Our Work
CHIC has been actively working with community leaders tackling pressing but under-addressed issues in our neighborhoods.
We invite you to read about some of our ongoing projects — and also to see what we might partner to address in your community.
Mel Taing for CHIC Community Engagement Consulting
Everett CLHP — a program that became Project RISE
The Everett CLHP (Community Level Health Project)
Tackling problem gambling in BIPOC and immigrant communities
This project brought together stakeholders impacted by the Encore Casino to think about how to prevent problem gambling before it hurts individuals, families, and communities. The advisory board brought together the Everett Haitian Community Center, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, the Eliot Family Resource Center, Cambridge Health Alliance, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. CHIC acted as stewards and facilitators for the Everett CLHP through a planning process that resulted in key recommendations for funding from the Department of Public Health (DPH), Office of Problem Gambling Services. We developed the key recommendations through deep listening from expert panels, interactions with stakeholders in eight community engagement sessions, monthly conversations with our advisory board, and knowledge of existing gray and peer reviewed literature. From this year-long collaborative planning process, we recommended Project RISE (see below) to DPH and they enthusiastically accepted our recommendations for funding.
Addressing emotional wellness for immigrant communities in in Chinatown and Everett
This project is built upon the recommendations of our Everett CLHP report and focuses on addressing emotional wellness for immigrant communities through the lens of racial equity and access to culturally appropriate services. We recognize that to serve these populations well, we must strive to ensure they feel respected, heard, and that they have a sense of belonging which will require new, innovative thinking and requires a framework that is caring and just.
The project is two-phased, with time for planning and capacity building to prepare for the intervention phase. Building the capacity of community-based agencies as cultural brokers is central to this project. CHIC helps with the capacity-building of three community-based organizations. We provide tailored, site specific feedback for the organizational growth and development, including, human, financial, and organizational resource development. Now in the intervention stage, we are supporting three immigrant-serving community-based organizations rooted in immigrant communities to design programs and services that are rooted in their respective communities' assets, strengths, and resources.
Project RISE includes a peer-learning network among the three grantee organizations in order to promote co-learning of successes and challenges. We have completed the capacity-building phase and are in the middle of the intervention phase. This grant will end in June 2024.
Chinatown HOPE, 2022
Chinatown HOPE (Health, Opportunities, Possibilities, and Empowerment)
Activating open space in Chinatown alongside eight Chinatown-serving agencies
Chinatown HOPE is a collective of seven Chinatown-serving agencies focused on addressing emotional wellness through the development of a resident-led garden brigade, art and wellness programs in open space, and long-term advocacy for open space in Chinatown. The key stakeholders include Asian Community Development Corporation, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Chinatown Main Streets, Chinatown Residents Association, Chinatown Community Land Trust, Chinese Progressive Association, Josiah Quincy Elementary School, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway funded by the Healthy Neighborhood Initiative of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. CHIC is facilitating this collective. We facilitated and guided the planning, community engagement, and intervention development phases. We are continuing to staff the working groups and ensure development, implementation, and evaluation of the intervention. We are currently at the beginning of the intervention phase. This grant lasts until October 2024.
Civic Design at DS4si
Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4si) and Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (RIRJ)
Evaluating an innovative space for reimagining social intervention design
We are working with ds4si and Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (a regranting partnership between MassArt and the City of Boston) on a community storytelling evaluation project that includes an evaluation of a Civic Design course which is training artists of all backgrounds to re-think and re-imagine the design of social interventions. The course is one element of ds4si’s newly launched Design Gym, an innovative, physical space in Uphams Corner that is a community resource for artists, creative, and creators to have the space, resources, and connections to actualize their interventions and projects. The Design Gym offers classes such as documentary filmmaking, woodworking, radical imagination, and others.
PRX
Community asset mapping to build capacity for community engagement & storytelling
PRX incubated the Massachusetts Storytelling Collaborative to support the local storytelling ecosystem in Gateway Cities through partnership-building, training, and strategy development. They aim to support local storytellers who want to tell, amplify, and disseminate stories that shift and re-frame dominant narratives. We are conducting a community asset mapping project based on the experiences of local storytellers. This mapping project looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats different Gateway Cities face in supporting local storytellers and will offer recommendations to PRX for how to partner with Gateway Cities to support their capacity-building efforts around storytelling. Additionally, this mapping project will provide a framework for other media outlets for how to do community engagement for storytelling that helps to amplify stories that are not being told.
Asian Community Development Corporation and Pao Arts Center
Residence Lab (ResLab) Community Storytelling Project
The ResLab Community Storytelling project is a portrait of ResLab and the impact it has had on individuals in the program, the community-based organizations involved, and the broader Chinatown neighborhood. By looking retrospectively at four cohorts of ResLab artists and residents, this project seeks to illuminate the long-term/cumulative impact of the program as well as how ResLab has grown, changed, and evolved over time to meet the changing needs of artists, residents, and the neighborhood. The goal of this portrait is to contribute to both the arts and community development sectors and how these sectors think about the role and impact of artists and residents in artist residencies and neighborhood placemaking/placekeeping efforts. It seeks to illuminate how artists and residents can work together on socially engaged practices in a way that is truly co-created and collaborative, where the resident is truly seen as an artist.
Watch this space for more updates on our work as we continue to launch and build upon programs to transform our communities.
