A bilingual presentation and discussion forum of the Chicago LGBT Community Needs Assessment was brought to the public at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen Oct. 2.
The LGBT Community Fund at the Chicago Community Trust, in partnership with Morten Group and Southwest Youth Collaborative, conducted the event, which marks the second within a series of several data presentations throughout various Chicagoland neighborhoods, but the first done bilingually.
Initially released to the public at Howard Brown Health Center June 27, the purpose, as explained in the slides, behind the assessment is "to gather data about the assets, needs and challenges of the LGBT community in Chicagoland" and "to inform future funding decisions made by the Steering Committee of the LGBT Community Fund."
LGBT Community Fund co-chair Prudence R. Beidler moderated the evening, while Alicia T. Vega, the Southwest Youth Collaborative executive director, made opening remarks. Principal Investigator Dr. Keisha Farmer-Smith and Morten Group President Mary F. Morten then led the presentation of the data, followed by a question-and-answer period.
"The idea of the assessment was to explore both the strengths, but also focus on needs and concerns and ideas that all members of the LGBT community wanted to share," said Farmer-Smith, the current director of programs and quality assurance for Family Focus, Inc. "So that's why we worked really hard to make sure many of the community areas were represented. I would love to know more about strategies. What strategies are members of the community using to build resources, to get information, to navigate when they encounter a barrier? I would love to know more about that."
Farmer-Smith and Morten said that in order to gather information from the community, they approached people at various locations from parking lots to libraries to film festivals to Department of Human Services centers, saying there was a significant level of support from LGBT services and programs that support LGBT needs.
According to an accompanying press release, the project was conducted in two phases one including a comprehensive online survey of which 1500 community member completed. Phase two consisted of telephone interviews with more than 50 leaders in the LGBT community along with 15 focus groups throughout Chicago. Data collection for the LGBT Community Needs Assessment spanned Oct. 7, 2011-Dec. 22, 2011. The group's project team analyzed the results from January to April of this year.
Annalena Klein, an event attendee, grew up in the Boystown area and went to Chicago Public Schools growing up. She said that by being raised LGBTQA-aware, she came to the event wanting to know more.
"I love that they divided it by community," she said. "I've lived in a bunch of communities in Chicago and seeing the difference … when she made that comment about Humboldt Park it was really interesting seeing that our neighborhood, someone recognizing it's so different. Having someone take recognition that there are people in this community that need help, that's a huge thing. I'm hoping we can get more communities active."
Farmer-Smith hopes the presentations will continue to be well-received and attract an audience that wants to share views and ideas.
"People share ideas for moving forward and give the trust some support and some ideas for direction that they would like to see," she said. "How the data can be used, but also ideas for how the fund can be used—I think that would be awesome. It was a lot of data to analyze and I think that some of the best ways that you can learn and you can grow is to present the data to the community and then have the community give feed back on what should happen next."
The full report is available on Morten Group's website, www.mortengroup.com .
