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CHICAGO MATTERS

 
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EAR TO THE GROUND

2004 Mentorship Program

Casey Sanchez  

Casey Sanchez

Casey's Story:
T he Crib Collective

It’s not easy finding a commune in Chicago, but the Crib Collective is located in North Lawndale, a neighborhood few Chicagoans who live outside the West Side ever visit. The largely African-American neighborhood suffers more than its share of gang violence and crime. The Lonely Planet Guide to Chicago writes the community off as “one of
the worst in the city.”

But the 2200 block of South Keeler can defy most of the gruesome stereotypes about the neighborhood, as shown by a couple of visionary youth and the commune they founded.


Casey Sanchez
, 25, is the editor of Extra, a weekly bilingual newspaper distributed throughout Latino neighborhoods in Chicago. His work has appeared in the Chicago Reader, The Stranger, and Citylink. An essay on his former life as a fish slimer appears in the recently released anthology, The Clear Cut Future.



Mentor Profile

Catrin Einhorn

Freelance Producer and News Correspondent, Chicago Public Radio
 

Catrin Einhorn is a freelance producer and reporter in the news department at Chicago Public Radio. Her work has appeared on The World, Marketplace, and NPR News. Before finding public radio, she interned for Catalyst, a magazine that examines school reform in Chicago.

She lived in Chile from 1999 to 2001, studying national identity and globalization on a Fulbright fellowship, then teaching English. She graduated from Haverford College in 1999, where she majored in social anthropology and concentrated in Latin American and Iberian studies.

Regarding the Ear to the Ground Mentorship Program, Catrin says, “I feel privileged to partipate in Chicago Matters' Ear to the Ground Mentorship because it lets me help Chicago Public Radio live up to its name. Public radio has a responsibility to reflect what's going on in its community, but that's difficult in a big city like Chicago. We struggle to cover as many stories as possible, but we miss so many important ones.

“By giving mini disks and microphones to a diverse group of young people from across the city, the Ear to the Ground Mentorship program lets Chicagoans tell the stories that are important to them. Everyone benefits. The station presents new stories from a different perspective; the mentees receive training they can use in future jobs, community organizing, teaching, oral history projects, etc.; and I get the chance to think through challenging questions about why I do the things I do, to discover new ways of doing them, and to meet a fascinating group of people in the process.”

 

 
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