Friends of the Parks

Friends of the Parks (FOTP) is a 501(c)(3) designated park advocacy organization, dedicated to preserving, protecting, and improving Chicago’s parks and forest preserves for all citizens. Since 1975, FOTP has increase private and public commitment to Chicago’s parks through establishing park advisory councils, developing new parks, renovating playlots, and presenting public workshops and lectures to create and informed citizenry.

FOTP:

Works to preserve forest;

Offers seed grants to registered community gardens;

Provides Environmental Education programming for kids;

And strives to increase community involvement in the planning, design and operation of neighborhood parks and open spaces through the Partnerships and Advocacy in Neighborhood Parks program.

Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts

Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts is a Google site and forum for people in and around Chicago who keep backyard chickens, help others who do, or wish they could! The group is a source of advice, info, and networking and a resource for residents seeking help changing policy in other communities. Members can read and post Q&A.

Healthy Schools Campaign

Healthy Schools Campaign, an independent not-for-profit organization, is the leading authority on healthy school environments and a voice for people who care about our environment, our children, and education.

Our mission is to advocate for policies and practices that allow all students, teachers and staff to learn and work in a healthy school environment.

By working with this diverse group of stakeholders, we advocate for change in the school environment and raise awareness of the ways that the air children breathe, the food they eat and the opportunities they have to be physically active shape their health and learning for a lifetime.

Programs:

• Food & Fitness
• Environmental Justice & Health Disparities
• Environmental Health
  • Green Clean Schools
  • Green Clean Illinois
• School Nursing
• Policy Initiatives

Healthy Chicago Lawn

Healthy Chicago Lawn is a community-based coalition working to improve the overall quality of life and well-being of the Chicago Lawn community area. The group acts as a neighborhood council member of the Chicago Food Policy Council and will be starting up a community garden in Marquette Park this year.

Starting in April of 2004, Healthy Chicago Lawn undertook a planning process to identify resources and gaps in the community. Based on community members’ experiences, data that describe the community and the availability of local resources, the coalition identified key areas of concern. Coalition members developed strategies to address the identified issues and work together to support collaborative efforts that seek to improve the overall quality of life and well-being of Chicago Lawn.

Action Groups

In order to achieve the strategic goals that Healthy Chicago Lawn coalition members developed, the coalition formed four action groups, each focused on one priority area. Each action group developed a set of activities designed to address the identified issues and is currently working on the implementation of these activities.

• Awareness and Access to Comprehensive Health Services
• Healthy Lifestyles and Behaviors
• Youth
• Community and Civic Engagement

Awareness and Access to Comprehensive Health Services

The Healthy Chicago Lawn coalition found not only a lack of available resources in our community, but also a lack of awareness of what is in fact available, both on the part of community members and service providers. The work of this action group aims to increase knowledge of available resources, decrease barriers to accessing health services, and enhance collaboration among service providers. To this end the group is working on 3 activities:

• Compiling a resource guide for health care/social service providers and residents with comprehensive health care information
• A discussion series among area providers for networking and education
• Targeted outreach for public benefit programs such as Kid Care

Healthy Lifestyles and Behaviors

One of the main priorities of this group is to address the availability of healthy foods in the Chicago Lawn community. Many community members have limited access to grocery stores and do a large portion of their shopping in corner stores. The Healthy Lifestyles and Behaviors group is working with local businesses to provide nutrition information in corner stores as well as sampling of produce, in order to increase both the availability of produce in these stores and the demand from community residents. In addition to promoting healthy eating, the group is working to support teachers and parents through a speaker series in community meetings.

Urban Sustain

Urban Sustain is a non-profit organization, founded in 2005, that designs environmental public awareness and education campaigns in underserved communities as a catalyst for civic engagement to build livable communities. More specifically, Urban Sustain works to improve the health of youth and under represented communities through local leadership development by raising their social conscience on environmental health concerns.

Their three programs are:

Exposure 101: Youth receive the tools to explore and improve their neighborhood.  They learn to test for environmental toxins and poisons in their neighborhood and to advocate to change their community.  The youth are offered fun weekend activities.  The youth are given skills in research, hands-on experiments to test the air, water and world they live in, environmental monitoring, community health education, public speaking, leadership and much more.  Projects have ranged from sampling and analyzing soil/air,  holding a community forum, educating local politicians on the dangers of tobacco to creating Public Service Announcements on the hazards of Lead (Pb).  These next generations of leaders are given skills to create a clean and safe community.  .

Translations:  Offers job readiness skills for youth.  Through the “Art of Interviewing” confidence is created, communication skills are improved, generational misconceptions are addressed and they are prepared for the next steps in their life.   The youth learn to create resumes and prepare for interviews.   Life Skills is another component of Translations program, this is an additional 8 hour course.  The Illinois Department of Employment Security – Hire the Future program has partnered with Urban Sustain to trained their staff on the “Art of Interviewing”.

Project Impact: Open community discussions with Community Coaches  where members can share their concerns on the quality of your air, water and housing.   Project Impact gives the community an opportunity to build social capital by coming together in a peaceful manner to mix, mingle, mobilize and find real solutions.  Previous Project Impact projects include: Success to bring healthier food to grocery stores in South Shore, Southside Beach Rapid Trash Assessments, Campaign to remove Chicago’s bottle water tax and other short lived projects which address which have a long impact on the health of the community!