BY JENNIFER MALAT

As we look forward to the symposium on March 1, I have been reflecting on the lessons from prior symposia. Last year, Yvette Simpson gave the keynote address. She explained that the journey to justice is neither a sprint nor a marathon. Instead, it is a relay in which we work with others to achieve our goals. Different people will carry the baton at various points in the journey. Her point resonates on many levels. For The Cincinnati Project, it reminds us that we have a specific role to play in our city. We should take the baton when the particular skills and resources of a university are needed. Others can rest and regroup knowing that they can rely on us for our part. We’re pleased to be trusted to help move the team forward.

Other important lessons have come from symposia. Two years ago, Patricia Hill Collins attended the conference as the keynote speaker. She responded to a presentation by asking how the UC researchers understand and manage their expertise and the expertise of the community members with whom they work. The discussion that followed was valuable, but time was too short to fully address the multiple layers of the question. It inspired us to organize a panel the following year entitled, “Power, Progress, and Partnerships” in which we spent an hour engaging with these questions. Christina Brown moderated a panel that included Iris Roley, Jeniece Jones, Shaunak Sastry, Farrah Jacquez, and Brian Calfano. Representing a variety of points of view, the panelists discussed how they manage power differences, which may change at different points in a project, and come together for a successful outcome.

I look forward to the lessons of this year’s symposium. We will hear from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and community activists. A panel will discuss objectivity and scholar-activist work; another will describe partnerships from first meeting to policy change; we will hear about completed research projects; and we will conclude with a call to action from women of color who are activists in Cincinnati. Their call follows a year of The Cincinnati Project amplifying the voices of women of color in Cincinnati with the exhibit “What Is and What Can Be: Women of Color and the Struggle for Justice in Cincinnati.” (The exhibit will be on display in TUC in the two weeks before the symposium. Check it out!)

Please join us for this year’s symposium. We are grateful for the lessons of each year’s symposium. We look forward to the insights that emerge this year.

BY LEYLA ASHRAF

Dr. Sara Williams, Scott Stoll, Dr. Farrah Jacquez, Dr. Carlie Trott, and a group of 14 University of Cincinnati students partnered with Parker Woods Montessori to implement and assess Dream It! A Playbook to Spark Your Awesomeness. The Dream It! Playbook was created by Dr. Sara Williams and Scott Stoll with the intention to teach children to become more aware of their dreaming capabilities. The goal of the UC student facilitators was to collect data from the participants from Parker Woods Montessori and track their dreaming progress through a pre/post survey, each chapter of the Dream It! Playbook, and a survey made specifically for this study. The study occurred over a nine-week period. Each week, throughout each meeting and chapter covered, we saw growth in mindset and hopefulness in most participants.

University of Cincinnati facilitator, Zoe Brown, poses with her token of appreciation made for her by a student in her group.

Having not worked with kids before, I had no idea what to expect. I remember being nervous before walking in on the first day of facilitating, but having that feeling be replaced by excitement as soon as I entered the room. All of the kids were happy to see us and to begin the Dream It! Playbook.

By the end of the program, each child in my group would volunteer to read out loud, which was something they struggled with in the beginning. They were always open to sharing their thoughts and dreams with the group. A lot had changed since the first day, for them and for me. After working together for nine weeks, a bond had been formed. On the last day of facilitating, one of my students told me she “wished she could put me in her pocket, so I could always go to school with her.”

The book’s authors, student facilitators, and professors after their Dream It! presentation at Parker Woods Montessori.

When presented with the course description a couple weeks before starting, I hesitated. Looking back now, I feel lucky to have been a part of this amazing study. Through this, I was able to work alongside many passionate people who all had the goal of supporting the children’s development. Working collaboratively on this created many great friendships and memories. I will always be grateful for this experience, the people I met along the way, and the impact it had at Parker Woods Montessori.

Women of color provide important leadership in the city of Cincinnati, working in all sectors and volunteering their time for a better Cincinnati. At the same time, women of color face a multitude of challenges, including an alarmingly high poverty rate, high rates of health problems, and other inequities.

At The Cincinnati Project, we have begun a new initiative in 2018, funded by the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, to raise up the stories from women of color as well as to reduce poverty and other disadvantages face by women of color. Working with community partners, we have launched a set of projects designed to benefit women of color either directly or by supporting the work of other groups with this goal.

Some of the projects will lift up the voices of women of color to tell success stories and describe obstacles to equality. Business owners and activists and women isolated by poverty will be featured in these projects. Other projects will help ongoing efforts to improve women of color’s lives. For example, an urban societies class will collect information that will help Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) reduce evictions in Cincinnati, a problem that greatly affects women of color. Another class will work to promote a business owned by a black woman, improve communication among neighborhood community councils, and help the Child Poverty Collaborative achieve their goals. Finally, our initiative will benefit from the research for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In this project, a group of professors is evaluating data on city employees for a study of gender, race, and other potential forms of inequality as a first step in the CEDAW process.

Because we do not want this research to sit on the shelf, we are making plans to bring it to the public. We have a design team who will synthesize this work and match it practical information. For example, women’s stories of activism and starting businesses will be shared in public spaces—we are still working on where and how—along with information about how to organize in your community or start a business. Look for more about this phase of the project during the summer.

All of this work will be completed and shared in 2018. We won’t stop doing other projects, but the projects partnered with women of color will allow us to focus efforts to demonstrate the power of coordinated efforts. We hope that our projects will support the efforts of All-In Cincinnati, the Child Poverty Collaborative, HOME, and other groups working on policy change and providing services that disproportionately support women of color.