Day of Action Held In South Shore To Create A Community Needs Assessment

I Project is an activism through arts initiative, rooted in Intersectionality theory, aiming to create equitable societies, according to The I Project Website. Photo Credit: The I Project
I Project is an activism through arts initiative, rooted in Intersectionality theory, aiming to create equitable societies, according to The I Project Website. Photo Credit: The I Project

Day of Action Held In South Shore To Create A Community Needs Assessment

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

A local initiative, The I Project, recently organized a Day of Action where Chicago volunteers met at Bouchet Elementary Math and Science Academy and then went door-to-door in South Shore to get direct input from residents on what would make their community more sustainable.”

I Project is an activism through arts initiative, rooted in Intersectionality theory, aiming to create equitable societies, according to The I Project Website. Intersectionality theory is the idea that all people have overlapping identities that affect the way they navigate life and experience oppression.

“Intersectionality theory is a theory created by Kimberly Crenshaw to explain how black women and women of color experience things differently because of their gender and because of their race/ethnicity culture. What The I Project prioritizes to do is to include and benefit the most oppressed subsets, which is queer women of color. That’s our main mission, to create equitable societies,” said Sabrina López-Zúñiga, team member of The I Project initiative.

Over the summer, The I Project team began their work in South Shore with a few different goals. First of all, they began working with Bouchet Elementary, 7355 S. Jeffery Ave., and helping the school to secure more resources for students. Secondly, the team set out to do a community needs

assessment specific to South Shore so that they could better serve the community as a whole.

The recent Day of Action which was organized by The I Project team was a way of getting out into the community to find out what would make this community work better for the people that are already living in it. Although they weren’t able to canvas all of South Shore in one day, they got a good start and some useful information.

“It seemed like a lot of people weren’t being given a chance to localize what they were feeling and what their needs are. That was the point of this project because we didn’t feel like we could go into this neighborhood and take it upon ourselves to figure out what they need and assume what they need,” said López-Zúñiga.

Though there were plenty of door-knocks that went unanswered on the Day of Action, López-Zúñiga said that it’s the doors that do get answered that you remember most when you are out canvassing.

“A lot of people were very cooperative and I think one of the big responses we got was that a lot of people didn’t know their neighbors and they didn’t think they had enough community events to create a community,” said López-Zúñiga.

The I Project team will still have to do a little more canvasing before they are able to start analyzing their results, but they are planning to release a full report on their South Shore community needs assessment in the Summer of 2019.

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