CURL is conducting research for the Jane Addams Resource Corporation (JARC) in order to better understand why/why not unemployed and under-employed women are interested in participating in JARC’s Women in Manufacturing job training program. Based on the research findings, CURL will also collaboratively develop a new recruitment strategy to expand the Women in Manufacturing job training program to more qualifying women in the Chicago area.
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The Englewood Women’s Initiative (EWI) is a program through a coalition of 8 organizations in the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago connecting women in the neighborhood with pathways to incomes over $40k/year through job training, business development, and financial and job readiness skills. CURL is evaluating the pilot and collaborating in creating a database tracking system and benchmarks.
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The Greater Roseland West Pullman Food Network (GRWP) is developing a sustainable model to address food insecurity in the Roseland and West Pullman communities, with the Greater Roseland Sustainability Initiative (GRSI). The GRSI is a collaboration between community, university, and business partners utilizing urban agriculture and social enterprise to increase access to fresh produce, improve STEM skills, and prepare youth for a “green collar” economy.
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The objectives of Roseland Christian Health Ministries was to create 70 new jobs for low income residents of Cook County, Illinois while serving the heath care needs of seniors living on the south side of Chicago and its adjacent south suburbs through the development of a Home Health Agency to complement RCHM's existing Christian Community Health Center. CURL helped evaluate the project.
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CURL partnered with Andersonville Chamber of Commerce to identify the major concerns of business owners living and working in Andersonville to create a plan of action for the future.
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Growing Home is a social enterprise that provides transitional jobs and job training to participants by employing them in organic agriculture at their two urban and one rural farm sites. This project assisted Growing Home in setting up a tracking database by collecting contact and other baseline data from past graduates and following recent graduates for three months post-program to determine outcomes.
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This study focuses on the Wal-Mart store that opened on the West Side of Chicago in September 2006. The research team conducted a series of three surveys of retail businesses in an area within a four-mile radius of the Wal-Mart location at 4650 W. North Ave, Chicago IL 60639. The surveys were administered in the summers of 2006 (before the Wal-Mart opening), 2007 and 2008. The basic sample follows 306 enterprises 82 of which went out of business over the study period.
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This international project was an effort to document existing successful alternatives to the reinvestment and displacement cycle in communities. We developed a curriculum that can be used either by faculty and students in the university classroom or by community leaders and residents in city and suburban neighborhoods.
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The project documented existing local, community-based projects in an effort to include these voices in the larger smart growth development discussion. It examined how the benefits of regional economic growth might be used more effectively to address pressing social problems in these communities and the broader region.
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