Abstract
The Chicago Conservation Corps (C3) recruits, trains, and supports a network of volunteers interested in leading sustainable community-based service projects. This project served as a developmental evaluation of the program, utilizing community-based participatory action research as a methodology. Collaboratively, C3 volunteers, partners, and staff decided to conduct a participatory media project, collecting feedback from a wide range of program stakeholders to address the question of C3’s greatest successes and areas for improvement. More than 100 stakeholders submitted feedback through videos, photos, stories, poems, and other creative outlets. Several co-researchers were then engaged in analyzing these submissions to find themes and stories that have since guided the implementation of the program. This study found that C3 successfully builds diverse, expansive networks and educates people regarding pro-environmental behaviors, empowering people to build and maintain sustainable communities. It also serves as an example of community engagement in program evaluation.
Highlights
IntroductionThe mission of the Chicago ConservationCorps (C3) is to recruit, train, and support volunteers as they lead environmental service projects in their communities (https://www.volunteermatch. org/search/org201584.jsp)
The mission of the Chicago ConservationCorps (C3) is to recruit, train, and support volunteers as they lead environmental service projects in their communities
At the time of this study, C3 was temporarily being administered through the Chicago Department of Transportation while a request for proposals went out to determine which local non-profit organization would take over stewardship of the program on July 1, 2012
Summary
The mission of the Chicago ConservationCorps (C3) is to recruit, train, and support volunteers as they lead environmental service projects in their communities (https://www.volunteermatch. org/search/org201584.jsp). Since the program’s inception in 2006, a vast network has formed, bringing together Chicago residents with a passion for environmental issues, teachers and students from Chicago Public Schools, city agencies (e.g., the Chicago Departments of Transportation, Streets and Sanitation, and Water Management), more than a dozen official partners representing the environmental non-profit field in Chicago, and innumerable community-based organizations engaged by the program’s volunteers. This group has implemented hundreds of community-based projects that have positively impacted the quality of life in their neighborhoods, but have addressed varied environmental issues including air quality; energy conservation; water quality and conservation; waste reduction, reuse, and appropriate management; food access and quality; climate change mitigation and adaptation; and a myriad of other topics. In other words by engaging volunteers and partners in creating a vision, C3 hoped the stakeholders would be more committed to carrying out the vision and not just leaving it in the hands of C3’s future staff, who were unknown at the time of this study
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