Welcome to the Community Journal

Hey there!  Thanks for taking a moment and visiting the Community Journal website and blog.

For the CJ’s first introductory blog post we’ll tell you:  (1) who we are; (2) some background; (3) what we do; and most importantly how you can help.

Who We Are

Located in one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse communities–Jackson Heights, Queens–the Community Journal is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, integrating and empowering diverse communities through arts, community economic development and public education initiatives. Founded in 2006, the organization is completely run by a dedicated and diverse corps of volunteers. Without the resources of full or part-time staff, the Community Journal has succeeded in creating several high impact initiatives.

Background | What We Do | How You Can Help

Some Background

Jackson Heights is one of New York City’s most diverse neighborhoods. Dozens of religions are worshipped in Jackson Heights.  Jackson Heights is home to a growing population of young professionals and is also home to largely under-resourced new immigrant communities.  Jackson Heights is home to a vibrant Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community and is home to the largest Gay community of color in New York City. Six in ten residents residing in Jackson Heights were born outside of the United States, and 80% speak a language other than English at home (nearly 55% of Jackson Heights residents are Spanish speakers). Jackson Heights has one of the largest immigrant Ecuadorian populations in the city and the largest Colombian population.  These Latin American residents are supplemented by a sizeable South East Asian community, which has established a vibrant business district along 74th Street, along with longer-standing residents of Italian, Jewish, and Irish origin.

While our neighborhood is often viewed as a utopian “melting pot”, these broad linguistic and cultural differences do sometimes contribute to misunderstandings and tension between Jackson Heights’ residents. And although many effective community groups exist within the Jackson Heights community these organizations typically serve the interests of one or a small subset of the wider population.

Without facilitated interaction, appreciation and integration efforts between these groups, Jackson Heights can feel like a town of “parallel lives and cultures”. This result can be civically, politically, economically and socially hurtful to a community. Not only are individual residents losing the opportunity to benefit fully from the richness of one another’s contributions—the unique arts, foods, traditions and skill sets that have the potential to inspire and assist their neighbors, but the community and various civic groups as a whole lose an opportunity to work together and advocate with a common voice for scarce resources and needed services.

Recognizing that more work was necessary in filling this “gap” in facilitated interaction, appreciation and integration among the diverse residents and neighborhood groups of Jackson Heights, the Community Journal set out to establish programming that would meaningfully integrate diverse communities through arts, community economic development activities and public initiatives and help to coordinate a common advocacy agenda for neighborhood resources.

The Community Journal targets two-way social and cultural integration across the wide and diverse immigrant and non-immigrant community through community organizing, collaboration and programming. To us at the Community Journal, this two-way social and cultural integration—the activity of ensuring that our diverse populations don’t just survive within our neighborhoods, but become part of the actual tapestry of the community where they inter-relate with their neighbors on a level beyond impersonal day-to-day transactions–is a critical piece that has largely been unaddressed.   Our proactive and conscientious method of identifying common ground among diverse communities, selecting initiatives that help to educate, diffuse tension, and partnering with direct service organizations as a way to promote integration is a new, but important concept, that we feel can be replicated in diverse communities across the nation.

What We Do

Jackson Heights Film and Food Festival: Now entering its fourth year, the Community Journal’s Jackson Heights Film and Food Festival http://www.jhfff.com/> ) has become a signature event drawing thousands of diverse audiences to the neighborhood every spring. The Fest screens award-winning local, regional and international films at a neighborhood theater. Films are selected on their ability to both celebrate individual diverse cultures within the community, while also capturing universal themes to which all members of any neighborhood can relate. Film curators work with immigrant service and immigrant advocacy groups to ensure the film selection and audience outreach process is culturally and linguistically competent. Discussions with community members, actors, producers and directors follow the screenings. The “Food” component of the fest is known as the “Taste of Jackson Heights” and offers residents and visitors the opportunity to sample authentic cuisines from dozens of Jackson Heights’ best restaurants. The Fest commences with a one-day showcasing of kid-friendly animated and non-animated films for area youth.

Community Journal Multilingual Newspaper: On a quarterly basis, the nonprofit publishes the Community Journal, a professionally-produced free and bilingual (English and Spanish) newspaper providing coverage of neighborhood people, issues and events of common interest to various ethnic and socioeconomic groups throughout Jackson Heights. Recent issues have included an in-depth profile on a Jackson Heights resident, a Q&A column addressing common immigration questions and an article notifying residents of upcoming changes to an area park. Community members from a broad demographic spectrum write, edit and translate all articles and provide photography and graphic services. Neighborhood residents from many diverse backgrounds have claimed the paper as their own and have remarked that the paper gives the diverse and large neighborhood with over 170,000 people a “small town” feel.  We have decided to temporarily discontinue the paper because of the difficulty in maintaining such an ambitious volunteer initiative.  Going forward we plan to post articles on this blog and hope to have the hard paper up and running again in late 2010.

NYC Clean Streets Program: In 2007, the Community Journal was selected as a recipient of the highly-competitive NYC Clean Streets program, an initiative of the City of New York which provides two years of seed funding to exemplary community-based groups wishing to manage a street cleaning and maintenance program in their commercial district. In line with the Community Journal’s commitment to engaging Jackson Heights’ diverse communities, the Community Journal is concentrating Clean Streets funding on “The Gateway”, a highly-frequented intersection and entry-point to the neighborhood because it is traversed and “owned” by all residents.  The Gateway, located at 74th and 73rd streets between Roosevelt and 37th Avenues, is the only area with over a dozen subway and bus lines and a nexus where the East Asian, South Asian, Latino, Caucasian, Gay, Straight, under-resourced, and young professional communities intersect.

Customer Loyalty Program: The Community Journal identified a need to encourage residents and visitors to support the Jackson Heights local economy and to be more knowledgeable and intrepid about exploring ethnic markets and other local businesses.  To that end, the Community Journal established a customer loyalty program encouraging residents and visitors to explore and patronize local businesses. To date, nearly two dozen businesses have agreed to offer special discounts to Community Journal loyalty card holders, which can be purchased for $20. Program goals are to encourage a greater sense of social responsibility and connectedness within the community, increase local business sales, and provide a revenue stream to support additional integration efforts of the Community Journal.

How You Can Help

It’s simple:

Call 718-393-7711.  E-mail: communityjournal@gmail.com> .  Visit us at our office at 37-43 77th Street between 37th Avenue and Roosevelt Avenue.

The Community Journal is completely run by a dedicated and diverse corps of volunteers.  Whether you like to lend a helping hand, plan, eat, write, read, edit, translate, have fun, you name it, there is something for you to do!  So please get in touch with us.