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Executive Summary
"Collaborate, Communicate, and Connect: A Vision for Getting the Word Out In Englewood"
Research Intern: Kimberly Schultz, Northwestern University and Brady Gordon, Stanford University
Community Partner: Imagine Englewood If...
 This paper focuses not just on specific assets, many of which are already well-mapped by community experts who simply need to be connected, but also on presenting a new hands-on approach to getting the word out and back in Englewood. This paper also offers an affirmation of IEi's powerful organizational mission to "collaborate, communicate, and connect," as well as suggestions as to how the organization can position itself within the diversity of other organizations in Englewood.
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The Question(s): The issue of communication in Englewood has long been articulated by community leaders as an area for improvement, but was given new relevance and a new spin, by the disconnect observed between residents who wanted to know about programs and organizations that offered programs. How do residents in a four square block bounded area within the Englewood community share information and find out about programs and general news? What local information do Englewood residents know? How did they learn about things going on in their community? What strategies are the organizations using to get the word out, and with what success? In what ways are organizations in Englewood communicating with one another?
Methods: The interns teamed up to conduct semi-structured and structured interviews, participant observation and survey questionnaires within a four block square bounded area of Englewood.
 Key Findings: Information networks are based on personal connections, with residents' knowledge of programs shared mostly through friends, neighbors and family.
- 1) An impressive number of organizations often times remained a mystery to residents only a couple blocks away.
- 2) There are approximately 200 organizations, institutions, and agencies serving Englewood, plus all of Englewood's churches, with programs ranging from computer classes to praise teams to the Boy Scouts.
- 3) Chicago Commons, Chicago Safe Start, and the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) have all compiled impressive directories of resources in Englewood. Yet people who wanted to learn about summer programs did not know about the directories.
- 4) There is only halting communication going on between the different groups. At least on some levels, people aren't talking and they're not collaborating. As an example, there are currently at least six plans for community centers in Englewood being discussed, and yet none of the organizations developing the plans are talking to each other. Of the six initiatives, three are being spearheaded by churches in the same six block radius, but in the course of our research we were the ones to first inform the pastors about the other churches' plans.
- 5) Flyers, institutional promotions, one on one outreach, community experts, word of mouth, public gatherings with spectacle for engaging and entertaining residents are all employed to spread the word of events, concerns, news, and organizing efforts. Englewood, similar to other urban African-American communities, is defined by rich social and informational networks. In plainspeak, while Englewood residents may not know about an organizational directory, they do have an intimate knowledge of their neighbors and the happenings on their block.
- 6) Many local organizations are addressing non-communication issues by holding monthly meetings and roundtables.
Findings in Action:
 This research, conducted as the result of a partnership between the grassroots organization Imagine Englewood... if! (IEi) and the Field Museum, seeks not only to identify areas where communication can be improved in Englewood, but also to examine how people are getting the word out, recruiting friends and family, an informing neighbors at the present time.
The task was to turn common sense and scholarly knowledge of Englewood's communication assets into real world observations and recommendations that will help Englewood community organizations, and in particular IEi, better reach and involve Englewood's different stakeholders in the area's renewal. Therefore, it was proposed that I.E.i... put together a group of performances with the theme "How We Share": a stand-up comedy routine about DCFS support, a poetry reading about growing up in a house with four generations of women, and a rap mourning a deceased beloved. The public programming and role playing/performances are to be done in teams to encourage residents to communicate across broader geographic and demographic boundaries. In the course of the research, in addition to looking at the ways people were communicating, the interns identified many programs, organizations, contact people, individual abilities, and opportunities for collaboration which had not previously been documented.
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