Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

Founded during the DePaul Centennial (1998-1999), the Lincoln Park Community Research Initiative (LPCRI) is a partnership of Lincoln Park community organizations, businesses and DePaul University. The goal of the LPCRI is to collect, document and preserve the shared history of DePaul University and the Lincoln Park community.

The Fall 2019 program celebrates 20 years of the Lincoln Park Community Research Initiative by featuring the film Walls that Talk: A film by the Voices & Visions Project, the latest installment in the ongoing research projects regarding the Lincoln Park community. The movie features local historians, architects, and Chicago residents as they reflect on three historic Lincoln Park buildings: Yondorf Hall, Lincoln Turner Hall, and the Belden Stratford Hotel. 

Resident Advisors were provided an opportunity to volunteer at Cradles to Crayons. They sorted new and nearly new clothes and organized them by size into bins. The clothing is packaged and distributed to disadvantaged children in the community through various partnerships. 

This is a class about action and reflection, and about coming to terms with one’s responsibilities to community.  This course will consider the theory and practice of service and the relationship between altruism and activism.  During the quarter, students will engage remotely in service to learn about and from others, to gain experience in the service sector, and to reconsider their own identities and roles in their communities.  Through a combination of reading, action, and reflection, we will define altruism and activism, studying their contributions and limitations as means of delivering service and bringing about change.  Students will also consider their current involvement in community service, what form that might take after DePaul, and where they fit on the continuum between two poles – the moral imperative to do good on the one end (altruism), and the political imperative to change things on the other (activism). 

·       Outside of class, students will devote a minimum of three hours each week to (remote) service work with one of the sites offered through this course.

This project is designed to help students make key connections between community psychology theory and the real-world social issues. Students will identify an issue of interest related to the partnering organization, review community psychology scholarly empirical evidence related to the issue, and report the highlights to the class and the partner. 

Students met with IHSCA to assess curricular needs. They met weekly to discuss the curricular goals of the rhetorical analysis assignment to address the language used by English Department at IHSCA. Students met with IHSCA community partner to work directly with students on college applications. Activities took place on site at IHSCA.  At the end, students write a lesson plan that instructor can use for rhetorical analysis.

Egan tutors facilitate small group learning within a Nixon Kindergarten classroom. Tutors provide instructional support for Math, Reading, and Writing and incorporate group activity to promote learning

Geared towards female-identifying youth, the Become a Filmmaker documentary filmmaking intensive is designed to provide all essential skill sets for a job in film. Guided by award winning filmmakers and DePaul graduate students, participants receive extensive training while exploring the power of their personal narrative. During the paid, six-week program, youth are visited by industry experts and go on a number of experiential field trips including a tour of Cinespace, the largest film studio outside of Hollywood. Working in small teams, participants create four original short documentaries. The films are screened as part of their graduation celebration and then go on to play at local venues and film festivals. The films’ themes provide a voice for social topics important to Chicag Housing Authority youth and serve as an entry point to community discussions on creating positive change in Chicago.

Co-hosted by Jeff Yost of the Nebraska Community Foundation and ABCD Institute Steward, Deb Wisneiwski. 

Many states and regions in the the United States have been experiencing significant outmigration of people and talent, especially from rural areas. Thankfully, these trends are changing. Empowering community members to understand the power of abundance thinking and expressing gratitude are important building blocks in helping communities create a more positive self-fulfilling prophecy and be successful in their people attraction efforts. Being grateful and extending an invitation to others to also be grateful and then pay it forward is proving to be a powerful community building tool.

Regardless of where you live, how has gratitude contributed to building community? How do we instill an "attitude of gratitude" in a community? What has happened when we focus on gratitude in our work and in our communities?

Global Gatherings are not webinars or presentations. They are opportunities for members of ABCD in Action to engage in meaningful conversations. We don't have the answers to the questions we propose, but we'll provide a space for you to share your stories, ideas, and questions. Our hosts will guide you through a series of questions in small groups in order to help you think together about the questions we propose.

Art has great power -- to move us, to connect us, to even start or spread social and political movements. How do art and artists fit into the work of ABCD -- that is, to identify, connect and mobilize the gifts and talents within neighborhoods while reminding everyday people that they have the power to create and lead their own solutions? How can art and artists help with the work of removing labels of need, brokenness or deficiency that are placed on some people in every community? How can art move us from a culture of deficiency and individualism to one of abundance, mutual interdependence, and neighborliness? How have you seen this in action, and what else can you imagine?  Global Gatherings are not webinars or presentations. They are opportunities for members of ABCD in Action to engage in meaningful conversations. We don't have the answers to the questions we propose, but we'll provide a space for you to share your stories, ideas, and questions. Our hosts will guide you through a series of questions in small groups in order to help you think together about the questions we propose.

Produced interactive maps documenting the international visitors and local partners of educational visits arranged by WorldChicago.