community leaders here – or in any neighborhood – to explain their public health challenges to city officials in a calm, collegial setting.

But that’s exactly what’s happening this fall and winter at a series of meetings between leaders of the NCP network and Commissioner Bechara Choucair, M.D., of the Chicago Department of Public Health.

“It’s about starting a relationship … opening the door,” said Dominique Williams, the health fellow with LISC Chicago who is coordinating the meetings. All told, some 15 sit-downs with Dr. Choucair are being scheduled, she said, and the agendas are as diverse as the neighborhoods that host them.

“Cascade” in the ER
At the Nov. 5 session held in the boardroom at Swedish Covenant, for instance, the commissioner listened intently as hospital CEO Mark Newton explained what’s happened to his emergency room following government cuts to mental health services, including the city’s recent closing of several mental health clinics.

“There’s been a cascade of events,” said Newton. He explained that state and city budget cuts for mental health have caused a spike in mentally disturbed and uninsured individuals being dropped off at the ER, where they’ve been bedded down for as long as nine days waiting for an opening at a state mental health facility. “That’s a question of morality, as to how they’re being cared for,” said Newton.

“It’s about starting a relationship … opening the door,” said Dominique Williams (center), health fellow with LISC Chicago, who is coordinating the 15 meetings in a panoply of communities around the city.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Tensions have mounted, he said, among police who pick up disturbed people on the street, ambulance drivers who are not being reimbursed for delivering them and hospital personnel struggling to provide humane care. “This is our single, most-critical issue,” Newton said.

Dr. Choucair responded that “maybe we can figure out a way” to route the uninsured to the remaining city clinics … and those on Medicaid to private, non-profit mental health centers.

Healthy Chicago partners
All the while, Dr. Choucair took notes on his slim, white digital notepad.

He explained that the LISC-organized neighborhood sessions are an integral part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Healthy Chicago initiative launched in late summer 2011. The plan targets a dozen public health priorities – ranging from tobacco, to obesity, to teen pregnancy to HIV—and advances some 200 problem-solving strategies.

“We cannot move the needle on our own as a government agency,” Choucair said. “We have to be working with community partners, and a key strategy is working with [NCP] agencies.”

Perry Gunn, executive director of the North River Commission, a New Communities affiliate, hosted a meeting with Dr. Choucair on Nov. 5.

Photo: Gorodn Walek

The LISC neighborhood network’s initial contribution to Healthy Chicago was a list of community-centered health recommendations devised by 70 local leaders from 30 organizations. The list, which included eight key strategies for healthier neighborhoods, was presented in June at a plenary meeting with Dr. Choucair and his senior staff.

He promised then to follow-up with a neighborhood-by-neighborhood tour … and has kept that promise with logistical help from Dominique Williams and the LISC network.

“The intersection between public health and community development is so critical,” Dr. Choucair said at the Swedish Covenant session. “We’ve made a commitment to LISC and its partners to move them [the report’s eight strategies] along. … But different communities have different needs, ... and these smaller meetings will help us better understand those needs and how can we be more helpful … how can we can partner better.”

Food equity
Linda Seyler, manager of the Global Gardens refugee training farm, where immigrants this past growing season raised more than 5,000 pounds of fresh vegetables, described the psychic as well as physical health benefits when new Americans are able to grow and cook foods they enjoyed in their native lands.

When Dr. Choucair asked what the city could do to help, Seyler pointed to municipal regulations that prohibit the transport of organic waste materials from home to garden or from garden to garden.

“The intersection between public health and community development is so critical,” Dr. Choucair said.

Photo: Gordon Walek

“You’re not allowed to take your kitchen waste to your community garden to compost it on site,” Seyler said. “If we’re going to do [organic] urban agriculture, … we have to keep feeding that soil.”

“Let me know the specifics,” said Dr. Choucair, “and we’ll work with the mayor’s office and the City Council.”

He said Mayor Emanuel is determined to keep his campaign promise to eliminate so-called urban “food deserts.” This involves not just attracting chain supermarkets to underserved neighborhoods, he said, but promoting community gardens, farmers’ markets and kiosks, and mobile delivery such as Fresh Moves, which is adding a second converted CTA bus and, with city help, may add a third and fourth.

Crime-fighting $
Harold Rice, executive director of the Albany Park Community Center, said his organization has had success cutting the rate of gang-related violence, but lately funding for that activity has grown scarce.

“We got our [CeaseFire] funds cut from $60,000 to $30,000,” said Rice. Although the funding was later restored, Rice’s organization and others face funding insecurity due to the loss of now-expired federal stimulus grants and other grants.

“From a safety umbrella standpoint,” Rice said, “it’s been hard to try to manage that. … We have strong relationships with some of the gang members, … but when we ask them what it would take to get them out of gangs, to stem the tide of crime, it often comes down to jobs.”

So the Center takes pride, he said, in recently placing 87 young men and women in jobs with the Garrett Popcorn chain.

Dr. Choucair congratulated that, then asked the gathered North River leaders to convey to their aldermen, who must approve the next city budget, their thoughts on the city’s CeaseFire pilot. This input will be valuable as the city considers future funding levels for CeaseFire and other public safety initiatives.

“Thank you for hosting,” said Dr. Choucair at meeting’s end to Perry Gunn, executive director of the North River Commission, a recently added NCP affiliate. “These meetings have been tremendously helpful.”

Another round of community meetings is being scheduled for January.

More information: Dominique Williams, LISC Chicago, 312-422-9571

To see the city's Healthy Chicago Agenda, please click here.LISC Chicago's health work is funded in part by The Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute.

Communities strategize to fight crime

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:51:41 CST

[Articles]

Photo:

Along commercial corridors, even nonviolent crimes like panhandling and loitering can deter customers. Merchants often blame the police or shrinking city budgets for neglect of the problem.

Those criticisms may be valid, but community groups can often do more than they realize to prevent crime, insisted Julia Ryan, national program director for the New York-based LISC Community Safety Initiative who, with her colleague Jason Cooper, joined more than 20 community developers at a recent meeting at LISC Chicago as part of the Commercial Corridor Brown Bag Luncheon Series. “If we rely on the police alone we’re really missing the boat,” she said.

A crime requires three things, she explained: an offender, a victim and a suitable location. Intervening at any point along this “crime triangle,” such as by altering the space or educating potential victims, can prevent the crime, she said.

To devise a safety strategy, Ryan and Cooper advised beginning with a small group of partners who have influence over the three points of the triangle, and then honing in on one section of your commercial corridor, or on the worst hot spots and perpetrators. One Rhode Island team in a community with a prostitution problem listed the main offenders and realized that there were only seven women, said Ryan. “They focused on offering services to that small group.”

Jason Cooper of the LISC Community Safety Initiative, who appeared with colleague Julia Ryan, talks with a police officer about community safety.

Photo:

Ryan and Cooper gave a brief overview of a strategy called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), an approach born in the 1970s that focuses on altering a space with changes such as lights, locks and fences. Because of poor implementation and a narrow focus on the physical environment, however, CPTED “got a poor rap in many cities,” Ryan noted.

In more recent years, they said, CPTED has evolved to look not just at the physical space, but the economic and social factors that influence criminal behavior.

Basic principles of CPTED include creating unobstructed sightlines from the street or nearby buildings, maintaining an appearance of order such as by fixing broken windows and removing weeds, and “territoriality,” which could mean common flags along a business corridor. “It sends the message that the people care about this space, and they are organized and it may not be the best place if you’re looking to offend,” Cooper said.

“Second generation” CPTED also looks at building social relationships within a neighborhood to work on solving problems together. Ryan and Cooper suggested beginning with a safety audit. For a commercial corridor that might mean organizing a team of business owners, their employees, local police, and residents of both genders to survey the area for features that contribute to crime using a CPTED checklist (click to download).

Gloster Mahon, violence prevention business consultant at the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, said his neighborhood has involved chronic loiterers in community planning rather than trying to get rid of them, since they live nearby and just come right back.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Creative problem solving is the next step, said Ryan. In one neighborhood, a police officer helped recruit a business that would stay open late and keep eyes on the street during the evening hours.

Changing the physical environment can make a big difference, but alone it’s usually not enough, Cooper noted. “We find we’re most able to sustain a decrease in crime when we’re able to knock out two [points], so we’re not just looking at a place, we’re changing the behavior of potential victims.”

Liz Griffiths DeChant, economic development director at the North River Commission in Albany Park, wondered how to deal with repeat offenders. “In our neighborhood, it’s these three homeless guys. How do you work on that piece of the triangle?”

Gloster Mahon, violence prevention business consultant at the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, said he’s done focus groups with loiterers in his neighborhood’s business district. “For people who are unemployed and aren’t in school, that commercial strip is where they get up and go to in the morning to see if they can get something to eat, to see if they can get small amounts of marijuana, to hang with their guys.” They can’t be run out of the area because they live just blocks away, he explained. Instead, he insisted, they need to be included in community safety planning.

James Kenady, program manager for the Southeast Chicago Commission, said a strategy that worked in West Garfield Park was to make it harder for drug dealers and buyers to do business—while at the same time offering them social services. “A lot of people aren’t aware of resources available in the city,” he said. “I’ve seen people, once they get motivated to turn their lives around, access those services.”

James Kenady, program manager for the Southeast Chicago Commission, recommended simultaneously making it harder for drug dealers and buyers to do business while also offering them social services.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Cooper agreed that strengthening the social safety net needs to be part of any community’s safety plan, but that it doesn’t always happen. “When we talk about crime, it can become ‘us versus them; us versus the gang members, or the dropouts.’ ”

Several participants mentioned the challenge of recruiting police for community safety planning given the staff turnover in most districts.

“That’s a pervasive challenge, and there’s no easy solution,” Ryan acknowledged. One idea, she said, is to have ready an introductory letter to the next district commander. “See if you can get current one to sign it [explaining], ‘Here’s what’s important to me about this relationship.’ ” If you can get the old commander to introduce you to the new one, even better, she said.

And if the police are reluctant to work with you on quality-of-life crimes like loitering, you might try to strike a deal with a prosecutor to step-up prosecution of those crimes for a limited time period, she continued. Then see if the police will agree to a crackdown, also for a limited time.

Keri Blackwell, deputy director for programs at LISC, said that she’s seen some NCP groups contact their transferred commanders and encourage them to work with similar groups in their new neighborhoods.

Keri Blackwell (left), deputy director of programs for LISC Chicago, said New Communities Program groups try to introduce departed commanders to community groups in their new districts; Liz Griffiths DeChant (center), economic development director at the North River Commission in Albany Park, came looking for answers on how best to handle the chronically homeless.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Mahon said he works closely with detectives in his community. “I let them know I have resources; I’m trying to employ young men. Guys have come to me with my card [and say], ‘Officer so-and-so sent me.’ ”

Kenady said that one group he worked for promoted relationships with the police both by laying on the pressure—“when we didn’t get the response we needed, we flooded the office with calls”—but also by giving them plenty of credit for any success. “Try to include the commander and officers in press conferences,” he advised. “Rewarding them for the work that they do really was effective for us.”

This luncheon was sponsored by First Eagle Bank. LISC/Chicago holds brown-bag luncheons for commercial corridor managers every other month on a range of topics at 135 S. LaSalle St., 22nd floor.

For more information about future brown bags and to RSVP to the events, contact Maria Hernandez at mhernandez@lisc.org, or (312) 422-9567.

Altgeld Park, Little Village gain green fields

Thu, 1 Nov 2012 00:54:11 CST

[Articles]

Everett Chinn paced the new artificial turf at Altgeld Park’s field as if it were his. It’s not. It’s a Chicago Park District property on the West Side – but he lays claim to an emotional ownership few others can.

Chinn, a photographer, lives a couple blocks east of the field – it’s on the 500 block of South Washtenaw – and played on it as a kid 30 years ago, when it was “patches of grass surrounded by dirt.”

When Everett Chinn played at Altgeld Park as a child in the early 1980s, this field consisted of clumps of grass and dirt.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Now it’s a regulation size, artificial turf field, with lights, a scoreboard, bleachers and all the amenities one expects these days from a first-class sports venue.

Chinn was there on a glorious fall morning to celebrate its grand opening, which culminated in a football game between Chicago Hope Academy – where his son, Armon Glenn, a sophomore, is on the team – and the visiting North Shore Country Day School.

“For the school, this is a great opportunity to play on a regulation-style field,” said Chinn. “It’ll prepare guys for college ball. And for the neighborhood, it shows we haven’t been forgotten. In years past, we had that feeling. But this brings hope to the neighborhood. That sign [behind him, the Hope Academy sign] says it all. It brings hope.”

That hope, in part, is the purpose of the tapestry of funders who pulled strings to make the aptly named Hope Field happen. Some of the money came from the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, which is supporting a number of Chicago Park District field rehabs throughout the city. Another $200,000 came from the National Football League’s Grassroots program, a national partnership between the NFL and LISC, which over the last 14 years has helped create or rehab more than 250 fields nationwide, including 10 in the Chicago area (of which LISC Chicago and the Chicago Bears have had a hand).

Other money for the Altgeld Park field came from the sophisticated fundraising efforts of Chicago Hope Academy, its partners, and the City of Chicago, through tax increment financing.

The grand opening for the Altgeld Park field, a project of LISC Chicago and the NFL Grassroots program, was held on a glorious fall morning.

Photo: Gordon Walek

For LISC Chicago, the Altgeld field – and the NFL Grassroots program – is of a piece with other local efforts to engage youth, their parents, and their families in activities (such as sports) that not only teach teamwork and cooperation, but also provide exercise, improve public safety and create a setting where young people and adults can interact.

“When all those things happen, the result is a sort of emotional glue that holds neighborhoods together,” said Keri Blackwell, LISC Chicago’s deputy director of programs. “We think that high-quality recreational facilities, coupled with organized, supervised activities led by strong mentors, are essential parts of anyone’s definition of a healthy neighborhood and childhood. They’re as necessary as decent housing, successful businesses, good schools and safe streets.”

For years, Blackwell has been a driving force behind LISC’s Hoops in the Hood program, in which 12 neighborhoods each summer close off city streets or open local gymnasiums so young people can play league basketball, supervised by adults. That program’s been going on for nearly a decade.

Similar to Hoops is PlayStreets, which LISC, Active Transportation Alliance, World Sport Chicago, the Chicago Department of Public Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois and several other organizations began late last summer, in which streets in Pilsen, Little Village, Brighton Park, Woodlawn, Chicago Lawn and South Chicago are temporarily closed to vehicles, allowing residents to use them for recreational purposes.

Soccer Field in Little Village
Another example of a neighborhood getting behind a key recreational facility occurred earlier this year when Little Village, the most park-starved neighborhood in the city, got some breathing room with the grand opening of a new soccer field at 31^st Street and Lawndale Avenue.

The synthetic turf field, on the shared grounds of Gary Elementary and Ortiz de Dominguez Elementary schools, replaces an old and worn natural turf field – in such bad shape it was frequently useless. The new field allows nearly year-round play, providing much needed recreational space for students and residents throughout the neighborhood.

American football is not the only kind of futbol played on the new artificial turf.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

You wouldn’t think a patch of green would be a tough sell, but in a neighborhood with precious little open space, even improving what’s already there was a tricky business. Like nearly every community development project these days, the new field happened because of the persistence of a few stubborn organizations and people who appreciate the value of a place where kids and adults can safely exercise and have a little fun.

Enlace Chicago, a key LISC partner in Little Village, and Beyond the Ball, which seeks to expand access to recreation and life skills for local youth, generated initial steam for the field, while Ald. Rick Munoz led the effort to get money to pay for it. And that was no small thing. The U.S. Soccer Foundation kicked in $70,000, with Munoz securing the remaining $1.5 million in city funds. Chicago Public Schools managed the project.

Little Village is one of Chicago’s most densely populated working-class neighborhoods, yet has few public recreational facilities. Enlace Chicago, Beyond the Ball, and their community partners have made expanding access to safe parks and open space a priority through a local quality-of-life plan developed in conjunction with LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program, which supports community development and improvement initiatives.

That effort got a further shot in the arm when the Chicago Park District and the city recently announced plans for a new park on the grounds of a former asphalt plant at 31^st Street and Albany Avenue. When completed in 2014, it will contain soccer and baseball fields, basketball courts and walking and jogging trails.

Beyond the planning and visioning and public-private partnerships that these projects require, it’ll be the Everett Chinns and their families who write the final chapter on the social and health benefits of local high quality soccer and football fields. An empty park, after all, isn’t much more useful than a vacant lot. But if the early activity at Altgeld and the Little Village soccer field is any indication, residents are embracing the facilities as key neighborhood assets – assets that have the potential to make neighborhoods better and stronger.

For an instant, city streets become neighborhood playgrounds

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:14:06 CST

[Articles]

Ordinarily, the 1900 block of West Cullerton Street doesn’t lend itself to basketball games or hula hoop contests. Too many cars. But the late afternoon of Friday, Sept. 28, was an exception. Autos, and all other vehicles, got the bum’s rush.

On a makeshift stage in front of Gads Hill Center, residents, community organizers, city officials and representatives from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois officially inaugurated PlayStreets, a new program designed to expand places where children can play safely.

Karen Atwood (left), president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, which sponsors PlayStreets, shows off her hula hoop moves.

Photo: Gordon Walek

As the name implies, PlayStreets periodically closes off streets in Pilsen, Little Village, Brighton Park, Woodlawn, Chicago Lawn and South Chicago to provide safe, supervised space with organized sports, fitness and dancing programs. The aim is to reduce childhood obesity.

NCP agencies and partners in those neighborhoods, including The Resurrection Project, Enlace Chicago, the Network of Woodlawn, the Southwest Organizing Project, Claretian Associates, and Beyond the Ball, were heavily engaged in making PlayStreets happen.

“This is a great advancement toward implementing our Healthy Chicago public health agenda and making our city the healthiest in the nation,” said Dr. Bechara Choucair, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. “Today also highlights the importance of working with community-based partners to make our city a healthier place.”

The Friday afternoon ribbon-cutting was strictly ceremonial. The program has actually been in effect since late August, when city blocks in the participating neighborhoods banned vehicular traffic for various three-hour stretches. The street closings will continue through late November.

Children play chess on a life-sized board.

Photo: Gordon Walek

The activities on West Cullerton were representative of what’s happening at other PlayStreets sites. A few kids shot hoops in the middle of the street. Others moved pieces on a huge chess board. Several more did running drills under the supervision of a coach. A handful of older residents huffed and puffed, trying to keep up with an energetic dance instructor. Meanwhile, plenty of neighbors were on the sidewalks, watching, particularly when Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois President Karen Atwood busted some nice moves with a hula hoop. She’d obviously done it before.

“This program allows us to reach so many Chicago communities and connect them to healthy behaviors in a fun and local way,” she said. “It also gives kids and parents information about wellness, nutrition and fitness.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield is the sole funder of PlayStreets via a $317,000 grant to the Chicago Department of Public Health.

While PlayStreets is a new program, the concept of closing down streets for recreational purposes isn’t. Rob Castañeda, executive director of Beyond the Ball, a Little Village-based organization that builds stronger communities through youth engagement in sports and play, watched the proceedings with the appreciation of someone who’s been there, done that, and is happy to see others following suit.

Enjoying the day are (from left) Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Bechara Choucair, Beyond the Ball Executive Director Rob Castaneda, and Jackie Samuel and Graciela Robledo of Claretian Associates in South Chicago.

Photo: Gordon Walek

“This is how it starts,” he said. “You get a few people out, they have fun, meet one another, burn some calories, and before you know it they want to do it again.”

Castañeda’s seen it a hundred times before, often through the Hoops in the Hood program he organizes with LISC Chicago (also a PlayStreets partner), whereby neighborhood groups close off city streets for community basketball games. The point is not only to encourage physical exercise, but also to establish a community presence on blocks that have become open markets for illegal activity.

“We’re clearly not going to solve the obesity problem in a single stroke,” he said. “But you have to start somewhere, and this is a very good place.”

Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance – an organization that knows about closing down streets (it shuts down most of Lake Shore Drive once a year for the “Bike the Drive” ride) – praised the PlayStreets concept as an important connection between how we get around and how we can use streets for active living.

And Jason Eby, director of programming innovation and evaluation at World Sport Chicago, which promotes youth development through sports, hailed PlayStreets as a way to engage kids in activities that promote good health and community building.

Learn more about PlayStreets in this video:

A growthful enterprise on Perry Street

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:40:24 CST

[Articles]

Look at the 1.7-acre plot of land at 57^th and Perry streets in Washington Park, and you will see rolling mounds of wood chips and dirt on what used to be a school parking lot.

But Brandon Johnson and Ken Dunn see something more: the seeds of a self-sustaining, urban agriculture enterprise that will sell to high-end restaurants and local corner stores alike while employing neighborhood residents.

The Washington Park Consortium's Brandon Johnson (left) and Ken Dunn of The Resource Center envision a self-sustaining urban agriculture enterprise.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Dunn, president of the Resource Center, has co-produced this movie before: his 45-year-old organization has launched a total of five similar enterprises and currently has three others operating at Division and Clybourn, 70^th and Dorchester, and on the site of Kendall College. He says others were discontinued when the land became too valuable, which he sees as a measure of success since his goal is to use vacant land in the most productive way possible.

“We’re not just demonstrating that it might be a good idea. The market is here,” said Dunn late last summer, as he prepared a portion of the Perry Street farm for planting. “As an economic development model, it stabilizes the quality of life until others say, ‘Hey, we’re near the lake, we’re near transit, I want to build a house.’ That’s the trajectory.”

For Johnson, executive director of NCP lead agency the Washington Park Consortium, the budding Perry Street City Farm won’t be entirely unplowed territory, either. His organization has developed two other community gardens in the past three years, the bounty of which has been mostly donated to local food pantries and given to neighbors in need.

Onions, collards and kale were growing at Perry Street Urban Farm in early August, with squash and tomatoes next on the menu, and then peppers and eggplant.

Photo: Gordon Walek

The Consortium has been facilitating the Resource Center’s connections into the Washington Park community, Johnson says. “This has economic potential, but it’s not a skill set that existed” in Washington Park, he says. “To get that skill set into the community, we brought in the oldest urban farming organization in the city.”

LISC Chicago has invested more than $55,000 in the Perry Street and other agricultural projects in Washington Park, says senior program officer Sandra Womack. Johnson adds that the City of Chicago contributed the land, formerly occupied by a closed public school, and $250,000 for fencing and site preparation work. The Consortium holds the lease and has subleased to the Resource Center. “We couldn’t do this without the city donating the land,” Johnson says, adding that Ald. Pat Dowell (3^rd) was instrumental in that regard.

Once the farm is fully operational next summer, Johnson expects it will help to stanch at least some of the $20 million in food “leakage” out of Washington Park each year. That’s the net amount that’s spent outside the neighborhood by residents, a calculation developed by LISC/MetroEdge and measured category by category. “This will be an ultra-local food hub designed to meet the needs of the residents and to create a gateway into this emerging industry,” Johnson says. “The demand for food is outstripping the supply.”

Dunn plans a farm-stand at the east gate of the property, along Lafayette, that will sell mostly to neighborhood people as well as a handful who drive in from elsewhere. About a half-dozen people will work the farm year-round and an additional 10 to 15 in the summer, some of them schoolchildren home for the summer.

The Resource Center is subleasing the land from the Washington Park Consortium.

Photo: Gordon Walek

“The jobs belong to the people from the neighborhood,” he says. “Primarily you want to market to people from the neighborhood. But you can’t pay a living wage and sell at prices that people can afford.”

That’s where the high-end restaurants come into the picture. Typically, the Resource Center’s farms sell about two-thirds of its produce to 25 five-star foodie establishments, where the clientele’s discriminating palettes appreciate produce that’s been picked earlier that day—particularly when grown in compost-only—and chefs are committed to buying local.

“Nothing compares in taste and appearance,” he says. “The restaurants ask, ‘How much can you produce for us?’ … Instead of just hoping the market is there, we make arrangements ahead of time.”

In addition to high-end restaurants, Johnson predicts the University of Chicago will become another potential source, given its stated goal to purchase 40 percent locally—and the lack of locally grown produce. “Illinois grows corn and soy, not to be consumed,” he says, adding that nearby restaurants in Hyde Park might also become interested.

The farm’s work will continue into the colder months through the use of hoop-houses and other protective devices and judicious choices of what to plant—for example, spinach can grow until January hardens the surface of the dirt too much, Dunn says. “The profitability falls drastically,” he says, “but this is about giving people jobs year-round.”

Dunn's organization has launched a total of five similar properties and has three currently operating; others have given way to housing as land values increased.

Photo: Gordon Walek

The Resource Center’s farms often grow as many as 10 crops a year in the same bed, while adding about four inches of compost each year, Dunn says. The city built a 6-inch bowl of compact clay around the Perry Street farm, he says, which means that it “doesn’t leak. No rainwater leaves the area.”

In early August, onions, collards and kale were growing. Squash and tomatoes were up next, followed by peppers and eggplant. The Resource Center grows seedlings at a facility on the North Side of Chicago and plants them on-site only when they’re ready to sprout and be sold. Perry Street and the center’s other farms typically hold barbecues every weekend with grilled zucchini, eggplant or whatever’s growing that week.

“The chef puts a powerful sauce on them, the workers eat together, and the food is free to the workers,” he says. “The purpose is to introduce people to healthy foods—and how they can prepare them in a tasty manner—without lecturing.”

Local hiring will help lead to local knowledge about food, which will help to develop the market in Washington Park itself. Amanda Deisch, program manager at Washington Park Consortium, says her organization has been seeding the ground, holding a series of nutrition lectures last year titled, “What’s All the Fuss About Food?” This summer, kids worked in their gardens. “When you grow something yourself, it becomes instantly a lot more interesting,” she says.

“It’s about creating opportunities to taste it,” Johnson says. “It’s hard to compete with fast food if people haven’t tasted [fresh food]. Junk food, that’s what’s there. Some people have never had quality fruits and vegetables. It can be the first time a person has tasted a tomato. Then they ask why a tomato from the grocery store is not this good.”

The Perry Street Urban Farm should be fully operational in 2013.

Photo: Gordon Walek

The farm will need to form other partnerships as it integrates itself into the community, Dunn says. For example, a police officer was recently checking him out, wanting to know what he was doing on the site. “We’re on the same team,” he explained to the officer, given the farm’s mission to train young people and put them on a productive path. The officer seemed to understand, he adds.

Once Perry Street gets up and running, the Washington Park Consortium will decide whether to turn any of its other properties into similar operations, Johnson says. “Can we create some kind of vertically integrated enterprise?” he says. “The city has done affordable housing well. It could take the same kind of approach to affordable urban agriculture. … It starts by recovering our leakage, and then expanding the market. How do we get this into corner stores?”

“For the last 50 years, society has not taken care of its population. We do what communities have always done,” Dunn adds. “What has always worked is a local community with a local resource selling to local people.”

Sacred spaces as 'keepers of the culture'

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:42:45 CST

[Articles]

In the coming months, artists in South Chicago will be going to church in droves—but not necessarily to worship.

This summer marked the start of a collaboration between Claretian Associates, NCP lead agency in South Chicago, and the Arts in Sacred Places (AiSP) program of Partners for Sacred Places, which is a national organization committed to preserving older religious structures for community use.

Arts in Sacred Places, underway in both South Chicago and Logan Square, is building on a pilot program in Philadelphia.

Photo: Photo courtesy Partners for Sacred Places

The joint venture aims to solve two problems: How to accommodate the workspace needs of South Chicago’s emerging community of artists, and how best to preserve churches and religious properties that are largely unused. The solution has been for Claretian Associates to act as a sort of broker and matchmaker.

“Arts in Sacred Places is about relationships,” said Gianfranco Grande, vice president for philanthropy and business development for Partners for Sacred Places and the director of its Chicago office. “We're building on a tradition that dates back centuries, if not millennia. It is a tradition in which houses of worship share space with artists, not out of convenience or to cut costs but because the two parties have a shared mission and shared values. Arts in Sacred Places trains congregations and artists to find and identify partners with whom they are compatible, and to develop sustainable space-sharing relationships based on their common mission and values."

Building on Past Experiences
Encouraged by the success of its pilot program in Philadelphia, Arts in Sacred Places kicked off its Chicago program in Logan Square and South Chicago in 2011, with staff and interns spending the summer surveying more than 50 artists and faith leaders in the city. Staffers gathered stories and collected data that chronicled existing partnerships and examined the potential for future partnerships.

Father Mark Kalema and the team from Our Lady of Peace brainstorm during the Arts in Sacred Places training.

Photo: Photo courtesy Partners for Sacred Places

“Knowing the city’s commitment to neighborhoods, we wanted to test out the neighborhood model,” said Amy Schachman, a project manager in the Chicago office of Partners for Sacred Places. "We've been watching the success of the New Communities Program model and applying its lessons to the launch of AiSP in Chicago.”

“In both Logan Square and South Chicago, we recognized two neighborhoods that had a great number of houses of worship that were being underutilized, and two communities that were excited about the project,” said Dawn Marie Galtieri, a consultant working with Partners for Sacred Places on the AiSP rollout.

The two communities are perceived very differently when it comes to the arts,” added Schachman. “While Logan Square is commonly recognized as a place where artists are moving to live and work, South Chicago is not,” she said. “And we were attracted to going into a neighborhood where people think there aren't artists and lots of art, connecting them with space in sacred places, and showcasing the vibrant creative work that is taking place in that community.”

"Sacred Places is joining forces with us at the perfect time," said Jackie Samuel, NCP director at Claretian Associates. "All of these artists are expanding their reach, and their need for space is going to be a very important element for success."

Photo: NCP file photo

In South Chicago AiSP reached out to Claretian Associates, which in recent years had developed strong relationships with community artists, starting with LISC’s Building Community Through the Arts program in the mid-2000s.

“Identification of space for artists has always been a priority strategy in the South Chicago quality-of-life plan,” said Jackie Samuel, NCP director in South Chicago. “Just 10 years ago, many of our artists were working outside of the community, and we had to reclaim them. Over the past seven years, I have watched our artists and arts organizations grow, and Sacred Places is joining forces with us at the perfect time. All of these artists are expanding their reach, and their need for space is going to be a very important element for success.”

Orientation Overflow
An orientation at the Chicago Temple in April brought together community arts leaders looking for office, rehearsal and exhibition space with representatives from Sacred Places for critical face-to-face dialogue, of the sort that can lead to unexpected collaborations and greater understanding between the two parties.

“The place was packed,” said Galtieri. “We had over 110 folks from sacred places, arts organizations and agencies that support both at the orientation. …What I saw was innovative people thinking [about] how to move forward.”

Samuel agreed: “Partners for Sacred Places realizes that this is like a marriage, so they are making sure that no one is feeling rushed or pushed into a situation that they will be unhappy with. Many of our artists have been looking for space for some time, so when they see a space in which they can envision themselves, you see this twinkle in their eyes because they finally feel that there is hope to act out their dreams.”

Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, under the leadership of Rev. James M. Moody, hosted Module I of the Arts in Sacred Places training.

Photo: Photo courtesy Partners for Sacred Places

Arts organizations and sacred places interested in pursuing further dialogue were encouraged to apply for the first of two rounds of classes. Partners expected to enroll eight arts groups and eight sacred places in the first class, but they received 24 applications and brought together 10 arts organizations and 11 sacred places.

“It’s an opportunity for them to better understand one another, form agreements, talk about content and dedicated space, and this brings together both the artist and the sacred place,” Galtieri said. “We're looking for collaborations that might not otherwise happen, so it’s a way to bridge the gap between the two groups.”

The first class was held on July 10, with another round of arts organizations and sacred places to begin training this fall, when Arts in Sacred Places also will host a community-wide forum to highlight the success of the program so far and likely next steps. “The forum, I hope, will help to show South Chicago that the commitment is long term, to show that Partners is not just interested but that there is broad support in the community,” Galtieri said.

“I would call it a meeting of the minds,” added Samuel. “This is an opportunity to debrief and reflect on what has happened so far. All of the artists are in different places of preparedness for this process. It will be great to hear from everyone as sort of a check-in and how to best move forward.”

Tuomi Forrest, executive vice president of Partners for Sacred Places, works with the team from St. John’s Episcopal Church as they outline their mission and values during the Arts in Sacred Places training.

Photo: Photo courtesy Partners for Sacred Places

Tie In to Larger Plans
The forum is timed to coincide both with Chicago’s Artists Month and the rollout of the final draft of the new city wide Cultural Plan, to be unveiled later this fall.

“It’s a great time for the arts in Chicago,” said Schachman. “We have a mayor who's very supportive of the arts and we’re going to have a revised cultural plan that understands and supports the arts community. There seems to be a lot of potential for our program to take off.”

With all the plans in motion to bring South Chicago artists into the community’s sacred places, Samuel took a moment to reflect on the intersection of arts and sacred places in her own life.

“I remember my mother jokingly telling me that I could not get an Easter outfit unless I performed a poem in the Easter Sunday production at church, and when I was a teenager we formed our first drama group in the church,” she said. “Of course you go for spiritual insight and lessons, but my experience as a child always had a connection with arts and culture.”

She remarked on the fact that many South Chicago churches today – and churches across the country – don’t have the resources or staff to provide these much needed services to the community. But they do have the space for it.

Karen DiLossi of the Arts in Sacred Places program assists the team from North Shore United Methodist Church during the training module.

Photo: Photo courtesy Partners for Sacred Places

“I find it very insightful for Partners for Sacred Places to recognize the spatial asset and connect artists to these resources,” said Samuel. “I have always looked at community churches as a place that is the ‘keeper of the culture,’ and we’re working to keep it that way.”

* * *

You can meet the Southeast Chicago visual and performing artists at their second annual Art Fair this Saturday Sept. 15, from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. at the Lakeside Properties on 8555 S. Greenbay Ave. (two blocks east of Rt. 41 or Burly Street.). For more information, contact Graciela Robledo at (773) 734-9181.

For more information about the upcoming forum this fall, and for information on Partners for Sacred Places and the Arts in Sacred Places program, visit http://www.sacredplaces.org/.

For more information on Claretian Associates, visit http://www.claretianassociates.org.

New directory points ex-offenders in the right direction

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:28:43 CST

[Articles]

Humboldt Park ranks third in a category that any Chicago community area would find challenging to manage: those with the highest rates of formerly incarcerated citizens returning to the neighborhood.

But the NCP quality of life planning process led by Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp. did not shy away from this challenge, putting into place the NCP Reentry Coalition to work on efforts to help that population re-assimilate and find gainful employment and a stable, productive lifestyle.

The NCP Reentry Coalition, developed as part of the quality of life planning process in Humobldt Park, released the reentry services directory at a training and networking session in March (for more on that, please click here).

Photo: Christy Prahl

In March, the coalition took its first major step in this process, releasing the 2012 Reentry Services Inventory and Agency Directory, which provides both a color-coded service grid with everything from housing to job training and a service directory with information on providers in each category, designed to facilitate referrals. In all, the manual covers six categories--employment services, emergency services, mentoring, transition housing, youth and family, and mental and physical health--and provides profiles of 23 service providers.

The directory addresses “a real and present need to coordinate services for the formerly incarcerated in Humboldt Park,” says Christy Prahl, NCP director for Bickerdike. “As one of the communities with the highest rates of return from the prison system in Illinois, we consider it imperative to bolster our network and augment service options wherever possible. Only by coordinating and promoting these services community-wide will the transition for ex-offenders be streamlined, giving them the best chance to contribute positively to society and avoid recidivism.”

Although initially released in print form, the directory soon will evolve into an online instrument, hopefully later this year, so that it can be updated cheaply and in real time, says Ellen Ray, program director at Humboldt Park Social Services, the lead agency on the project, which received a $7,000 seed grant from LISC Chicago.

The directory has been released in printed form but soon will be released as an online instrument, so it can be updated in real-time.

Photo: Christy Prahl

“The need is great, and the ambition to address the issue is great,” she says. “We’re thinking through how we can translate what we have now into a digital medium, which has a lot of congruity with what Bickerdike is doing through the Smart Communities Program and the Humboldt Park Portal. We’re hoping to have it online, where people can identify their needs, click through and find an organization that meets their needs.”

Prahl credits the modest seed grant from LISC “and a tremendous amount of sweat equity” in launching the several-year project “to collect, assemble and distribute reentry service information in a user-friendly format, building a referrals network in the process. We truly believe that only by working together will we bridge the gaps created by insufficient funding and disproportionate need, where the demand for services far exceeds the supply.”

The directory provides an exhaustive list of resources based on a plethora of experience in working with the formerly incarcerated and deep knowledge of the wraparound services they need—such as mental health, family reunification, child support, and public benefits applications, Ray says The potential referrals should help to build solid relationships with parole officers, she says.

Employment services are just one of six categories covered in the directory, which also includes emergency services, mentoring, transition housing, youth and family, and mental and physical health, with 23 agencies listed in all.

Photo:

“It’s the nuances of what somebody who is returning deals with that are often most difficult to problem-solve around,” she says. “It gave them an opportunity to know who else on the ground is doing this work, and who they might be able to connect them to. It’s often not what you would think about that can be pivotal, like having professional clothing” for a job interview.

The agencies involved in the coalition originally contemplated a more ambitious project to actively coordinate referral and service delivery but realized those in the room were already stretched to capacity, Ray says. “The coalition formed in large part out of that discussion, in thinking through as a community what solutions were available,” she says. “The directory was a way to make progress on the goal of comprehensive service delivery.”

A recently completed survey showed that 13 organizations are actively using the grid, a median number of six to 10 times, with 21 times being the highest. “We’re really excited about that,” Ray says. Respondents cited emergency care and employment services as the most frequent need. “The other thing it’s really highlighted was the dearth of services for people who have offenses that require registry on the sex offender registry,” she says. “Our next step to get into hands of parole resource unit and talk about how they can use it.”

“We’re already seeing good results from our efforts and hope to expand this project as we move forward, making the information directly accessible to the formerly incarcerated through the Humboldt Park Portal,” Prahl adds.

Treasury official: Chicago “at forefront” of development efforts

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:18:03 CST

[Articles]

Don Graves is executive director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and he is also deputy assistant secretary for small business, community development and housing policy at the U.S. Treasury Department.

He was in Chicago recently to attend meetings and to tour two LISC-supported developments: the Rosa Parks Apartments in West Humboldt Park and the Green Exchange business incubator in Logan Square.

Green Exchange developer David Baum shows some of the features of his innovative office building to senior Treasury Department official Don Graves (center) and Jonathan Greenblatt (left), a special assistant to President Obama and director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Following those tours, Graves sat down with LISC senior scribe John McCarron to talk about the future of community development in a time of diminished public resources. This is an edited version of that conversation.

Q: What did you see at Rosa Parks and Green Exchange that might inform your work at Treasury?

A: They show, I think, how people have learned over the past 10 to 20 years how to better use federal funding, federal programs, federal tax credits to get a better bang for the buck. They were able to lever a small amount of [federal] dollars into much bigger projects than they’ve done before. And these are both projects that enhance community stability and long-term economic development.

Q: Anything especially impress you?

A: Well, the Green Exchange concept is the type of thing we’d like to see more of across the country. Chicago, I think, is at the forefront in that respect – the ability to galvanize different segments behind greater community stability and economic development.

Q: It gets complicated, though, doesn’t it?

A: Definitely. We’re seeing cities across the country using our programs, whether it’s CDFI [Community Development Financing Institutions] funding, New Markets tax credits, low-income housing tax credits, in ways that 20 years ago we couldn’t have imagined.

We’d like to see local developers and local businesses and local communities driving these sort of things – and for local, state and federal governments to be responsive to their needs – rather than us trying to tell communities what we think is important for their community.

Q: Obviously Green Exchange got a big boost when Coyote Logistics, with more than 500 young employees booking freight shipments via computer, leased a couple of floors. Were you surprised at what you saw there?

Graves and Greenblatt meet with Coyote CEO Jeff Silver (right) at the Green Exchange in Logan Square.

Photo: Gordon Walek

A: Not really. You’re finding that recent grads of colleges and universities are much more interested in being in a vibrant community and working for organizations that have an investment in those communities. Coyote is a great example. They’ve incorporated the desires and wants of their employees into their business model. That, plus the innovation involved in meeting a need within the shipping industry.

Q: But you didn’t see a lot of less-educated, less tech-savvy immigrants behind those computer consoles, did you?

A: No, but we have a real opportunity right now, within our high schools and our community colleges, for getting this kind of training – sciences, engineering, math – that is absolutely necessary for the Coyotes. But also the soft skills are important, the people skills, so they can talk to people on the phone and sell. That also has to be in the schools, but it needs to be supported at home and the broader community as well.

Q: Most federal programs used here might be considered ‘domestic discretionary’ and could be on the chopping block as Congress confronts the budget deficit. What’s in store?

A: One of the reasons I’m here is that we’re going to get to a place later this year where Congress will take the actions they need to take. So we [the Obama administration] have to think about the kinds of things we’re going to do going forward. So maybe I can help bring additional light about the great things that are occurring here, about great facilities like this, that we need to support so we can get the kind of jobs we need to grow the economy.

The federal officials' Chicago tour stops outside the Rosa Parks Apartment building on North Homan Avenue in Humboldt Park.

Photo: Gordon Walek
Q: So maybe you’ll be in a room with someone from OMB saying: ‘Please don’t cut this program because I’ve seen how it stimulates private investment in distressed neighborhoods!’

A: I guarantee you that folks like me will continue to voice support for New Markets tax credits, CDFIs, low-income housing tax credits, HUD 108 loans – all programs we’ll need to create economic development and community stability going forward.

Q: Does a Green Exchange help you make that case?

A: Exactly. And we were at the Rosa Parks apartments earlier – a great example of how a community can bring together all the organizations and players. It’s organizations like the LISCs of the world and the Bickerdikes of the world. If we can’t find a way to get them what they need today, we’re going to be in a world of hurt for the next generation.

Q: What do you think of the emphasis on green technologies and systems?

A: We have to think about our environmental footprint, about the ways to sustain and reclaim our communities. If I were living and working in Chicago, the Green Exchange is the kind of facility I’d want to come to every day.

Q: Can’t let you go without asking about foreclosures. Our region saw 15,000 new filings just last month. The Treasury’s mortgage relief program, HAMP, has disappointed. Can that be turned around?

A: There is hope. HAMP didn’t hit its original target, but it did drive standards for the industry and caused the setup of proprietary [bank-run] mortgage modifications that no one expected. So a lot of what HAMP was supposed to do is getting done through proprietary models, including principal reductions.

New Coyote employees explain what motivated them to join the company – the largest employer in the Green Exchange.

Photo: Gordon Walek

On housing we’re seeing we’ve hit the bottom and nationwide we’re starting to see both increases in values and reductions in foreclosures. Now the president is calling for a refinancing program to help owners who are ‘underwater,’ and we’re seeing a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle in Congress. We’re also looking at changes to appraisal standards. Appraisals often are the sticking point in refinancing.

Q: Has the foreclosure crisis morphed into a jobs crisis?

A: To some extent. Insecurity about jobs is leading folks to not want to buy new homes. But historically, investment in a home is the way to build a family’s wealth. It’s still the safest place for low- and moderate-income families to put their money. And with ownership you also tend to get a strong community buy-in.

LISC network delivers for Healthy Chicago

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:33:37 CST

[Articles]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is tapping directly into LISC’s network of neighborhood groups for ideas on how to advance his administration’s ambitious Healthy Chicago agenda.

On June 12, that network showed why.

Dr. Bechara Choucair, commissioner of public health, speaks with Claretian Associates' NCP Director Jackie Samuel. Behind them are LISC Chicago executive director Susana Vasquez CDPH's Erica Salem.

Photo: Gordon Walek

Some 50 community leaders – most from NCP – delivered a 20-page set of policy recommendations to Dr. Bechara Choucair, commissioner of the city’s Department of Public Health.

The recommendations (see list at bottom) are the fruit of a 10-week effort by a special committee representing the 16 New Communities plus their local partners on health issues. More than 70 leaders – organized into three subcommittees – have been researching and brainstorming what can be done to make their communities healthier.

Ultimately they settled on eight core recommendations on matters ranging from gun violence to alcohol and tobacco sales, from fresh food access to breast feeding. And there are indications the city will keep LISC’s local experts in the loop as the recommendations move toward implementation.

“The mayor and I knew from the start that we had to work with communities in a very meaningful way to transform and improve the health of our city,” Dr. Choucair told the assembled committee after its presentation. “One of the very first groups, when we started talking about how we can work with the neighborhoods, was the New Communities Program.”

NCP “gets” health
Helping the city identify opportunities for health interventions is a natural for the New Communities, seconded Susana Vasquez, LISC Chicago’s executive director.

Driver Sacha McLeod and helper Joel Casey are ready to weigh fruits and veggies aboard the Fresh Moves mobile produce market. LISC's health advisory committee has called for more traveling grocers and the city is talking to the CTA about converting additional buses. More info: www.freshmoves.org

Photo: John McCarron

“When NCP agencies updated their quality-of-life plans in 2010, for most the highest priority was public health, broadly understood,” she said. “So our neighborhoods have a deep understanding of and commitment to public health. We knew we could be good partners getting the message across and coming up with innovative ideas. So we’ve activated our neighborhood partners, and their partners, and others who care about community health, in a way we haven’t before. We’re ready to use our local networks to impact community health.”

The LISC committee did most of its work through three sub-committees, each one tackling four of the 12 priorities identified last fall when the Emanuel administration announced its Healthy Chicago agenda. About 70 individuals representing 30 organizations participated, with each subcommittee meeting at least five times.

Dominique Williams, a LISC fellow on loan from the Civic Consulting Alliance, coordinated the project. She said each subcommittee developed just three core recommendations.

The recommendations
One subcommittee addressed adolescent health, HIV prevention, tobacco use and violence prevention. It was co-chaired by Jacqueline Samuel of South Chicago lead agency Claretian Associates and Ulises Zatarain of Pilsen lead agency The Resurrection Project.

“The mayor and I knew from the start that we had to work with communities in a very meaningful way to transform and improve the health of our city,” Dr. Choucair told the assembled committee after its presentation. “One of the very first groups, when we started talking about how we can work with the neighborhoods, was the New Communities Program.”

Photo: Gordon Walek

“We’ve had a series of shootings over the past two years involving both high school and elementary students and it has really broken our hearts,” said Samuel in explaining her subcommittee’s No. 1 recommendation: a citywide fund that would make bridge loans to help local anti-violence programs get started or expand.

Like other presenters, Samuel, the New Communities organizer in South Chicago, was able to cite pilot programs undertaken with NCP assistance that showed promise and deserve more resources.

“We were able to bring in CeaseFire to mediate street-level conflicts and to hire 30 Safe Passage watchers through CPS to make sure youth get to and from school safely,” she said. “But a challenge was funding. We’d win a government grant but sometimes the funds wouldn’t come as soon as needed. There’s a gap. Sometimes a program couldn’t start on time or we might have to lay off staff. So we propose to create a ‘bridge’ loan fund for organizations waiting for more permanent funding.”

The loans would simply cover the period between when a grant was announced and when the funds actually arrived, at which time the loan would be repaid. She suggested civic-minded financial institutions might be willing to participate and charge zero interest for short-term loans, sparing the city any direct expense.

Another subcommittee took on healthcare access, cancer treatment access, communicable diseases and public health infrastructure.

Co-chair Shaan Trotter of lead agency the Washington Park Consortium explained their neighborhood’s NCP quality-of-life plan contained several health-related recommendations … but implementation became the issue. So their sub-committee’s No. 1 recommendation, he said, would be for each aldermanic office to have a paid health coordinator.

E’a Williams from Curves leads a zumba session at the Health Fair on the Block, held on 79th Street in Auburn Gresham, and sponsored by NCP and Elev8 lead agency Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp. For the full story, please click here.

Photo: Ben Levine

“He or she would provide on-the-ground outreach and keep the aldermen informed on the community’s health needs,” said Tenisha Jones of Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., the lead agency for both NCP and LISC Chicago’s Elev8 program, which has brought health clinics and wellness programs to local schools.

The third subcommittee studied maternal care, healthy homes, heart disease and stroke as well as obesity.

One of their recommendations is for all city buildings to provide rooms for breastfeeding, as is required of state buildings. “The city could set an example for private employers,” said Angela Hurlock, executive director of Claretian Associates. She reminded all that breast-fed children have lower rates of obesity and other health problems, and that one goal of Healthy Chicago is to get more low-income moms to breast-feed their babies for the first six months.

On the move
Hurlock noted that Mayor Emanuel recently announced a “win” having to do with another of her subcommittee’s recommendations: make it easier for mobile food vendors – especially those selling healthy foods – to get city licenses and go into business. The mayor recently announced that federal funds have been obtained to launch a second “Fresh Moves” bus, which will enable that nonprofit to begin selling its fresh fruits and vegetables in South Side neighborhoods in addition to its West Side routes.

The Bush Community Garden of Hope brings South Chicagoans healthy, locally grown food.

Photo: Maureen Kelleher

Indeed, deputy health commissioner Erica Salem, who is coordinating Healthy Chicago for Commissioner Choucair, said she has been in contact with the mayor’s office to encourage the Chicago Transit Authority to provide additional surplus-but-serviceable buses as needed.

It’s this kind of community-oriented, inter-agency cooperation, according to LISC’s Vasquez, that will enable the city to implement Healthy Chicago even though resources are tight and – with state and federal cuts looming – about to get tighter.

“There are constraints on budgets and on time,” said Vasquez. “But we have proved time and time again that when you put smart neighborhood people to work on a difficult task, the resources and the innovative solutions will be found.”

Dr. Choucair also hinted funding might be available for innovative ideas. “We do have flexibility over some of those dollars,” he said of the DPH budget. “The mayor and I are all about shaking up the status quo. We need to hear from the community on how to do that.”

More information: Chris Brown at cbrown@lisc.org

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Pilsen dances to its plan

Thu, 31 May 2012 20:27:34 CST

[Articles]

It’s a beautiful thing when neighbors get together, set aside their differences and decide as a group what their community is going to become.

It’s even more beautiful when they actually get it done.

Pilsen's quality-of-life plan focused on how to preserve the neighborhood's heritage as a center of Mexican culture and keep it affordable for blue-collar Latinos despite gentrification pressure from nearby downtown.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

So there were lots of satisfied smiles – even some “We did it!” wonderment – as neighbors gathered on the evening of May 29 to celebrate the accomplishments of the Pilsen Planning Committee.

Not that every last goal has been checked off on the ambitious list in the committee’s 2007 quality-of-life plan. After all, there was the not-so-little matter of a Great Recession that descended on the nation’s economy shortly after the ink dried.

Considering the headwinds, however, Pilsen’s execution of the NCP surely ranks among the most successful of the 16 neighborhoods that set out to plan and to do using best practices of comprehensive community development.

Goal #1: Unity
In Pilsen, the biggest achievement likely occurred at the outset: the bringing together of groups and leaders who were often previously at odds over how best to keep the neighborhood affordable for blue-collar Latinos in the face of gentrification pressure from nearby downtown.

The quality-of-life plan helped to spur the 45-unit Casa Morelos Apartments, which sits on previously vacant land at 2015 S. Morgan St. that contributed nothing in the way of taxes or services and had become a source of blight.

Photo: Eric Young Smith

But there on the stage stood Raul Raymundo and Teresa Fraga, co-chairs of the Pilsen Planning Committee, and on this night co-emcees of the celebration held in the auditorium of Benito Juarez Community Academy on Cermak Road.

Before uniting to coordinate the plan, Raymundo focused on housing development as executive director of The Resurrection Project, while Fraga, as former head of Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, led marches against development of upscale housing.

Together, and with big help from Ald. Danny Solis (25^th), they led the committee and crafted a workable plan to keep Latino families in, not wealthier families out.

“The Pilsen community plan has taken on a life of its own,” Fraga told the gathering of about 200, first in Spanish then in English. “Some plans stay on the shelf and collect dust. For the Pilsen quality-of-life plan, that’s not the case.”

She and Raymundo ticked off several impressive numbers: more than $120 million invested in Pilsen – from all sources, public and private – over the past five years that advance various goals of the plan; $859,743 in grants from LISC Chicago and other sources; overall crime down 4 percent; high school graduation rates and middle school achievement test scores up 16 and 7 percent respectively.

Close partners
Later in the celebration, Raymundo called to the stage Susana Vasquez, now executive director of LISC Chicago and previously director of its NCP citywide.

The quality-of-life plan has helped lead to more than $120 million invested in Pilsen over the past five years, with $859,743 in grants from LISC Chicago and other sources.

Photo:

“She has been our partner from the get-go,” Raymundo said, “and tonight she’s representing not just LISC but all our funders.”

“You came together, and with some LISC support, you organized and implemented a quality-of-life plan,” said Vasquez. She credited Pilsen and TRP with teaching her a few “basics” of community organizing when she lived and worked there for six years more than a decade ago.

“But more importantly, you raised resources on your own to improve your schools, connect residents to technology, help local businesses grow, build housing for families and, yes, support arts and culture. We’ll continue to support your quality-of-life plan into the future,” she promised.

Not done yet
“We’re not done,” Raymundo responded. “There are still a lot of projects in formation,” he said, such as the La Casa housing for college students on Paulina Street near TRP’s headquarters.

LISC Chicago executive director Susana Vasquez, who previously led NCP, recalled that she learned the "basics" of community organizing while living in Pilsen and working at The Resurrection Project.

Photo: John McCarron

Also called to the stage for kudos were Solis and Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who knows well the NCP story having directed the program in nearby Little Village as head of Enlace Chicago.

Ulises Zatarain, TRP’s NCP director, outlined some of Pilsen’s plans for the future … but not before crediting his predecessors, Guacolda Reyes and Alvaro Obregon, for advancing the plan during prior service as NCP director and organizer.

“We will have a strong focus on education,” Zatarain said, “but we will continue to grow comprehensively, and to take ownership of our future – a future that is very bright.”

Following a rousing display of musicianship and dancing by the Orozco Academy Mariachi Band and Baile Folklorico, co-emcee Raymundo declared, “As you can see, our future is in good hands. … Here, among these talented youngsters, are our next alderman, our next county commissioner, our next CEO of The Resurrection Project.

Ulises Zatarain, NCP director for The Resurrection Project, said the agency would continue forward with comprehensive vision of community development and with an especially strong focus on education.

Photo: Gordon Walek/LISC Chicago file photo

“With these future leaders and with the support of our public officials, we will continue to make our community the best that it can be … and the best it can possibly become.”

The assembly ended with neighborhood and church leaders crowding onto the stage to the Getting Strong Now theme from the movie Rocky.

It was a beautiful thing.

To see the plan: http://www.newcommunities.org/cmadocs/Pilsen_QofL_2006.pdf

More information: Ulises Zatarain uzatarain@resurrectionproject.org

Job openings in community development

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:13:01 CST

[Articles]

Lead Organizer - Lake County United is seeking a lead organizer who will work with the agency's leaders to identify issues and create local and regional campaigns to address them, build core organizing teams in existing member institutions and recruit new member institutions, and conduct regular leadership trainings and retreats, among other duties.

For the full job description, please click here.

Marketing Associate - St. Joseph Services is seeking a motivated, results-oriented marketing professional to develop and implement strategies to build awareness for SJS Community Center programs and support Development efforts. The Marketing Associate will work approximately 15 hours per week with the Director of Development, Community Resource Manager, and program managers to set and achieve goals.

For the full job description, please click here.

Grant Writer - St. Joseph Services is seeking a motivated, organized, and detail-oriented person to manage the grant effort and grow this segment of Development. The Grant Writer will coordinate between departments to ensure accurate and timely submission of all public and private grant applications and reports for SJS programs. The Grant Writer will be responsible for writing the majority of the narrative for applications and reapplications. This part-time position averages 15 hours per week.

For the full job description, please click here.