Alternatives, Inc, an organization serving youth in Uptown, is working with CURL to develop a participatory evaluation process focused on their restorative justice program.
Children and Youth, Participatory Evaluation | tagged Current The Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University Chicago is working together with Bethel New Life in developing research to benefit the surrounding community. This emerging project will focus on key issues around community and economic development. Research goals will include utilizing GIS technology to create databases of information pertinent to the surrounding and Bethel New Life community.
Community Need / Asset Mapping | tagged Current In 2003 McCormick Foundation invested in agency-sponsored childcare programs to enhance organizational health and build their capacity to recruit, train, and retain high quality directors and teachers, thereby sustaining high quality childcare programming. The partnership continues from June 2010 to the present. To sustain this collaborative network of mutual support CURL will continue to utilize this collaborative (inter- and intra-agency) and cohort-based (i.e. policy fellows and program leaders) model for the next two years (2010-2012).
In June of 2009, the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network began to train the first volunteers for a new Court Watch program at the Centralized Domestic Violence Courthouse in Cook County. CURL’s research team is assisting the Network by entering, organizing, and analyzing the data gathered by the court watch volunteers.
Domestic Violence | tagged Current CURL is working in partnership with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a faith-based organization serving Greater Roseland, to conduct a livability study of the impacts of a proposed Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Red Line Extension. The proposed extension would allow the CTA Redline to go beyond its current South branch terminal at 95th street to a new terminal near 130th street, with intermittent stops near 103rd, 111th, and 115th streets. This project builds on the partnerships that have been developed by DCP and its Red Line Oversight Committee (ROC) over the past 8 years to advocate for and support the Red Line Extension project.
CURL and Changing Worlds created a research partnership for a new, stand-alone measurement development study the impact of Changing Worlds’ literacy program.
Children and Youth | tagged Current To better understand the factors producing stable diversity, community leaders are being interviewed in a select number of communities identified as stable and diverse according to the 2000 and 2010 Census data.
Race, Ethnicity and Diversity | tagged Current CURL partnered with Catholic Charities to evaluate their Homelessness Prevention Call Center. The Call Center is a Homelessness Prevention Initiative of the City of Chicago’s “10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.” Launched in January 2007, the Call Center directs individuals identified as being at risk for homelessness to appropriate short-term funding agencies and other social services as deemed appropriate.
Homelessness, Participatory Evaluation | tagged Current CURL is partnering with the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) to evaluate their Victim Assistance Program (VAP). The VAP provides assistance to public housing residents who are victims of violent crimes that occur on CHA property or are impacted by a traumatic event.
Domestic Violence, Participatory Evaluation | tagged Current Working with various social service agencies that provide homelessness services, the research team will evaluate the programs and models that have been put into place under the Chicago Plan and provide data to make necessary mid-course corrections and improve implementation going forward. The four key components of the project are a qualitative study of homeless clients, a longitudinal client survey, a homeless service agency survey, and a service inventory.
Homelessness | tagged Current Over the course of three years CURL, in conjunction with Loyola’s School of Social Work, and with the financial support of The Michael Reese Health Trust, is conducting an evaluation of the Illinois Department of Human Services’ (IDHS) Open Door Demonstration Project as part of the Smart Paths Initiative.
Participatory Evaluation | tagged Current The Illinois Children's HealthCare Foundation funded two initiatives at Southern Illinois University and at the University of Illinois Chicago to assist those schools in making programmatic changes to their dentistry programs with the goal of increasing the number of dental students and graduates who are interested in community-based, pediatric, and special-needs dentistry.
This pilot oral history project is examining both these impacts and how a community organization “lives on” in the form of how it shaped both public policy and individual activists’ careers. In addition to being of specific interest to those seeking to understand community safety, the project also hopes to establish a model for understanding a community-based organization’s impact years after the actual work took place.
Community Safety | tagged Current Gateways is a refereed journal which publishes articles produced through university-community cooperative research projects. It provides an international forum for academics, practitioners and community representatives to explore issues and reflect on practices relating to the full range of engaged activity. The journal publishes evaluative case studies of community engagement initiatives; analyses of the policy environment; and theoretical reflections that contribute to the scholarship of engagement.
Heart Women and Girls, an organization working with women and girls in faith-based communities – especially in Muslim communities – to build “leadership and self-esteem through health and wellness programming” is collaborating with CURL to conduct an assessment relating to health. The research will be designed to measure attitudes, opinions, and knowledge of young Muslim college students as it relates to a variety of health issues. The outcomes will allow HEART and others in the field to be better equipped at targeting resources by understanding the community need.
Health and Healthcare | tagged Current In partnership with Heartland Alliance, CURL received a two-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to: (1) Define the essential components of the Housing First model; (2) Develop a fidelity index for Housing First programming; (3) Test the finalized fidelity index for reliability and validity; and (4) Assess the degree to which fidelity predicts improved substance abuse treatment access for clients.
Homelessness, Housing | tagged Current Fairfield University, Santa Clara University and Loyola University Chicago have partnered and received a grant from the Ford Foundation to explore experiences of undocumented students at Jesuit universities. The project seeks to better understand challenges and obstacles faced by undocumented students and ways of eliminating those barriers. The project has several short-term and long-term goals.
Policy, Race, Ethnicity and Diversity | tagged Current The City of Evanston Human Relations Commission and CURL are collecting information on a broad range of organizations in Evanston that contribute to the quality of life and connections among all Evanston residents. Expected outcomes will be an up-to-date listing of organizations and services ranging from youth and senior citizen services to religious congregations and food security.
The CURL Research Team will evaluate The Ounce’s Community Assessment Projects which inform strategic decisions made at the Ounce and its delegate agencies. The findings from these assessments guide program designs and external partnerships while ensuring that the centers are meeting the needs of their service areas.
The Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University Chicago has partnered with the Social Justice and Social Change Research Centre University of Western Sydney to launch Residents’ Voices, a project designed to develop new ways to research and understand affordable housing issues in Chicago, Sydney, and Adelaide.