South Bend Recap
Food Information Networks (FINS)
FINS is funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant that is a collaboration between the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan. The goal of the grant is to thoroughly understand the barriers to access to healthy food, develop technological supports, and deploy and study interventions in two cities – South Bend, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan. The CIL interns focused on developing a community relations plan with the Rum Village neighborhood and building a foundation for the later adoption of a pilot mobile app under development by the research team. The interns worked with the Rum Village neighborhood association and other community partners to develop a Back-to-School event to build awareness of the FINS project while providing access to other services.
Incubator Farms
An Incubator Farm is a place where new and beginning farmers are provided with affordable access to land, technical training, and farm resources that offset the barriers that young, disadvantaged farmers face. The development of support systems like incubator farms are very scarce around the U.S, and almost nonexistent in the state of Indiana. For this project, the interns were tasked with completing a literature review and market research on incubator farms. Using the findings from their research, the team used ArcGIS to develop a color coded map of St. Joseph County which identifies assets for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and rates land for potential incubator farms.
LeadRx
Lead poisoning is a serious public health issue that affects the South Bend region. The goal of the project was to provide information and resources for lead poisoning, prevention, and intervention. To achieve this goal, LeadRx created educational materials in both English and Spanish while also revamping a REDCap questionnaire that will aid health officials in guiding patients through lead treatment and remediation. LeadRx also created a publicly available, interactive dashboard that shows areas vulnerable to lead poisoning. The project hopes to raise awareness and empower the community to take action against lead poisoning.
Neighborhood Planning
This project presented the unique opportunity for interns at CIL to collaborate with the Near Northwest Neighborhood (NNN), Inc. to plan the construction of Booker T. West Park at 715 Leland Avenue in conjunction with the St. Paul Bethel Baptist Church. By working alongside the key stakeholders of the project, tthe interns needed to make the vision and desire of the neighborhood a reality The goal of this play area is to provide children from ages 2 to 12 in the Near Northwest Neighborhood with a safe, fun, and educational environment to grow and play. In addition to preparing the site by removing debris and dead
NNN – Booker T. West Playground Design & Implementation
This project presented the unique opportunity for interns at the Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) to collaborate with the Near Northwest Neighborhood (NNN), Inc. to plan the construction of Booker T. West Park at 715 Leland Avenue in conjunction with the St. Paul Bethel Baptist Church. By working alongside the key stakeholders of the project, the CCI interns needed to make the vision and desire of the neighborhood a reality The goal of this play area is to provide children from ages 2 to 12 in the Near Northwest Neighborhood with a safe, fun, and educational environment to grow and play. In addition to preparing the site by removing debris and dead trees/shrubs and building a retaining wall, the interns created an implementation plan that provides a comprehensive summary of all of the work, research, insights, and connections that CCI interns have made over their seven-week work period that will be needed to continue and complete construction of the park.
Traffic Calming
Traffic Calming is the process of installing physical measures such as Speed Humps to address the issue of speeding in neighborhoods. South Bend has been compiling requests since 2015 to compare locations that have the greatest need for Traffic Calming. In recent years, due to an increase in funding, South Bend has been working to develop a comprehensive approach to record these requests. The interns created a WebApp based on ArcGIS that removes a large portion of the manual labor needed previously; therefore, requests will be processed at an accelerated rate leading to increased implementation per year.
Collaboration Partners
- 1Roof (Southeast Neighborhood Center)
- Church Community Services
- City of Elkhart
- City of South Bend
- Elkhart Community Schools
- Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce
- Hydrodigital
- Near Northwest Neighborhood Association
- NWI Food Council
- Rum Village Neighborhood Association
- Shirley Heinze Land Trust
- SOAR
- South Bend Regional Chamber
- THOR Industries
- Tolson Center for Community Excellence
- University of Notre Dame Athletics
- Young Hoosier Farmers Coalition
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