Our current programs & projects:
“Is There A Better Way?”
Our flagship collegiate dialogue series that transforms campus debate into community solutions.
Community Canvassers
Non-partisan information gathering operation at the hyper local level, bridging the gap between voters and the ballot box.
Mentor Mentee Relaunch
An inter-organizational collaboration with Lake County’s A Safe Place, bringing back a highly impactful program.
Click the tabs below for more details about each program:
Is There A Better Way To Do This?
Rather than just endlessly talking about problems, we move participants through a structured, three part workshop arc. The program has a high degree of customization potential, offering an opportunity to design it to fit different campus’ particular needs and scope.
Initially, participants don’t need to agree on anything, except, that there is a better way to do “X”. After identifying sentiments and deep seated disagreements on a particular topic, we build out a “spectrum of agreement” and come up with novel solutions and recommendations for alternative ways to do “X”. The next part is interfacing with experts in the field, who react to the ideas participants came up with, while giving insight to their experience. Finally, participants will take the information they learned and create polished policy and procedural recommendations for change.
The idea is to get participants to see they can come up with policy and procedural solutions, and to start questioning the status-quo.
This program is being piloted at colleges and universities in Lake County and Chicago, Illinois. Are you interested in bringing this to your campus? Get in touch with our team by clicking the button below!
Community Canvassers
We deploy trained community canvassers into various neighborhoods, collecting data on what are the important issues in a hyper local area. One of the ultimate goals of this program will be to answer the question, “Why should I vote?”
By identifying the priorities of a voting base, CC can then do the work of educating the community about the decision makers with influence on that particular issue. Community Canvassing will not only serve as a way to understand what the community wants addressed, but also give us an idea of the impact our programming has after being deployed.
By gathering raw data on the concerns of a community, we are able to create a “Community Needs Assessment/Report” that empowers residents to self advocate, and provides local leaders with a roadmap of what their constituents actually value.
Mentor Mentee Relaunch
In collaboration with A Safe Place, Lake County’s only organization dedicated solely to the prevention of domestic violence and human trafficking, we are bringing back a highly impactful program.
The mentor mentee program at ASP provided young men with a safe, grounded role to be kids again. By pairing each mentee with a healthy male role model, mentors would model the kind of man these boys could grow up to be.
This refresh will start with a 1 year pilot of a more structured version of the program, with the goal of expansion in the future.