by AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. 2024 QUARTER 4
September 4, 2024
THE AUSTIN COMMUNITY PUBLISHED ITS FIRST QUALITY-OF-LIFE PLAN CALLED AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. (AFT) IN 2018.
THIS QUARTERLY PUBLICATION DESCRIBES HOW AUSTIN COMING TOGETHER (ACT) IS SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY TO IMPLEMENT AFT AND OTHER EFFORTS.
THE PLAN CONTINUES TO MOVE AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. PAGE 3 THE AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. (AFT) HIGHLIGHTED AGENDA: A NEW APPROACH TO OPTIMIZE IMPACT PAGE 4 A COMMUNITY’S JOURNEY TOWARD MENTAL HEALTH EQUITY PAGE 7
Since 2010, Austin Coming Together (ACT) has facilitated collaboration to improve education and economic development outcomes in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.
Today, we serve a network of 50+ organizations committed to improving the quality of life in the Austin community. Our strategic plan is called Thrive 2025 and outlines how we will mobilize our resources to achieve four impact goals by the year 2025: Quality Early Learning, Safe Neighborhoods, Living Wage Careers, and Stable Housing Markets.
Officers
CHAIR
Larry Williams
Broker, State Farm Insurance
VICE CHAIRMAN
Bradly Johnson
Chief Community Officer, BUILD Inc.
SECRETARY
Jerrod Williams
Law Clerk, Illinois Appellate Court
Leadership
Darnell Shields
Executive Director
Andrew Born*
Senior Director of Community Impact
*Also part of the ACT Leadership Team
Operations
TREASURER
LaDarius Curtis
Senior Director of Community Engagement & Health, West Side United
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Darnell Shields
Austin Coming Together
Directors
Sharon Morgan Director of Graduate Support & Community Outreach, Catalyst Schools
Reverend Reginald E. Bachus Pastor, Friendship Baptist Church
Deirdre Bates* Director of Operations
Dearra Williams
Executive Operations Lead/ Assistant to the CEO
Londen Mance Office Administrator
Sandra Diaz*
Service Delivery Enhancement Manager, Austin Community Hub
Emone Moore Engagement Coordinator, Austin Community Hub
Dollie Sherman Engagement Specialist, Austin Community Hub
A House in Austin
Academy of Scholastic Achievement
Austin Childcare Providers Network
Austin Community Family Center
Austin Weekly News
(Growing Community Media)
Be Strong Families
Beat the Streets Chicago
Bethel New Life
Beyond Hunger BUILD Inc.
By The Hand Club For Kids
Cara
Catholic Charities
Chicago Austin Youth Travel Adventures
Chicago Community Loan Fund
City of Refuge
Defy Ventures Illinois
Erikson Institute
Friends of the Children
Friendship Community Development Corp. of Austin
Greater West
Town Community Development Project
Tenisha Jones
Chief Program Officer, UCAN
Reginald Little
Business Development Specialist, Great Lakes Credit Union
Dawn Ferencak
Senior Marketing Strategist, Chicago Parent
Deborah Williams-Thurmond Community Outreach & Engagement Specialist, Habilitative Systems, Inc.
Saenovia Poole
Community Resources Coordinator, Austin Community Hub
Clara Bonnlander Social Services Coordinator, Austin Community Hub
Ethan Ramsay* Planning and Investment Manager
Grace Cooper Lead Organizer
Housing Forward i.c. stars
IFF
Institute for Nonviolence Chicago
Jane Addams Resource Corporation
Kids First Chicago
KRA Westside
American Job Center
Learning Edge Tutoring (fka Cluster Tutoring)
Ruth Kimble
Founder & CEO, Austin Childcare Providers Network
Max Komnenich
Associate Principal, Lamar Johnson Collaborative
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Jack Macnamara 1937–2020
FOUNDING BOARD CHAIR
Mildred Wiley 1955–2019
Mia Almond
Project Coordinator
Arewa Karen Winters
Community Organizer
Natalie Goodin
Special Projects Manager
Nicholas Galassini
Chicago Neighborhood Recovery Program
Associate
Legal Aid Chicago (fka LAF)
Manufacturing
Renaissance
Mary Shyrese Daycare
Maryville Academy
Mercy Housing Lakefront
New Moms
OAI, Inc.
Oak Park Regional Housing Center
Open Books
Marketing & Development
Alicia Plomin* Director of Marketing and Development
Jon Widell Marketing and Development Specialist
Sydni Hatley Marketing and Development Coordinator
PCC Community Wellness Center
Project Exploration
Renaissance Social Services, Inc.
Sarah’s Inn
South Austin
Neighborhood Association
St. Leonard’s Ministries
Stone Community Development Corporation
The Catalyst Schools
The Journey Forward
The North Avenue District, Inc.
Towers of Excellence
UIC Jane Addams
College of Social Work
VOCEL
Westside Health Authority
West Side Forward
Worldvision
Youth Guidance
By Darnell Shields Executive Director, Austin Coming Together
Since its inception in 2018, the Austin Forward. Together. (AFT) quality-of-life plan has significantly contributed to positive transformation in Austin, laying an in-depth foundation for action and impact.
Over the past five years, AFT has driven immense change because of collaborative efforts and strategic actions led by the community. Although the original plan had a five-year timeframe, its influence will affect generations to come, and the work is not finished.
As the stewards of the AFT plan, ACT conducted an internal assessment of how and why more than 43% of the 84 actions were able to be initiated and what actions saw less success. This assessment helped us engage AFT leaders and partners to discuss how to optimize the plan’s efforts.
Even though AFT has a group of 45 leaders working alongside over 70 unique implementation partner organizations,
one of the priorities going forward will be deepening community ownership and amplifying impact. This involves conducting robust research and evaluation to better understand effective strategies and areas for improvement, while also continuing to assess our progress.
The Austin Forward. Together. quality-of-life plan has been driven by deep commitment and collaborative effort.
Over the past five years we learned a lot, but now we felt it was time to evaluate how that went and from this assessment a new strategy to optimize our efforts developed: the Highlighted Agenda.
Today marks the official public release of the AFT quality-of-life plan Highlighted Agenda! Find it listed on the upcoming pages or at AustinComingTogether.org/QLP. n
This process—this community driven process to create the QLP— has given me and others the opportunity we were looking for to make a BIG difference in our lives and the lives of our neighbors. It’s our chance to be a part of making Austin everything it can and should be.
JERROD WILLIAMS, CO-CHAIR OF THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TASK FORCE
The AFT Highlighted Agenda is a new approach to more effectively implement Austin’s award-winning AFT quality-of-life plan that started in 2019. This approach is meant to amplify the plan’s impact by aligning resources and leveraging expertise from multiple Task Forces into 10 focus areas over the next three years. Our goal is to have a comprehensive neighborhood-wide action plan, created and led by community leaders from across AFT issue areas, for each of these 10 items.
By focusing capital resource investments into each commercial corridor and coordinating among the corridor projects, we aim to expand on the economic prosperity of Central, North and Chicago Avenue, and bring more job and commercial opportunities to the area.
IMPLEMENT THE ASPIRE INITIATIVE
Make a concerted effort to refocus and gain more traction on the entire Initiative after the initial push to advance the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation. The Center will open in 2025, offering onsite manufacturing job training and other resources at Madison & Central Avenue, and will be the first of the four ASPIRE Initiative projects to be completed. The others are: Aspire Housing (a multi-tiered approach to provide homeownership assistance, plus new or renovated units for sale); The Aspire Education & Wellness Campus (a new state-of-the-art early learning, health, and recreation center); and new programs and support to increase enrollment at the Austin College and Career Academy.
Work with AWC members to create project plans to make connecting more workers to living-wage careers a reality. We want to continue to support job training centers’ important work, and expand support for local entrepreneurs in order to help more Austin workers and business owners make a living right here in Austin.
WEAVE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE (RJ) INTO THE FABRIC OF AUSTIN
Ensure Restorative Justice (RJ) becomes part of the fabric of Austin by developing an Action Plan that spans the various AFT goals that address RJ. Having our institutions fluent in the RJ philosophy, and our residents introduced to RJ practices like peace circles, will support healthy relationship building and the ability to prevent and resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner.
Develop an Action Plan that spans the various AFT goals addressing youth issues and empowerment. This effort will build on the success of many of our partner groups who’ve been working with Austin’s young people for years. Moving forward, focus will be on giving youth the power to influence recommendations throughout the entire AFT plan.
Grow and invest in the five working groups of Austin Eats, an initiative that’s been underway since 2020: emergency food; grocery and culinary entrepreneurship; gardens and farms; food education; and marketing. By collaborating with partners from across the food ecosystem to strengthen it, we are able to make a greater impact on Austin’s overall wellness and get closer to achieving the initiative’s mission of removing barriers preventing Austin residents from accessing healthy and affordable food.
Organize a campaign to educate community leaders about the systems and support that exists for young children, and how we can change them for the better. Austin residents depend on childcare providers, and this effort will better recognize these unsung and underpaid leaders in the community.
Rising housing costs and the threat of gentrification are a major concern in Austin. This effort will develop local policies that ensure that Austin residents can afford to live in the neighborhood and get to reap the benefits of the AFT plan.
Mental health is a complex issue with many root causes and effects. This effort will involve developing an Action Plan that addresses mental health for residents in a holistic way by expanding access to mental health services,meeting the needs of young children, youth, and families. This will Include grassroots hyper-local research on the mental health needs in Austin.
Create action plans that focus on the community stories we want to tell with modes of communication that will reach a larger audience, and strategies to amplify authentic narratives. This will make us better equipped to tell community stories through the arts as well as journalism/writing.
With the release of the AFT Highlighted Agenda, ACT is going “on the road!” Our team will be on tour and available to co-host discussions about the new phase of Austin’s AFT quality-of-life plan and its vision and strategy, with block clubs, churches, community organizations, coalitions, etc. Other ways we’ll ensure to update the community on the progress of implementing the Highlighted Agenda are through newspaper sections like this, emails, and social media.
Community
Narrative
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
Kenneth Varner
Healthy Schools Campaign
Dearra Williams
Austin Coming Together
STRATEGY LEADS
Suzanne McBride Austin Talks
Adrienne Otkins Community Resident
Alicia Plomin Austin Coming Together
Cindy Gray Schneider Spaces-n-Places
Jai Jones
PSPC, The Chicago Community Trust and Community Resident
Economic Development
STRATEGY LEADS
Erica Staley Manufacturing Renaissance
Emily Peters Jane Addams Resource Corporation
Tina Augustus Community Resident
Roxanne Charles West Side Forward
Melissa O’Dell Defy Ventures
Fanya Buford Berry Community Resident
Education
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
Charles Anderson
Michele Clark High School
STRATEGY LEADS
Ruth Kimble
Austin Childcare Providers Network
Cata Truss Community Resident
Housing
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
Athena Williams Oak Park Regional Housing Center
Allison McGowan Community Resident
STRATEGY LEADS
Shirley Fields Community Resident
Rosie Dawson Westside Health Authority
Baxter Swilley Community Stakeholder
Public Safety
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
Bradly Johnson BUILD Inc.
Marilyn Pitchford Heartland Alliance
STRATEGY LEADS
Edwina Hamilton BUILD Inc.
Bertha Purnell Mothers OnA Mission28
Jose Abonce The Policing Project
Ruby Taylor Taproots, Inc.
Youth Empowerment
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
D’elegance Lane
Community Stakeholder
STRATEGY LEADS
Aisha Oliver Root2Fruit
Helen Slade Territory NFP
Dollie Sherman
Austin Coming Together
Chris Thomas YourPassion1st
Civic Engagement
TASK FORCE CHAIRS
Deborah Williams-Thurmond
Habilitative Systems Inc.
By Jonathan Widell Marketing & Development Specialist, Austin Coming Together
In Austin, a major health crisis has afflicted its residents for years. The area’s vibrant community is often overshadowed and neglected due to untreated mental health issues and trauma. With the city closing public mental health centers and the challenges from the pandemic, we have seen the issue of mental health become a high priority for community members.
While there are service providers in Austin doing great work, many residents are still left to navigate these struggles alone. In addition to an increase in services and accessibility, better collaboration and overall awareness are necessary to meet the need for mental health services in the community. Plus, a stigma around utilizing resources or fear of judgment may hold individuals back. A group of Austin youth created their own quality-of-life plan and selected mental health as a priority for the community, reinforcing why one of the focuses of the Austin Forward. Together (AFT) Highlighted Agenda is addressing mental health.
Over the past five years, Austin has made major strides in its overall AFT quality-of-life plan, but the mental health actions in the
plan have yet to be implemented. Recently, through the AFT Highlighted Agenda, we will be able to be more intentional about addressing the mental health action items across the AFT quality-of-life plan, and shift resources from across task forces to focus on this initiative as a priority. This will allow us to make sure mental health services are integrated with other services and efforts in food access, workforce development, education, and housing.
In June 2023, ACT convened with over 30 partners from diverse sectors. Groups included mental health providers, churches, youth-serving organizations, and early childhood experts, connecting through a restorative justice circle to establish trusted relationships. Since the initial meeting last year, the focus shifted to discussing barriers we face and ideas of how we can work together to address them. Open discussions led to an agreement that we want to work together on a neighborhoodwide strategic action plan to expand mental health services for young children, youth, and families in Austin.
Realizing that a strategy to address mental health in Austin depends on understanding the local context, earlier this summer we partnered with the Black Researchers Collective to advance racial equity by training and equipping community members with research tools to be more civically engaged and policy-informed. Over the course of three workshops, residents learned the basics of doing grassroots research. Through this partnership, we were able to hire two community researchers to work with us for a six month period to help better grasp the mental health landscape through focus groups with residents to understand the community needs, and surveys with mental health providers to get a holistic picture of the current assets
in the community. Their findings are crucial in shaping our strategic plan surrounding the Mental Health Initiative, with the goal of finalization by early next year.
The journey towards addressing the mental health crisis in Austin is ongoing, but the progress made so far offers hope. By uniting a diverse group of partners, meaningfully engaging the community, and developing a strategic plan, we are not just addressing immediate needs, but we are laying the framework for lasting change in Austin. While we anticipate challenges, we will continue to collaborate and dedicate ourselves to ensuring the community is on a path to a healthier, more equitable future, and will not leave any residents behind. n
