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​GET TO KNOW US

We are students of Township High School District 211 in Illinois

Our goal is to provide up to date news/information, trusted resources, and an all in all simple way to educate yourself on the basics of navigating this disease.

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​GET TO KNOW US Our goal is to provide up to date news/information, trusted resources, and an all in all simple way to educate yourself on the basics of navigating this disease.

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So far the progress on my civics project has been the planning worksheets, and discussing how we are going to go about the project so far.

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Over the past month, our group has gotten alot of brainstorming done and we have our main action plan ready to go. We are going to make a website for our goal in order to spread awareness, but we are going to make sure we focus on a particular audience so it actually gets viewed. Here is one of the conversations our group mates had:

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Over the course of the end of December and the start of January our project progress has been moving slow. We are starting to get our website set up and trying to contact various organizations to gain information relating to the virus to add to the site. So far, I have reached out to the CDC for information, asking and discussing major issues that would deal with community safety and COVID. Our main action plan is to create a website that centers around the key ideas about community safety and COVID, but not just hitting on what we already know. Everyone knows about wearing masks and social distancing so we want to go more in depth and see what other precautions can be taking to limit the virus from spreading. I will provide all screenshots of every attempt of outreach that my groups provides. One concern we have about the project is making sure the website actually gets to people so it makes a impact. Over the next 2 months we are going to work on completing the website and making sure we get it out and it doesn't flop. Below I will link the main links and statistics we will be using, Zack my partner has begun a template for our website and we are starting to attach links and resources to it, when we have a link available for it I will link it to this padlet wall.

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Explore your county through over 1000 indicators and nearly 100 datasets.

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The Cook County Reopening Plan for Offices Under the President (OUP) outlines OUP's phased approach to reopening Cook County facilities to employees and the public. Download the overview or the full plan.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and the Offices Under the President - the six bureaus and 34 departments that report directly to the President - began preparing for and responding to the global outbreak of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020 and President Preckwinkle officially declared a disaster for Cook County on March 10, 2020. As the virus upended residents' lives and disrupted our economy, Cook County government pivoted to working remotely while maintaining all essential government services.

OUP is now preparing to implement a phased approach to transitioning employees to on-site work in accordance with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's Restore Illinois Plan. As of June 1, 2020, the Northeast Region, which includes Cook County, has transitioned to Phase 3: Recovery under the Restore Illinois Plan, which allows businesses and workplaces to reopen by observing capacity limits and public health precautions. To outline OUP's phased approach to reopening Cook County facilities to employees and the public, President Preckwinkle's administration has created this Cook County Reopening Plan for Offices Under the President.

Highlights of the Reopening Plan

Senior staff return to Cook County facilities beginning June 15, 2020.

The first official wave of employees will return to Cook County facilities on July 6, 2020.

Employees working on-site will continue to comply with physical distancing standards and adhere to the guidance provided within this plan and any additional guidance provided by supervisors.

Cook County facilities will reopen to the public on July 6, 2020 and members of the public will be required to adhere to physical distancing standards and other requirements as directed by Cook County.

Entering County Facilities

All employees will be required to present employee IDs and undergo thermal screening.

Public visitors will be required to undergo thermal screening.

All public visitors and employees will be required to wear face masks and practice physical distancing.

Personnel Support

The Bureau of Human Resources (BHR) provided employees and managers with handbooks and online training before returning to the workplace.

BHR updated telecommuting, time and attendance and physical distancing policies to allow for staggered start times and alternating days.

BHR increased employee outreach and availability of employee assistance programs and telework training.

The Bureau of Asset Management (BAM) will provide PPE and other supplemental materials to employees upon return to the workplace.

Facilities Modifications

BAM added COVID-19 signage throughout facilities with instructions on how to queue, use elevators, physically distance.

BAM is modifying public service counters with plastic guards and other protections.

BAM modified workspaces, cubicles, conference rooms, courtrooms and other congregate areas to facilitate physical distancing.

BAM increased air filtration and sanitation schedules.

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Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and the Offices Under the President - the six bureaus and 34 departments that report directly to the President - began preparing for and responding to the global outbreak of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020 and President Preckwinkle officially declared a disaster for Cook County on March 10, 2020.

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Cook County Medical Examiner COVID-19 Related Deaths

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The Website Is up! Me and Zach have been working on adding information, working on titles and actually creating social media for the site, so we can gain some outreach. I will link the site here.(Feb 9)

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Our Website is fully operational and more and more information is being added each day. We also have launched social media accounts for the website to increase the amount of outreach we are to get with the website to insure it does not Flop. We are working on finishing up the branding of the site as well, so it doesn't look as bland and possibly steer people away from the site. We are continuing to add research and links to our site, however none of the contacts we have reached out to have got back to us at this time. The email to the CDC requesting more in depth information was no responded to at this time. If I receive a email I will update this post at that time. My partners are more so in charge of updating our social media, and when that becomes available I will also link that as well. We are making great progress, however, more than previous months by far! Most of our inner group communication is done through snap chat, which is difficult to save and capture and most of the time we forget to screen shot, but my group mates are sending their screen shots so I can also supply them here.

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What issue or concern were you trying to address through your work on this project?

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What issue or concern were you trying to address through your work on this project?

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The main issue my group was trying to resolve was dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic and the amount of misinformation being spread. We wanted to create a Informative source for people to be able to have 100% facts.

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The global goal that our issue aligned with was Sustainable Communities #11.

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Overall-What Would You Rate Your Performance on this Civic Engagement Project?

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Overall-What Would You Rate Your Performance on this Civic Engagement Project?

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I would say that my group meets expectations on this civic engagement project. Our goal had to do with awareness and the website we created definitely supplies information about the pandemic, but It falls short on the action part of the project. Due to the pandemic(and some of our parents) we weren't able to go out to spread awareness. We had ideas about presentations and fundraising but ultimately we chose to stick with the website. We had tried to get interviews with health officials and those also fell short and that contributes to the score I gave us.

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The main awareness issue that we contributed to was making our website. On the website we listed facts, provided graphs and information and overall tips on how to combat and stay safe during the pandemic. We provided an awareness for a virus that is affecting not only our community but communities basically all over the world. This action could actually have a impact on people who are confused and don't really understand how the virus works, or for people who are skeptical on if the virus is actually real or if anything that is actually stated to prevent that actually works. Also with vaccines coming out many people are provided with misinformation on that. Going through my personal Facebook I see a lot of posts by the older generation with a lot of untrue facts about the virus. With the older generation being at the highest risk for the virus it is important that we make sure they have the correct information and that hopefully that will allow them to make a informed decision about it.

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We attempted to focus on the population of people who still doubted or had questions on the COVID virus. That being more of a older audience. What needs did your service/agency try to support this population? My  group tried to support the need for correct and accurate information for that group of people. Correct information in that regard is a question of physical safety which is why it fall under our global goal, community safety. How did you gather your information on this group or agency? Who did you talk to? Where did you go? All our information gathered was either by the CDC itself, by emailing them or going to their COVID 19 prevention page. As for information on the group of people we were trying to connect with, I used experiences from talking to my older Uncles and Grandparents. Through discussion with them, I realized they thought the entire virus was a scam and they didn't have to do anything to protect themselves. We obviously saw a problem with this and attempted a solution(from home) that could service this population. One of our group members, Zack had a interview with one of his family members that is going to be put on the website to hopefully reinforce from a actual medical professional on the danger and awareness on the Virus. Do you believe your group/agency is successful in meeting the Global Goal that you set out to address? WHY OR WHY NOT? Overall, Yes I believe my group was successful in addressing our global goal. I believe this because our website provides awareness on the goal(safety in communities and maintain sustainability). A specific example would include the information on the actual website that is public and can be viewed by anyone. What is a way that your agency could improve its service to the community? One way that our group could have made a larger impact was through in person events. If we were able to do a fundraiser or a campaign in person I feel like the reach of the project would have stemmed a larger audience and made a much larger impact, but we were not able to. We could have addressed other issues of the virus, such as school and how that could open up safely. We could have also stemmed our information to different audiences, because I believe the younger generation already know many of the safety tips and providing information that they could have related to would have made a larger impact.

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How might your experience with this civic engagement project be helpful in the future? I think that this project has definitely made me more aware of trying to make a impact in the community. For example through emailing local government official's and sometimes actually getting a response made me realize that it's actually not too hard to make your voice heard in your community. This will be helpful for me in the future if I ever need to make my voice heard in my community on a multitude of issues that could arise. The actual action of trying to get out and help, I think too will make am impact on me. I have never really tried to do anything like this and I think going out and gaining information and trying to share it with a specific community is very helpful and really gives a sense of fulfillment especially in this crazy time we are in.