by Lyndsi Barboza
Student achievement across Chicago’s southwest side is on the rise due to an exciting collaborative program that seeks to provide youth with the desire to learn and grow. And now, The Resurrection Project (TRP) is expanding that program to another school in Pilsen.
Established at CPS’s Orozco Community Academy, in collaboration with Local Initiative Support Corporation’s (LISC) New Communities Program, TRP’s Elev8 afterschool enrichment program has been a success since its pilot phase began in 2007. The Elev8 model was designed to enhance academic achievement by providing afterschool enrichment programming for youth, increase parent to school involvement, and provide better access to health care for whole families.
The Pilsen-based program touts over 26 afterschool programs that are facilitated by a rich matrix of partners, including Alivio Medical Center, Gads Hill Community Center, Seven Generations Ahead, and West Town Bikes. Elev8 provides participants with a healthy afterschool environment to build upon skills and gain new interests that support their social and emotional needs, all while promoting the school as a community space for the whole family.
Due to the “hard work of students, faculty and staff, parents, and community partners, such as Elev8,” says Ms. Paulette, Orozco Principal, Orozco Community Academy is now back to a level 1 school according to CPS Performance Policy Information released in mid-September.
The Orozco community has seen so much success in the past six years that TRP is now expanding the initiative into more schools across Pilsen. As of this academic year, Elev8 will begin offering at-scale programming out of neighboring middle school William F. Finkl Academy.
“We have seen the successes of Elev8 afterschool programs at Orozco,” says Ulises Zatarain, Vice President of Community Programs at The Resurrection Project. “Now we are able to take these programs to more schools, so that these schools may also experience the success Orozco has had over the past 5 years.”
In addition to physical expansion efforts, TRP is expanding program components to reach a greater breadth of the academic population by implementing early childhood education programming and facilitating primary and secondary transitions to improve student outcomes. By aligning curricula and creating teacher exchanges between receiving middle school and primary school as well as between receiving high school and feeder middle school, TRP will coordinate the development of new teaching and learning standards across academic bridges. TRP and partner organizations have been utilizing a data-heavy tracking and analysis system to better understand transition trends between these two critical education points.
“The idea,” explains Zatarain, “is to create a performance-based model of programming that we will be able to see the benefits of over time through tangible measures, like high school graduation and college matriculation.”
The ultimate goal of The Resurrection Project’s education enhancement efforts is to improve student programming and parent participation in order to achieve an increase in student academic and social-emotional preparedness, matriculation rates, and school performance.
In the long-term, realizing these successes will result in safer, more stable, and economically thriving communities.

Return to Nueva Vida October 2013 here.