The Chicago Project

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About The Chicago Project

The Chicago Project” is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that is dedicated to helping schools develop programs and curriculum that address issues of social class and race within their district.  The organization provides a rigorous, engaging, and thought-provoking curriculum and experiences to local chapters.

One such program is a year long course examines the economic, political, and social forces that create and maintain the disproportionate representation of poverty in the cities and prosperity in the suburbs within the United States. The course is a combination of one hundred hours in class and one hundred hours of field experiences in at least three historically poor urban communities, including North Lawndale Chicago (from where the project gets its name).

 

Goals of The Chicago Project

The civil rights movement started over fifty years ago when ordinary people were transformed by extraordinary events. In the same manner, The Chicago Project takes ordinary students and provides them with extraordinary experiences in the hope of instilling them with a burden to stand up for all people in their school and community.

Goals
1. To educate students on the history and current status of poverty in Ohio and the United States.

2. To help students understand the causes of poverty and strategies to support people and communities in sustainable prosperity.

3. To encourage students to examine their own attitudes and beliefs about poverty and prosperity.

4. To instill a passion for social activism in the area of personal and community development.

 

Origins of The Chicago Project

The critical need for an organization like The Chicago Project was made plain by acts of racism in the fall of 1997 involving students from two local schools. The first incident involved students from Greene County Career Center and Greeneview High School burning a cross on the front lawn of the National Afro-American Museum in Wilberforce. A short time later, a group of college students carried a mannequin across campus and hung it from a tree to scare some friends. The mannequin the students used was dark complected; apparently, the students failed to consider the racial environment this created. Furthermore, the school was Antioch University (only 10 minutes away from the Greene County Career Center)--one of the most progressive colleges in the Midwest. If any college was actively promoting racial tolerance and inclusion, it was this one. However, the event happened there. The incident powerfully demonstrated the need to educate and inspire a new generation of civil rights advocates and leaders.

 

About the Founder and Director

John R. Wilson

John R. Wilson grew up in Naperville, Illinois, lived in North Canton, Ohio and currently is a resident of Dayton, Ohio and a high school History teacher. Ten years ago the FBI showed up at his high school and requested to look at yearbooks. A small group of students from his school had attempted to burn a cross on the front lawn of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio. Shortly thereafter, a group of local college students at Antioch University hanged a mannequin with dark complexion from a tree to scare some friends. These students failed to understand the reference to lynching in their prank. These incidents, both occurring fifteen minutes from the high school, powerfully demonstrated the need to educate and inspire a new generation of leaders who will stand up for all people in their schools and communities.

 

In response to these incidents, John started a course at his high school entitled “The Chicago Project.” Initially he took students to North Lawndale, Chicago (from where the course gets its name), one of the poorest communities in the nation to pick up trash, paint houses, and to immerse his students in a community that was culturally and economically different than their own. However, a local pastor challenged him by saying, “If trash on the ground was really what is keeping people down here, don’t you think we would have picked it up already? Go find out what is really going on here!”

 

Responding to the challenge, John gradually developed a 200 hour course that examines how racism and economic disparity have been a driving force in the shaping of urban communities today. In the Chicago Project, students spend half of those hours after school and on weekends in classroom lectures and activities and the rest of the time in the communities of Dayton, Cincinnati and Chicago. While in the respective communities students visit organizations involved in all aspects of neighborhood revitalization. Ultimately, students must answer the question: What causes poverty and what leads to prosperity in a community?

 

The course became a non profit organization in 2003 and now includes presentations to church organization on Biblical approaches to issues of poverty.

 

John and his wife Michele hope to purchase a training center in Dayton to provide experiences for people living in the suburbs of Dayton to move from a model of charity to one of justice when encountering people experiencing poverty.

 

John can be contacted at:

wilsonite2009@gmail.com

937-760-7561