SPOTLIGHT

ESLARP, in collaboration with the Community Informatics Initiative and Department of Landscape Architeture, will be supporting a Design Workshop and Seminar on Sao Tome starting this December.  This is the outcome of a collaboration has been growing for several years now between faculty and students from the University of Illinois and governmental and non-governmental organizations in São Tomé, an island nation off the coast of West Africa.

Professors Laura Lawson, Rebecca Ginsberg, and Lynne Dearborn will be the team leaders on a unique interdisiplinary design opportunity.  Participants will travel to São Tomé during winter break and work will continue throughout the spring semester.  Find out how to apply for the Design Workshop and Seminar.

 ESLARP in Action Blog

Organizational Capacity Building

Two to three times each semester, ESLARP organizes weekend trips that bring between 40 and 100 students to East St. Louis to help implement many of the ideas identified in plans and design proposals. Volunteers collect data for neighborhood planning, rehab and remodel for non-profit organizations, cleanup vacant lots and parks as well as provide landscaping improvements. In addition to course work and outreach weekends, ESLARP staff and graduate assistant support community-based organizations in a variety of ways, for example, through grant writing assistance, nonprofit training, sponsoring community leaders so they can participate in training and attend conferences,  review of construction documents and contracts and facilitating networking between community leaders and organizations with university faculty, staff and students at the University of Illinois and elsewhere.

Examples of Past and Present Projects:

•    CCP12 Clean-Up
•    Eagles Nest
•    Opal’s House
•    Village Theater
•    St Vincent DePaul Thrift Store
•    ESL Park District
•    Farmers' Market