Asiaha, her husband and daughter were set to leave their Chicago neighborhood, Englewood, to live in a suburb. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just leave the kids playing in dirt and broken glass in empty lots. She couldn’t be one more person to give up on the neighborhood where she grew up.
According to an analysis of the FBI’s 2018 uniform crime reports, Englewood’s violent crime rate is about two and a half times higher than the national average, and property crime was nearly eight times higher, according to estimated data. Vacant lots are everywhere. The Chicago Sun Times reported that the neighborhood had the second highest number of property demolitions in the city, with very few permits to rebuild. An eye-opening 2011 report in the Chicago Tribune noted that the many vacant, boarded-up homes you see in Englewood have “kept [the neighborhood] in [a] downward spiral.” Asiaha only knew how to lead by putting her love for her community first, and that made all the difference in getting her community to believe in Englewood again.
This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
“How many people have you killed?” Former Marine Julio Cortes looked into the face of the curious teen interrogating him. “Next question,” Cortes replied. Those are the kinds of questions we’re taughtnever toask a veteran: Have you ever seen someone die? Have you been shot? Who did you kill? But in Chicago’s Urban Warriors program, those kinds of questions are not only permitted but encouraged. That’s because the teens participating in the program have more likely than not witnessed or experienced similar violence themselves. Cortes is one of 40 veterans currently participating in Urban Warriors, a program operated by the YMCA of Metro Chicago’s Youth Safety and Violence Prevention (YSVP) initiative. The program uses trauma-informed therapy to create and implement community projects throughout the city. Urban Warriors, one of five YSVP projects, is a five-year-old initiative with branches in a handful of Chicago’s most under-resourced neighborhoods, and it pairs veterans with youth who are at risk of committing or being subject to violence. As nearly half of all homicides in Chicago are attributed to gangs, the need for effective intervention in the city is dire. Nationally, the percentage of those in gangs who are under 18 years old hovers around 35 percent. Psychologists have found that if young people find mentors outside the streets, they are motivated to stay away from gangs. And that’s exactly what Urban Warriors has found effective in building up the self-esteem and self-worth of the kids in its program. The teens look up to and respect veterans, who can relate to what it feels like living in a war zone. They know what it’s like to fear for one’s life. And talking about the looming specter of violence in their lives helps youth process the resulting trauma. “Kids identify themselves as soldiers, because they live in war zone communities,” Eddie Bocanegra, the co-founder of Urban Warriors, tells NPR. “They make the parallels between, veterans, you know, carry guns, we carry guns. They got ranks, we got ranks. They got their Army uniforms, we got our gang colors.” A female Urban Warriors cohort and their mentors. During one recent conversation, Cortes and some teens in his group were discussing what it feels like right before getting shot in a drive-by shooting — the anxiety, sweat and anticipation that hits you right before you think someone’s going to pull the trigger. “And then it turns out to be an ice-cream truck driving by,” Cortes tells NationSwell. “These kids are over-alert and watching their backs, even when they’re in the safest environments. They try to explain that feeling to other people who don’t get it. But I do.” As a former gang member, Bocanegra knows what he’s talking about. At 14, he shot and killed a kid he mistook for a rival gang member, which landed him in prison for 14 years. While doing time, his brother — a decorated Army veteran — told him to seek therapy for the trauma he experienced on the streets and in prison. Bocanegra listened to his brother and sought out counseling. Eventually he started working with anti-violence programs and, out of curiosity, began surveying gang members in 2013 to see who they looked up to. “It all started based on this question we put out with high-risk youths: whom they felt safe and protected with,” Jadhira Sanchez, the director of Urban Warriors, tells NationSwell. “We gave them options such as EMT’s, cops, lawyers, doctors and veterans. And they chose veterans. That’s who they looked up to; that’s who they respected.” For 16 weeks, three different cohorts of 20 teens — separated by sex — are partnered with five veterans. Each Saturday, the teens get to talk to each other about issues they’re currently dealing with. They get to ask questions of and seek guidance from the veterans. A social worker who can help to navigate services, such as applying for college or jobs, sits in on every conversation. All the veterans and case workers are trained in trauma-informed care to help them navigate tense or uncomfortable conversations, but they say the single most effective approach has been simply giving the teens a chance to connect with people with whom they can relate. “We found youth who [talk about] going into the gang world, and they compare that to basic training in the military branch. When you lose your buddy or brother in combat, some people compare that to losing someone on the streets. When you have those comparisons, they open to each other up because they feel on the same level,” Sanchez says. “I had family who were involved with gangs, which means that even if you don’t claim it or wear the colors, you’re [guilty by association],” says Cortes. “Think about being 10 years old and your mom takes you to the good stores, and you see all the cool clothes but you can’t get it because of the colors on it. A 10-year-old has to process that. It’s little things like that.” Urban Warriors participant William Javier can relate to the above. Javier, 17, grew up in Pilsen with an abusive father. He saw his friends join gangs and had to dodge stray bullets countless times. “You could literally die, going across [the street] to get some food, from a random bullet that wasn’t meant for you,” he says. It resulted in him living inside his bedroom — trapped in his home by fear. But one day, tired of being inside and wanting to “be out there,” he thought about joining a gang. “That life slowly starts grabbing at you and pulling you in. And my closest friend started to notice it,” he says. That same friend pushed him into joining the Urban Warriors program two years ago. Javier was the teen who asked Cortes how many people he killed. (The veterans are not required to answer every question.) “I knew he killed someone,” Javier says. “It was still a little [shocking] for some reason. But after that, I started to feel comfortable with him.” Beneficial outcomes of the program have been mostly anecdotal, though Sanchez says they do survey participants before and after they complete the program. But the stories coming out of Chicago’s program are promising, and could be replicated in cities like Los Angeles or New Orleans that are also grappling with gang violence. “I have youth that never wanted to go to college and now want to,” Sanchez says. “That’s a huge victory.” Javier’s involvement in Urban Warriors has even saved his life, he says. “I never saw myself graduating or living at all past freshman year. I saw myself in the grave,” he says. “After Urban Warriors, I saw myself in a better light — more open and confident and positive in life. Now, I’m close to graduating. I’m living happily. And doing the things I’m doing.”
City leaders are thinking globally, even as they act locally. More than 300 mayors brought local government to the international stage in June when they promised to uphold the Paris climate accord. “We can’t wait for governments to act on climate change. For solutions, look to cities,” former New York Mayor Michael Bloombergsaid on Twitter. This is part of a larger trend of cities embracing their power to change the world by activating their residents. Set against a backdrop of population growth that predicts that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2030, cities are seeding interest in civic engagement and local government with citizens who are eager to create more inclusive communities. “Inequality — in access and quality of services, and therefore, opportunity — is one of the single largest threats our society faces today,” says Jeff Senne, corporate responsibility operations leader and senior director at PwC. “Cities possess the highest levels of inequality and consequently provide the greater opportunity to address the root drivers of this issue.” Global players appear to be taking notice. At this year’s Social Innovation Summit in Chicago, representatives from city offices around the globe met with business and philanthropy leaders to discuss insights and innovations related to local and global issues. Unlike their larger counterparts, local initiatives benefit from their scale and speed. City governments are smaller and more nimble than state and national governments. “At the city level, we can quickly impact and change residents’ lives,” says summit speaker Sharone April, director of the Jerusalem Innovation Team. Technology also plays a role in a city’s ability to act quickly and agilely while serving its public. New online platforms, aimed at information exchanges between residents and local governments, have allowed cities to promote two-way conversations and civic engagement. In Philadelphia, a mobile lab called PHL Participatory Design Lab travels around town to give residents a chance to voice their thoughts on ways to improve their city. The city of Charlotte, N.C., plans to start a weekly podcast called Your Move, featuring city officials conversing with Millennials. Members of the Minneapolis Innovation Team, one of about 20 innovation teams funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, discussed their web portal for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. The portal offers resources to fledgling entrepreneurs, such as starter guides for common business types and information on how to navigate regulatory processes. “It’s all in response to what communities said they want,” says Brian K. Smith, director of the Minneapolis Innovation Team. “When we make it easier for small businesses and minority and immigrant entrepreneurs to access the knowledge, financial and social capital they need to be successful, we not only help the business owners at the margins. We also make everybody’s lives easier.” A similaronline platform has gained popularity in Los Angeles. In September 2016, Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Innovation Team introduced a program that helps small business owners cut through red tape. The open-source platform offers step-by-step guidance to overcome hurdles such as finding a location, negotiating a lease and getting a business loan. “We worked with city leaders and residents to design and test the portal and are consistently sharing the process and tools we used with other cities so that they can start with what we did and hopefully launch something even better that we can take from in the future,” says Amanda Daflos, director of the Innovation Team in the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Budget and Innovation. That spirit of collaboration could be felt in another city, halfway around the world: An app called Coming Soon, based in Jerusalem, Israel, allows locals to name the types of businesses their neighborhoods lack. Coming Soon shares that information with entrepreneurs to help them target, refine and optimize their new ventures. “It provides powerful data for business owners so that they can open the right business in the right location,” April says. That data is especially powerful in a city where half of new businesses shutter within five years. “Residents will be able to influence what is happening in their neighborhoods,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement. “This will impact the city through enhanced quality of life for residents and advance the business sector—a win-win for all involved.” The focus is specific, but the ambition is broad. By creating hyper-local initiatives that encourage an engaged public, city and industry leaders hope to affect quality of life across diverse sectors, including climate, economy, technology and opportunity. Local mayors to the world: Perhaps there’s also room to act globally, but think locally. Presented by Social Innovation Summit. NationSwell and PwC are Social Innovation Summit partners. Social Innovation Summit is an annual global convening of black swans and wayward thinkers. In June 2017, more than 1,400 Fortune 500 corporate executives, venture capitalists, CSR and foundation heads, government leaders, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, activists, emerging market investors and nonprofit heads convened in Chicago to investigate solutions and catalyze inspired partnerships that are disrupting history.
President Trump has pledged $1 trillion to rebuild America’s systems, but the proposed infrastructure bill relies heavily on private financing to fund sorely needed waterworks and transit projects. This poses a problem because private companies “only work on projects that create revenues,” saysRep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), ranking member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “The vast majority of the national highway system, and our bridge problems and all our transit problems, do not generate revenues. It will not help them.”
A BETTER FINANCIAL MODEL
Sustainable infrastructure is often understood to be a bridge built from recycled materials or an electric plant powered by wind, for instance, but it’s also infrastructure whose upkeep expenses are included in its building costs so that there aren’t social or environmental costs later on.
The ability to fund maintenance prevents massive failures, like the Flint water crisis or the year-long shutdown of certain lines of the Washington, D.C., metro, from ever happening. “For years, there’s been this separation of costs for building a bridge versus actually making sure that bridge stays up, and over time, it’s created a really weird recipe for a lack of consideration for operational costs in state budgets,” says Anthony O. Kane, managing director for the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. “If you build a road one way and it has to be built again in 20 years. Why not build a road in another way and give it a longer lifespan?” For the close to 30,000 rural local bridges that are deficient across the U.S., sustainable infrastructure is a solution with longevity. The Kansas City street car is a new example of sustainable infrastructure.
SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Leading the way in sustainable infrastructure projects are New York City, Chicago and Kansas City, Mo. The use of recycled materials, a reduction of carbon emissions and sound pollution are often key elements of building plans. In Los Angeles (another city at the forefront of the environmental movement), the Metro system is being revitalized by utilizing solar panels for alternative energy and adding 6.6 miles of new train tracks using recycled materials.
“It’s not the classic 1950s definition of infrastructure anymore,” says Rick Bell, executive director of New York City’s Department of Design and Construction. “Transportation isn’t just highways and bridges. It is just as important to create a bike lane for people to get around the city without a car.”
“BRANCHING” OUT
Some of the most successful sustainable projects are ones that citizens might not even view as infrastructure. In Chicago, trees are used as infrastructure to help reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage. A 2014 Friends of the Park report found the 70,000 trees that were planted over a 20-year period have reduced carbon emissions in the Windy City by 25,000 tons each year — the equivalent of 15,100 automobiles. The tree canopy also reduced air temperature, saving $360,000 annually on residential utility costs.
CATCH UP ON THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE WITH THESE DEEP READS:
The Future of Fashion Is Mushroom Leather, Bloomberg When you think about how high-end fashion items are manufactured, you might conjure up images of factory pollution, mistreatment of animals and poor labor conditions (and you’d be right). But François-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kering — the luxury group behind Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci and others — is taking major strides to fix the supply chain. In the last four years, his company has invested in alternatives to leather, embraced the use of recycled textiles, worked to reduce plastic use and even links CEO bonuses to sustainability achievements. “It’s the new moon,” says Pinault. “The new frontier is the sustainability frontier.” The Paperfuge: A 20-Cent Device That Could Transform Health Care, Wired A team of Stanford bioengineers has developed a device that costs less than a quarter to make and can help save lives around the world. Dubbed the Paperfuge, it operates like a traditional centrifuge to spin bio samples and help diagnose diseases like malaria, but it requires no electricity and fits inside a doctor’s pocket. The device embodies “frugal science” — the idea that affordable yet powerful tools can transform global medicine. New Court Aims to Redefine Young Adult Justice in Chicago, Christian Science Monitor For young people charged with nonviolent crimes, a criminal record can mean diminished job prospects, continued poverty and a seemingly inescapable life of repeat offenses. But a pilot program in Chicago aims to break this cycle by letting perpetrators make amends to those they’ve wronged and contribute positively to their community instead of serving time. Ultimately, if the offender completes the program successfully, his or her record can be wiped clean.
The statistics are startling: In the United States, being transgender doubles a person’s chances of living in poverty and triples the risk of being unemployed, according to a study conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality. That financial setback is largely due to the difficulty of finding and retaining stable employment: Nearly one in three trans individuals report experiencing discrimination in the workplace, such as losing a job, denial of a promotion or being subjected to verbal harassment or sexual assault.
But what if those stats could be shifted in the tech industry, a booming sector that provides a growing share of jobs? How would you build a talent pipeline? Could a change there lead the rest of the economy to follow suit? Obsessed with these questions, Angelica Ross, a transgender activist, decided to find out. She started TransTech Social Enterprises, an incubator for LGBTQ talent, as a hub for trans people to work on freelance web development, graphic design and multimedia projects, while further enriching their tech skills at training academies. Ross launched her organization in Chicago and, after three years of iterations and the scheduled opening of additional branches in Washington, D.C., and Buffalo, N.Y., the network now includes 347 members. Last year, the company disbursed $90,000 in compensation for projects its members completed.
“The main mission behind all of this is to get trans and other marginalized people to realize that they are their own best bet, their own heroes,” Ross says. “They’re much stronger than the world communicates to them.”
Ross knows the importance of instilling this self-worth, because at one time she herself believed there were few paths to economic advancement for people like her. At age 19, she decided to officially make the transition to female. Her parents tossed her out, and she lost her job at a makeup counter in Racine, Wis. (Years later, she and her mother reconciled.) Desperate for work, Ross moved to Hollywood, Fla., where she worked as an escort and a model for an adult website. “At that time for trans women, especially those who were looking to get any transition-related surgery, there was a high level of trafficking into the adult industry,” she says. But then the website’s owner noticed her skill with computers and tasked her with touching up, cropping and resizing pictures. The experience made Ross realize she didn’t need to be working for anyone else — at an adult site, no less — to apply her technical skills. She left and founded TransTech a few years later.
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Because she experienced firsthand the many barriers to success for transgender people, Ross made a conscious decision that TransTech’s programming be as accessible as possible. Annual fees are $99, but scholarships cover those who can’t pay. And there’s no formal curriculum, a boon to aspiring techies who might not have the time to complete an intensive weeks-long program. Ross, who now lives in L.A., describes the model she eventually settled on as akin to a gym membership. Much like the equipment that fills a fitness center, TransTech’s co-working spaces are stocked with their own tools of the trade: Macs preloaded with Adobe’s Creative Suite, and plenty of scanners and printers. In place of personal trainers, TransTech offers peer mentorship. Like lifting weights to build muscle, her members are developing technical know-how by learning from others in the space, attending workshops and applying YouTube lessons to real-life projects.
The tech training is often a natural fit, as LGBTQ individuals have long been plugged in to the web. “When trans people were really just coming out of the shadows, it was on AOL, Yahoo! chat groups, even Craigslist. These are places where we found community, found love, found job opportunities,” Ross explains. “Tech is just the catalyst for everything.”
And the types of jobs TransTech members pick up are often easier to fit into their lives. Frequent medical appointments and friction with disapproving colleagues make working in an office a potential minefield. But as freelancers, they have the flexibility to set their own hours and communicate with colleagues in whatever format they wish.
Ross believes the model she’s building at TransTech will eventually help serve those beyond the transgender community. Parents with infants or people with physical disabilities would both benefit from a looser conception of a workplace. “The tech industry’s policies are half of the solution,” she points out. The other half? Installing more transgender employees in leadership positions, where they can bring a different, and much-needed, perspective to a company’s decisions.
“The trans community is bigger and more valuable than companies usually acknowledge,” Ross says. “If you look, and especially if you look to TransTech, you will find a plethora of talent.” This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
In a late-night victory speech, President-elect Donald Trump called his base “the forgotten men and women of our country,” and he promised they “will be forgotten no longer.” His line embodied the spirit of 2016: This was the year that nationwide events put a spotlight on plights that can no longer be overlooked. Beyond Trump’s core base of white working-class voters, there was an assortment of marginalized communities making headlines, from the gay Latinos targeted at an Orlando nightclub to the black men confronted by police in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul; from indigenous peoples protesting a pipeline in the Dakotas to those fleeing climate change in Alaska and Louisiana; and from hijab-wearing victims of hate crimes to unemployed veterans.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, because where there is strife there is also powerful art to make sense of it. And 2016’s collection of books, movies, TV, plays, music and other works was no different, helping us see these groups, to understand their grievances and develop a response. After polling our staff, here is the art that most moved us at NationSwell in 2016.
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It started with a simple question. As a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012, Raj Karmani, the founder of Zero Percent, was a regular at a neighborhood bakery. The store was always fully stocked with more than a dozen different bagel flavors, and that got Karmani thinking. “I wondered, ‘When all those beautiful bagels are made fresh each day, what happens to the ones that don’t sell?’” So Karmani asked the bakery’s owner, and learned that he did his best to donate what he could to area nonprofits. Still, many of those bagels were thrown out at closing time. Karmani vowed to change that.
Then a computer science student, Karmani first built the app that would become Zero Percent during a hackathon. “Technology is going to be the core of this solution,” he says. Zero Percent’s app allows restaurants, schools and other institutions that sign on to easily note what kinds of food they have available and in what quantity, and when they would like to have it picked up. The system then notifies a local nonprofit, giving them the option to pick up the food. In Chicago, where the startup is based, Zero Percent also hires drivers to make daily, pre-scheduled pickup and drop-off runs.
That a city like Chicago would have such a need for surplus food initially surprised Karmani, who grew up in Pakistan. “Coming to the United States, I felt I came to a country that is the richest and most powerful country in the world, and that I had left poverty and hunger behind,” he says. But his conversation with the bakery owner opened his eyes to two huge problems in the U.S.: the dual issues of hunger and food waste. “Forty percent of the food produced in the United States goes to waste,” Karmani says. That translates to more than $22 billion worth of prepared and perishable food every year. “That’s why we named the company Zero Percent,” he explains. “We wanted to bring that statistic down to zero percent.”
Join the cause! Commit to reducing food waste in your community. See how to donate unspoiled food here.
Restaurants and other businesses pay a fee to participate in the program. In return, Zero Percent streamlines the process of donating excess food. “It’s just a great way to know that we’re feeding others who need it,” says Jon Naylor, a managing partner at Blackwood BBQ in Chicago. It’s a morale-booster for staff, and they mention it during interviews with new potential hires, Naylor says. Customers also like to hear that the restaurant is giving back to the community, he adds.
The participating institutions can also gain financial benefits. Zero Percent’s functionality includes a dashboard that shows them exactly what they’ve donated and where their donations have gone. This makes it easy for them to document donations for tax purposes. It also helps them track how much excess food they’re ordering and making, so they can make their operations more efficient. “We had a lot of lettuce leftover at the beginning,” says Timothy Muellemann, a manager at Sopraffina in Chicago. “Since we began using Zero Percent, we’ve been able to see the items that we had been ordering too much of, and it’s helped us keep that in check,” he says.
The benefits for local nonprofits are obvious — fresh, healthy, prepared food they can serve to those who need it most. Besides going to soup kitchens and food pantries, Zero Percent provides surplus food to after-school programs and organizations that serve underprivileged populations. “What’s amazing is that we get so much fresh, nutritious food from Zero Percent,” says Kylon Hooks, a program manager at Chicago’s Broadway Youth Center, which primarily serves homeless LGBTQ youth. Hooks says that getting healthy food from a high-quality source has an emotional benefit too. “It gets young people to think, ‘I’m worth eating this way,’” he says. “Zero Percent is an invaluable resource.”
Since its launch in 2013, Zero Percent has distributed more than 1 million meals to almost 150 nonprofits in the Chicago area. But Karmani has his sights set on bigger goals. “I firmly believe that food waste can be entirely eliminated,” he says. “I’m still striving to reach that utopia of zero food waste. I’m not going to congratulate myself until we have, step by step, shown that we can move the needle on food waste, first in Chicago, and then elsewhere.”
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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
A Swarm of Controversy, WIRED Can environmentalists and Big Agriculture come together to save honeybees? It’s a question Jerry Hayes, a former hive inspector turned Monsanto scientist, asks constantly. As conservationists blame Hayes’s company for colony collapse, he asks humans to learn something from the bees: how to cooperate for the hive’s sake.
Welcome to Uberville, The Verge An experiment in an Orlando suburb could change the face of public transit. As part of a contract between Altamonte Springs, Fla. and Uber, local government subsidizes intra-city rides with the startup and fronts additional funds when connecting with mass transit. Critics argue that the plan isn’t accessible to low-income and disabled riders, but Altamonte officials say the deal was the only affordable way to connect the suburb’s sprawl.
Chicago Tackles Youth Unemployment As It Wrestles with Its Consequences, Chicago Tribune Applying for a first job in Chicago can feel “like trying to go across Lake Michigan,” insiders say. Rap sheets or typo-laden résumés can ward off employers, and inaccessible transit through high-crime areas can discourage adolescents — disconnecting 41 percent of the Second City’s 18–24 year olds from work or school. Fortunately, a bevy of groups are helping this vulnerable group land work.
