Blueprints Make Their Mark
By Kauthar Umar
Since its inception, IMAN has worked with the community to develop solutions to the many challenges that confront youth in the inner city. Part of IMAN's mission has been to shape youth into effective community leaders, who can help to facilitate social change in our communities and give back to the greater society.
Over the past decade, IMAN’s youth programs have focused on leadership training, academic excellence and spiritual development as ways to address youth issues. IMAN’s administration felt there was need for a formal assessment of the underlying concerns effecting youth in the Marquette Park area.
“You need the structure and a foundation first to build a house,” said Asad Jafri, IMAN’s Youth Coordinator. “We’re conducting our research and building that structure now. Our Blueprints Project is the foundation for IMAN’s future youth programming.”
In May 2007, IMAN implemented Blueprints: A Youth Needs Assessment Project focusing on obvious and underlying issues affecting youth. Working under a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant, the Blueprints Project ends in December 2007 and has a select group of young people involved in multiple aspects of organizing and developing a foundation.
Unlike some programs, the youth in IMAN’s Blueprints Project have played a major role in choosing the appropriate project name, developing the needs assessment survey tools and representing IMAN when networking with community and partner organizations.
During the first few months of the assessment the youth distributed surveys among their peers in the Marquette Park area and facilitated focus groups regarding the issues that they face in their communities.
“We took our results and identified four categories of importance; identity and stereotypes, activism and lack of resources, relationships and STD’s and lastly drugs and violence,” said Aisha Durr, a youth in the Blueprints Project.
The youth are currently developing a DVD and booklet that will be presented in a Chicago area tour of schools, foundations, community centers and mosques, in order to bring light to these issues. The hope is to facilitate communal discussions about solutions and gain support for IMAN’s youth development programs.
As IMAN looks towards the near future, the research from Blueprints will serve as a foundation to work from for exciting programs on additional issues challenging youth, such as public safety in public high schools and soon to launch an organizing campaign that implements more parent / mentor involvement, student leadership, and policy change.
“Blueprints is our spring board to making our upcoming programs a success,” said Jafri. “It’s given us visibility in our community and people on the street trust us and know that we are providing a space and services to benefit the young generation.” |
