For Yomika Alexander, participating in the University of Chicago Office of Civic Engagement and Cook County Justice Advisory Council’s joint Community of Care initiative felt like a much-needed hug. The experience brought together Alexander—a U.S. Air Force veteran who was doing violence prevention work in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood when the Community of Care launched— and nearly 200 other representatives from 150 violence prevention organizations for a series of humanities-based workshops and activities over 14 months. The initiative aims to recognize and empower participating violence prevention workers as community leaders; strengthen relationships across organizations that rarely have opportunities to connect; and, ultimately, make a more meaningful, collaborative impact in this critical area of work county-wide.
“There’s so much armor that we wear while doing this work. There’s no way to not be directly impacted over time,” Alexander said. “You have to be able to turn over this or that [type of] resource to individuals and not internalize everything that you’re hearing. So, to be able to come into a room [of others with similar lived experiences] and remove the cloak and say, ‘I’m actually hurting because I’m doing this work...but I can’t stop doing this work because there are people hurting,’ was affirming and in some ways it felt like a hug. I was able to recognize the struggles that other service workers experience, while also having them recognize the struggle in me. For this reason, the Community of Care Initiative was not only validating but therapeutic as well."
Participating in the Community of Care, Alexander said, pushed her out of her comfort zone and has already helped her set firmer boundaries in her work as well as build a valuable network of peers.
The Community of Care, which wrapped up its pilot year with a day-long closing event in December, was initially developed to complement a round of violence prevention grant funding distributed by the Cook County Justice Advisory Council in 2023. In addition to doing grueling, sometimes traumatizing work, these organizations are often working in silos and aren’t incentivized to collaborate as resources are scarce. Noting this dynamic, Avik Das, the council’s executive director, approached the Office of Civic Engagement to see how they might work together to provide leadership development support and build trust and relationships among grantee organizations and those working for them, thereby creating a stronger network of organizations supporting each other and county residents, especially as COVID-era violence prevention funding shrinks. Das says he was inspired by his own experience participating in UChicago’s Civic Leadership Academy in 2018.
“There is the fostering of fellowship with individuals who are traveling in the same area of work but not necessarily given the time to talk to each other and compare notes that they’re not alone or that there’s innovation happening right next door that they simply haven’t been paying attention to,” Das said. “And then the other component I benefitted from when I was a Civic Leadership Academy fellow was the rigorous component of you’re a leader of an organization that has to constantly navigate ambiguity and come to decisions when the answers are not easy. So, I’m not only alongside likeminded fellow travelers from different walks of life, but then I was able to benefit from leaders and world-class thinkers being able to challenge us.”
A unique approach
Bookended by two day-long events on UChicago’s campus, the initiative divided participants into eight smaller cohorts whose additional touchpoints were unique to the pairs of civic facilitators leading their respective groups. The experience grew from the ethos and structure of the Office of Civic Engagement’s Civic Actor Studio, a four-day leadership retreat, led in partnership with The Court Theatre, that connects disparate civic actors to examine the various leadership roles they play through a theatrical lens. Community of Care participants first took part in a condensed one-day version of the Civic Actor Studio, then, depending on their facilitators, additionally gathered for at least four other workshops or activities such as painting, sculpting, examining poetry, cooking, or otherwise building something together. Alexander was so moved by the initiative’s shortened Civic Actor Studio, she carved out additional time to participate in the full four-day version as well.
“It forced you to examine the roles that you play in life and why you choose to bring this character out for these situations and question what would happen if you brought this particular character to this particular stage, what could that change for you?” she said. “We were constantly having breakthroughs and getting in touch with the parts of ourselves we set aside.”
Stronger together
The initiative’s 21 civic facilitators were all local civic leaders who had previously completed the full Civic Actor Studio themselves and many carried the leadership and collaboration metaphors that anchor that experience to their own workshops. Yohance Lacour, a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist and activist who works with local youth, and his co-facilitator and Goodman Theatre Artistic Producer Malkia Stampley, for instance, led their cohort in building leather boxes together.
“I wanted to think about how to implement a project where everyone participated in making a thing because what I’m seeing [in local violence prevention efforts] is you’ve got so many organizations who are selflessly doing this work but they are all having to kind of fight for the same purse strings and the same federal grant dollars and for that reason there’s a certain competition unfortunately. They don’t want to be in competition with each other, but it’s hard for them to work together when they each have to get their own piece,” Lacour said. “So, we set up an assembly line where somebody had to trace patterns—who’s good at tracing? Who’s good at cutting? Who’s good at using glue? We just put everybody on a piece and it came together and they realized how everybody’s contributions produced the final product. Their [violence prevention] work needs to mirror that type of approach.”
Rest and recharge
In addition to equipping participants with more effective leadership tools and strengthening pathways for collaboration across organizations and individuals, the Community of Care was designed to offer violence prevention workers with a rare opportunity to pause, reflect, and tune into their own needs. The initiative’s December closing event—which featured speakers, breakout groups, a documentary screening, and the chance for participants to sing, dance, and create a mural together—aimed to emphasize the power of cocreation and ensure each individual felt like a valuable contributor to a broader ecosystem, Joanie Friedman, Executive Director of Civic Leadership in UChicago’s Office of Civic Engagement and one of the initiative’s chief organizers and architects, said: “I hope they feel like their cup is maybe a little bit more filled.” Funding from the Sue Ling Gin Foundation will continue the work with and supporting violence prevention workers and organizations going forward.
Lacour, who credits the years he spent in prison and on the streets with igniting his passion for violence prevention work, says having a chance to pay forward the lessons he’s learned in and out of the Civic Actor Studio as a facilitator is rewarding but he’s also heartened just to share space with dedicated people who pour themselves into the communities they serve and deserve to be poured into themselves for a change.
“It’s like on an airplane, you put the mask on yourself before you put it on the kid—we all know that, but when you doing this work, especially when you doing it on a high level and you can’t see how they could operate without you, you just hold your breath. You don’t take the mask,” he said. “And that’s a beautiful thing to see that selflessness, but people gotta love themselves too.”