South Bend Recap
Thirty-seven interns collaborated on eight projects alongside more than twenty-five community mentors from South Bend. They addressed issues such as food access, lead abatement in residences, and affordable housing. In a pioneering move, CIL joined forces with the City of South Bend’s Engineering Department, integrating the City’s interns into CIL’s program, which also allowed them to work on-site at the city.
dataMichiana
dataMichiana is a platform developed to provide civic data, maps, and interactive dashboards for the Michiana region, following the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership model. The platform offers geo-tagged open data for Northern Indiana and customized secondary data from national, state, and local sources. Each cohort of CIL interns collaborate with community partners to map data, creating useful layers for South Bend that focus on equity in areas such as education, housing, workforce development, and food access.
Food Information Network
To address the issue of limited access to healthy food options among vulnerable populations, CIL including Notre Dame faculty collaborated with Purdue Extension, enFocus, Beacon Community Impact and the Saint Joseph County Department of Health. The collaboration aimed to develop a technology-based food decision support to improve access to healthy food options based on user needs and preferences. The team developed an initial prototype of an application designed to gather and store user information and produced a comprehensive report on the sustainability of a hub model for physical food access.
Mentoring with 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend
CIL partnered with leaders and mentees from 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend to explore enhancements to their mentoring program. This team designed and scheduled 10 STEM-related events and assisted with a TechPoint Foundation 4 Youth Grant that will fully fund a robotics team for 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend.
Pre-Approved Building Plans
CIL collaborated with the City of South Bend’s Department of Community Investment, independent experts, and staff from Notre Dame to evaluate the feasibility of different housing designs on local properties. Interns designed site plans, financial models, and a wrote a report with recommendations.
Rum Village Neighborhood Traffic Calming
CIL partnered with the City of South Bend Engineering Department to create a unique embedded internship experience. Interns collected and analyzed traffic data, facilitated and presented at two community meetings, and developed a proposal for traffic calming in the Rum Village Neighborhood, which they presented to the City Engineering Department.
Safe & Healthy Housing- Lead Remediation
CIL partnered with the Notre Dame Lead Innovation team to pilot the lead mitigation solutions that 2020 interns researched. Interns created a framework for the Lead Remediation Kit, recruited 7 participants and implemented the remediation strategy three times.
Southeast Neighborhood Housing Rehabilitation
CIL partnered with South Bend community development corporation 466 Works to research housing rehabilitation best practices and create a process map for acquisition of homes for rehabilitation. 466 Works will be able to apply this process to future housing rehabilitation projects.
Urban Sustainability and Resiliency Project
CIL partnered with the City of South Bend Forester to modify the existing tree planting program application that included a distribution criterion that insured trees were planted in areas in need first. This team also started the process with the Department of Public Works to acquire three additional lots for new native tree nurseries.
Collaboration Partners
- 466 Works
- Bike Elkhart County
- City of Elkhart
- City of South Bend
- Elkhart Community Schools
- Enfocus
- Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce
- iNDustry Labs
- La Casa De Amistad
- Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG)
- Notre Dame Lead Innovation Team (ND-LIT)
- Riley High School
- South Bend Regional Chamber
- Southeast Area Organized Residents (SOAR)
- South Bend Venues Parks & Arts
- THOR Industries
Interested in our work?
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