Community Capacity Project

Prof. Chris Tirres and Dr. Olya Glantsmann, along with graduate assistants, Safa Assad, Chris Camilleri, Yesenia Garcia-Murillo and Wendy de los Reyes Moore, worked to hold focus groups and intensive discussions with community organizations in Chicago. They worked to identify the community groups’ assets, barriers that kept them from doing their work well, and possible points of collaboration with DMC. Working with eighteen different community organizations, the ComCap investigators looked at a number of factors, human, organizational, legal, technical and community support, in order to complete their report They identified a number of strengths, but also needs ranging from a lack of finances to rapid staff turnover, from language resources to a lack of space, from a need for mental health services to better technical coordination.