Serving UIC's Great Cities Commitment: Solutions for Today's Urban Challenges

GCI’s Director of Neighborhoods Initiative, Thea Crum, partnered with the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) to publish a report on the system of leadership development programs in the Chicago area. The study was driven by a commitment to support a new generation of civic leaders and to encourage a more “inclusive paradigm of public service leadership” by determining what opportunities currently exist for leadership development and where there are challenges or gaps in the system.

Overall, the study identified 166 leadership development programs in the Chicago area, administered online surveys with 66 programs, and conducted 16 individual interviews with program directors or coordinators. Three overarching categories of leadership development programs emerged, revealing important differences obscured by the general leadership landscape trends, including:

• Student programs (53 total) that are primarily based at universities or colleges and target 18- to-24-year-old undergraduate college students, regardless of race, sex, or community. These programs tend to focus on the internal, individual dimensions of leadership, such as self-awareness, integrity, and creating a personal vision.
• Professional programs (54 total) that are primarily geared towards college-educated, working professionals between the ages of 25 and 34 looking to advance their careers. They prioritize professional relationship building and networking activities and offer alumni events.
• Community programs (58 total) that intentionally target participants based on race, geographic community, and income, regardless of educational background. Participants join these programs to improve their community, and these programs prioritize building community organizing, political leadership, and community visioning skills.

The study examined the purpose of programs, the participant selection process, whether the program had a specific target population, and the program design. The research identified the need for increased and intentional efforts to target and recruit people of color, women, and low-income individuals for leadership development programs to better reflect the diversity of the Chicago region and improve the diversity of public leadership overall. Additional findings include the need for collaboration between programs, expansion and support for leadership development programming models that include a more holistic approach to leadership development, and the development of standardized evaluation metrics. The full report can be found here.

About the Author:
Thea Crum, GCI Director of Neighborhoods Initiative: As the Director of GCI’s Neighborhoods Initiative, Thea works in collaboration with community-based organizations, elected officials, and university faculty, staff, and students to provide training, technical assistance, and applied research on community and economic development projects. She is the lead staff person on the Participatory Budgeting Chicago initiative and is a member of the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board.

The Great Cities Institute (GCI) is pleased to announce that it has embarked on a project with the Pilsen Planning Committee (PPC) to create a new Quality-of-Life plan. This nine-month participatory planning process will include key neighborhood stakeholders such as community organizations, service providers, elected officials, property owners and residents. This project is a part of GCI’s Neighborhoods Initiative, which reflects the Institute’s commitment to improve the quality-of-life in communities in Chicago.

Since the 1970’s, Pilsen has been identified as a Latino community and residents have consistently been engaged in strengthening and building upon that identity. Pilsen has many assets including its history and strong community identity, close location to Chicago’s downtown business district, proximity to public transportation, affordable housing, and a previous Quality-of-Life plan. The new plan will build upon the strengths and successes of the previous plan, completed in 2006, including the governance structures developed to coordinate the plan’s implementation.

As part of the new planning process, GCI will evaluate the 2006 plan and work with both data and the community to assess the current conditions in Pilsen. The PPC and community stakeholders will work closely with GCI to drive the final framework of the plan including the identification of key issues and strategies, such as education, housing, and jobs. Once completed, GCI will also develop an evaluation for the plan to empower the community to track their successes throughout implementation. This new quality-of-life plan will continue to build upon the strengths of the community while also developing strategies and sub-strategies to ensure future development and community programs to preserve Pilsen’s robust cultural institutions and family-friendly environment.

Participatory Budgeting Chicago (PB Chicago), one of the Great Cities Institute’s main programmatic priorities, will be tripling in size this coming year. PB Chicago is a collaborative initiative that aims to build a more democratic and equitable approach to public spending in Chicago by implementing and expanding participatory budgeting processes throughout the city.

Since its inception, PB Chicago has engaged over 9,000 residents to directly decided how to allocate over $12 million in public dollars. Through the process more than 60 high-impact projects have been developed and funded such as street resurfacing and sidewalk repairs, park and public school improvements, pedestrian safety projects, bike lanes, murals, new trees, and much more. For the 2015-2016 participatory budgeting (PB) cycle, PB Chicago is expanding from three wards to eight.

In the spring of 2015, the Chicago City Council saw significant turnover, electing 13 new aldermen to serve in wards across the city. Some ran for unoccupied seats left empty by the ward remapping; others were elected over long-serving incumbent candidates. Five of these new aldermen will be joining three returning partners to open up $1 million each in capital infrastructure funds to their constituents. The eight wards participating in PB Chicago 2015-16 are:

10^th Ward – Ald. Susan Garza

17^th Ward – Ald. David Moore

22^nd Ward – Ald. Ricardo Munoz*

31^st Ward – Ald. Milly Santiago

35^th Ward – Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa

36^th Ward – Ald. Gilbert Villegas

45^th Ward – Ald. John Arena*

49^th Ward – Ald. Joe Moore*

*returning partner

In 2015-16, PB Chicago will serve over 425,000 residents across the eight wards and will determine the allocation of $8 million. This expansion is an important step in PB Chicago’s efforts to institutionalize participatory budgeting in the City of Chicago. In November 2013, the Mayor and City Council voted to fund the hiring of a new City of Chicago Assistant Budget Director whose primary task is to support alderman as they implement PB projects.  PB Chicago is working with city to improve the transparency and tracking of winning projects so that residents can follow the implementation process.

As the initiative grows, PB Chicago is hoping to continue engaging youth at a higher rate. Alongside partners such as Embarc and Mikva Challenge, PB Chicago has worked in Chicago Public Schools – such as Sullivan High School in the 49^th Ward – to facilitate the PB process for students. This cycle will look to include more schools in the new partner wards. By including citizens at an early age, PB Chicago inspires civic engagement and builds sustainability into the PB process.

PB Chicago is currently preparing for the upcoming PB cycle. Starting in October, ward offices will begin organizing idea collection events to solicit project ideas from community members about how to allocate PB funds. Thousands of Chicagoans will share their ideas for improving their communities in a democratic and transparent way. To find out how you can be a part of PB Chicago this year please visit GCI’s website and PB Chicago’s website or follow along on social media as PB Chicago opens up government to the people.

About the Author:
Thea Crum, GCI Director of Neighborhoods Initiative: As the Director of GCI’s Neighborhoods Initiative, Thea works in collaboration with community-based organizations, elected officials, and university faculty, staff, and students to provide training, technical assistance, and applied research on community and economic development projects. She is the lead staff person on the Participatory Budgeting Chicago initiative and is a member of the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board.