A text-based community hotline that gives residents on the West Side accessible information about neighborhood events and resources was launched last week.
The Westside Community Network was launched Thursday, an expansion of the Garfield Park Community Hotline, come from Fresh Supply, a nonprofit participatory learning organization.
People can text “HEY” to the number 872-814-6336 to subscribe, and after the name and age of the resident is confirmed, the network will send information subscribers choose, including community news, local events and community hubs to explore. They can also subscribe to a digital forum for residents to offer ideas on how to improve communities on the West Side of Chicago.
Fresh Supply, an organization focused on creating reform in communities through equitable technologies, launched the Westside Community Network, an SMS service, through the collaboration of students in the non-profit’s flagship summer program that includes 22 students from Al Raby High School and Chicago Tech Academy.
Jasmine Jones, co-founder and executive director of Fresh Supply, said she has worked with students in the program since its debut in 2022. Jones, who also works as a physics teacher at Al Raby High School, said that students are very qualified to develop the technology for the Westside Community Network.
“Students are able to articulate some of the issues in a community very well,” Jasmine said. “They have rich funds of knowledge from their own experiences, but oftentimes, students and young people in general aren’t positioned in ways that are transformative…at Fresh Supply, we want to seed something new…we believe that our young people are the investment.”
Throughout the summer, the Fresh Supply students learned about Chicago’s digital divide and how to develop solutions to create digital justice.
The digital divide in Chicago refers to the connectivity gaps that exist in Chicago’s South and West Sides, which include communities that are most impacted by digital disparities.
For example, a study from the Chicago Digital Equity Council, published in January 2023, reported that about “172,000 Chicago households (over 15%) don’t have internet at home, and nearly 92,000 (roughly 8%) don’t have any device.” The makeup of Chicago’s 10 least connected neighborhoods, it showed, is 72% Black and 25% Latino with an average median household income of about $35,000.
David Jones II, co-founder and president of the board of directors at Fresh Supply, said that he hopes the Westside Community Network will highlight the need for legislation that improves the digital disparities in the Chicago’s West Side communities. One of the main goals for the network is to provide accessibility to information for households that may lack an internet connection, he said.
“We do hope to impact and influence policy at that level so that things can change more systemically,” Jones said. “[The Westside Community Network] is not an end-all be-all…but it is a tool now for us, as an organization, the organizations represented with it now in our community hubs, the students and young people who are influencing the decisions and the outcomes of what it looks like – that’s real community. If we can find ways to start communicating better, creating better accessibility points for people to tap in…now were basically tunneling the internet to them.”
The students who participated in the summer program visited multiple organizations and nonprofits across the city to learn about their needs and how the network can bridge the communication gap between the organizations and the people that they aim to serve.
Jones said that contributions from students were invaluable to the Westside Community Network. Including students was necessary as they are impacted by technology often, he added. For example, Terron Smith, a student from Chicago Tech Academy, offered insight on the wording for the text messages that helped shape the hotline.
“If we’re going to have real progress and growth in a community, the effort to do that has to be inter-generational,” Jones said. “The world around us is changing and being shaped so rapidly by technology and tech systems that are most impacting our young people…we need to make sure that we center those that are being most impacted, those who are most vulnerable at the table to be able to help us to make decisions on how these things actually manifest in real life.”