Samantha Dane

20 March 2015
Andrew Miller
UNIV 390
Archer Heights Action Plan
The community of Archer Heights has many assets. It is a median income
neighborhood full of families. The community is home to many activist groups, places of
worship, and small businesses. Many of the residents have strong cultural ties. Archer
Heights has a large population of Polish, Arab, and Latino persons. These subsections of
the Archer Heights population have very strong ties within themselves but lack ties
connecting them to the other cultural groups. Archer Heights has the assets necessary to
address the deficit of not having inter-cultural community.
On an individual level, there are two assets that will most help Archer Heights to
address this issue. One is the strong cultural ties present in the community. This will help
individuals to bring their culture and the very understanding of having a strong culture to
the relationship with other cultural group. The second asset that will help is the strong
neighborhood ties present in the area. Because the residents are there for a long time and
know their children might stay in the area as well, they are more likely to be motivated to
create positivity change.
Within the community there are several assets that I believe can help address this
concern. One asset is the large number and diversity of the places of worship. Places of

worship in Archer Heights include an Islamic center, several Catholic churches that offer
masses in Spanish, and a non-denomination Christian church. Cultural and religion are
often intertwined making these assets an ideal place to begin creating a cross cultural
community. Several of these locations have a community room or hall that could be
utilized for meetings and events.
There are many community organizations that can act to address this issue.
Several organizations, Arab American Action Networks, Latino Organization of the
Southwest (LOS), Social Service Assisting Neighborhood Arab American Development,
and Polish Highlanders Alliance of North America, are focused on one cultural group.
However, they all are focused on helping those around them. Therefore, these
organizations can serve as another point of collaboration and community building
between cultural groups. Several organizations, such as Southwest Organizing Project,
Southwest Women Working Together, and Archer Heights Chamber of Commerce, have
already come together based on geographic location.
Local institutions will also serve as assets for this issue. The parks in the area,
Archer Park, Catalpa Playout Park, Curie Park, Marquette Park, and Senka Park, can
serve as public green spaces for groups to gather. The schools in this area are diverse and
plentiful. These schools can work to focus on understanding other cultures through
curriculum and extracurricular programming.
Archer Heights is a diverse community full of assets. These assets, on an
individual, community, and institution basis, can be used to address to concern of a lack
of cross cultural community. By finding this communitys strengths, planning on how to
address its shortcomings can be developed positively.