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2024 SLP Cohort

From Circle to Community: Youth Leading the Way

Happy July! We are already halfway through 2025, and this time of year provokes a posture of reflection for me as I consider what we have journeyed through and what is possible for this second half of the year.

At our final circle to wrap up the 24-25 school year, KEY students, family members, KEY mentors, and NCO staff & board members gathered in a local park (pictured above). 

During circle, students were invited to reflect on their KEY experience from the past year. A common theme emerged from the stories the students shared. KEY has been a place for students to grow more comfortable with their selves, and in doing so, be more open to building community with their peers and others. This is a beautiful and important realization: the importance of having a healthy relationship with ourselves extends invitations for healthy relationships with others. 

A core part of NCO’s approach to restorative justice is acknowledging the interconnectedness between the individual and the collective, and the power that lies in a safe, consistent community that allows space for restoration and consequently flourishing for all.  

So on that Saturday afternoon, in the safe space cultivated by all of us gathered in Ellis Park, we remembered and reminded each other that it is right to take time to delight in the growth that we have experienced over the year. 

In that same spirit, I would like to celebrate with you a few more things going on at New Community Outreach as we lean into the summer! 

KEY Summer Leadership Program

This summer, 8 student participants, including 2 interns, are engaging in an intensive 7-week program centered around the planning and implementation of a community impact project, allowing students to further develop leadership and professional skills, engage with their neighbors in a new way, and understand their role in building a stronger, more resilient community. 

Our 6th cohort learned from various partners, including community historians from Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project; a social justice artist (Tonika Lewis Johnson, creator of Folded Map Project); a community organization focused on community development and beautifying the community (QCDC); leadership consultants from Admired Leadership; and so many more. They also sharpened their professional skills through learning sessions with the Chicago Bulls Community Relations team. 

As a cohort, they decided that an issue they want to address is the physical and mental harms of trash in their community. They developed a project that decreases the harms of trash by hosting a trash pick-up race event that culminates with speakers to increase awareness and knowledge about how we have the agency and power to make a difference.

After pitching their project to a panel of judges at the United Center (see photo below, left) and receiving funding, they are hosting their event next Tuesday, July 29, 11am-1pm at Washington Park (53rd & MLK Drive). You’re invited to join us! See flyer below. 

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Be Part of Something Bigger: Support Restorative Spaces This Fall

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This fall, New Community Outreach invites you to be part of something bigger—supporting restorative spaces for healing, reconciliation, and flourishing in the greater Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago.


Here’s how you can join in:
1️⃣ Become a regular donor – Your ongoing support helps sustain programs that create lasting impact in our community.

2️⃣ Grab your NCO Swag – Purchase new NCO swag (see below) & wear your support proudly!

Every donor who joins our campaign this fall by becoming a regular donor or making a donation will be entered to win exclusive NCO gear to keep you warm and show your commitment to community.

Your donation doesn’t just provide resources—it furthers NCO’s impact. Together, we can create spaces where every person is seen, valued, and supported.
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Rest, Reflection, and Restorative Work in Bronzeville

I recently had the opportunity to take a sabbatical to intentionally lean into a time of rest and reflection. I had a loose plan for this time, but I found myself reading a lot more and allowing myself to process my lived experiences through non-fiction reads as well as activate my imagination through fiction reads. One book in particular played an important role during my sabbatical, titled Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others.

In this book, there is a section that asks the question, is this [work/profession/job] working for me? It is both a practical and somewhat unusual question to ask of oneself. As the child of immigrant parents, I learned the importance of hard work and sometimes the need to just buckle down and get the work done. But this question disrupts automation, which I acknowledge is a privilege – to be able to ask this of myself and take time to think through. 

Coincidentally, a variation of this question – the idea of impact – is something New Community Outreach as an organization is spending time this year to more formally unpack, analyze and hopefully arrive at discoveries to ensure that what we are doing is in fact “working”, or making an impact in the community as our mission sets out to do. 

So this question posed to me felt right during my sabbatical, and I took time to unpack this question using scaffolds the book offers – what is the ideal benefit of this work for me and for those I serve? How does that compare to what is working for me or not?

The beauty of this exercise for me was the alignment between hopes and reality. I reflected on the ideal benefits for me: being part of something that is life-giving without it feeling life-taking and being fully present and presenting fully in the community I get to be part of through this work. And I crystallized the ideal benefits for our youth and neighbors as having increased experiences with things that are restorative (spaces, relationships, experiences), along with direct opportunities for healing and flourishing.

With the ideal benefits in mind, I spent concentrated time reflecting on what is happening at NCO, the stories we get to hear and the [feedback] data we gather.  I wrote out the ways our programs and events are connected to our mission.  And while I honestly assessed to what degree those ways are in or not in our best interest, I found deep gratitude in the alignment I not only felt but saw written out of how restorative practice is what we do as an organization and how we aim to live and be as humans within the organization. 

I feel that in our grind culture, the person can get lost in the organization/ business/school amidst the calendar, the tasks, and the systemic pressure of success. Knowing the big and small ways my team and I are not lost as well as the ways we intentionally prioritize each person we get to be in community with, I am excited to move into the remainder of this year knowing that this is indeed working for me. And I look forward to sharing the ways the work we do is working for us as an organization committed to the Greater Bronzeville community. 

Thank you, as always, for your partnership,

Sonia Wang, NCO Executive Director


P.S. Interested in experiencing a collective space in circle? Join us for our first Community Circle of 2025! See below for more details. 

How Community Shapes Us — and How We Shape It

This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a peace circle at one of our partner schools as part of our KEY (Knowledge Empowers Youth) restorative justice program. During circle, Hope and Kate, our KEY Program Leads and circle keepers, invited participants to discuss engaging in a community: “Community is a mutual relationship, we impact our community and our community impacts us.” We were asked to think of a specific community, a space where we are linked to others in some way, and reflect on how that community has impacted us and what we bring to that community.

As we shared about different communities – cheer team, drumline, specific friend group, Bronzeville – one student specifically chose their KEY community having been a participant for two years. They shared how KEY is a community where they receive love from their peers and adults in the program and a space where they can bring their leadership and share honest thoughts. Their reflection made me pause and think back to when we first met this young person – how we were once strangers and at times, they were even skeptical about this space where we come to reflect, share, and build relationships. 

Yet to hear them reflect on KEY as their community and the mutual relationship that has developed reminded me of how important these collective spaces are, especially during times when things can feel uncertain or when we feel isolated. Winters in Chicago can do that for us. Transitions in life can do that for us. Pervasive social issues affecting our city, country, and world can do that for us.  

However, when I have the presence of others, their wisdom, their love, and their struggle, I experience collective healing and purpose and forward movement in hope toward flourishing. I am reminded of how important it is to remember that whether we feel it or believe it, our presence in a space is felt as much as that space may have an impact on us. Mutuality is a beautiful undercurrent of humanity. 

Our youth are wise, and I am daily reminded of that because of the shared, safe spaces I get to be in with them. This mutual relationship is what gives me hope that amidst stressors there is always celebration, amidst challenges there is always joy. We find this in these shared, safe spaces. My hope for us as we begin a new year is that these spaces will become more plentiful and more frequently occupied by you and me. And that in those spaces, we are reminded that we are valued and seen through the interconnected web of humanity.

Thank you as always for your partnership,
Sonia Wang, NCO Executive Director

P.S. Interested in experiencing a collective space in circle? Join us for our first Community Circle of 2025! See below for more details.