Chavez Day: Developing Relationships and Building Community in a Diverse Urban Environment

Cesar Chavez Day of Service has developed over the last three years as a signature program for Northeastern Illinois University and the North River region of Chicago. A Hispanic Serving Institution, Northeastern has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the most diverse public institution in the Midwest.

Planning for Chavez Day is done collaboratively with community organizations and schools in and around the Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, a diverse community on the Northside of the city that serves as a gateway community for immigrants from around the world. Given Chavez’s link with agriculture it was decided by the organizers of the first Chavez Day program in 2013 that strong focus would be placed on urban agriculture.

The core planning group for Chavez Day for the last there years has included (in addition to Northeastern) the North River Commission, which serves as the lead organization for community and economic development for the north river area of Chicago and includes more than 100 civic organizations, businesses, and institutions; the Peterson Garden Project, which coordinates eight urban gardens on Chicago’s Northside, and Roosevelt High School, which is located in the heart of the Albany Park neighborhood. Though other organizations and schools have been involved in different years these four organizations have been the key contributors in the ongoing development of Chavez Day of Service program.

Decision making on what projects to focus on and what organizations to involve are made collaboratively and take into the consideration the needs of the community, the types of learning activities that might be provided for participants, and the needs of the partner organizations.

The university’s new community garden, NEIUGround, again served as one of the volunteer service sites for Chavez Day 2015. The garden, which opened in the spring of 2014, was developed through partnerships that were nurtured through the 2013 Chavez Day Program and community involvement in the Reimagining Food initiative developed through a partnership between Northeastern’s College of Arts & Sciences and Division of Student Affairs.

Chavez Day volunteers also made a return visit to the Global Gardens Refugee Training Farm in Albany Park which participated in the 2013 Chavez Day program. The site for this training farm was originally a vacant lot that has been turned into a productive garden where refugee families are growing fresh vegetables for home consumption and earn supplemental income through sales of produce to local businesses. The training farm also provides opportunities the farmers to improve their English language skills.

New in 2015 were service opportunities in a local city park. These opportunities were developed in response to the loss of hundreds of ash trees throughout the North River Area from Emerald Ash Borers and are a direct result of partnerships developed between the university and the North River Commission’s Environment Committee. Projects are designed to raise awareness in the community of the impacts of the Ash Borer infestation and to support the health of the remaining trees.  One of the many positive results of these new service opportunities was the addition of two more partners, Open Lands, one of the oldest metropolitan conservation organizations in the nation, and the Chicago Park District. 

Though we have had our stumbles and growing pains along the way the Chavez Day planning process has had a significant impact in helping the organizations involved to identify new ways to work together across organizational lines and contributed to the development of innovative programs. Just as important the planning process has helped the university revisit its relationships with the surrounding community and the city.