Inside Connection:

New Generations Program:

High School Writing Projects
in Family and Community History

The Central Illinois Regional Planning Committee of the Illinois Humanities Council is initiating a new program to encourage high school groups in our area to investigate family and community history. High school teachers, high schools, or youth organizations are invited to submit proposals for projects that have groups of young people use research and imagination to discover the lives of those who come before in their families and communities and to bring their stories into the present. CIRPC will grant awards of up to $600 to help support the best of these projects.

Who is eligible to apply?

High school teachers, school administrators, or youth-group leaders from nonprofit organizations (churches, youth centers, home-school consortiums, etc.) from throughout the Jacksonville-Springfield-Decatur areas and the surrounding counties.

Applicants are encouraged to be creative in their proposals; a wide range of possibilities will be considered for funding. Highest consideration will be given to proposals for projects that:

• involve more than 10 high-school students;
• have a substantial research element: oral interviews, library or Internet searches, museum and historic site investigations, etc.;
• have a substantial writing element: oral interview transcripts, reports, essays, narratives, historically accurate original fiction, poetry, drama, etc.;
• have a focus on local families and communities;
• have some sort of public presentation: a booklet, website, community presentation or performance, etc.;
• will be completed before April 1, 2006.

• How have you come to be here, in the middle of the middle of the country, at the beginning of the 21^st Century? How are youa product of past experiences?

• Who are "your people," and what are they like? Think of your immediate family, your extended family, your ethnic group or race, your religious community, your geographical community.

• How long have these people been in Illinois? Why are they here? How did they get here? What features of their previous lives did they bring with them? What did they leave behind?

• How did these people adapt to life in Illinois? What new forces shaped them? What changes in language, religion, work, leisure-time activities, health, politics are a result of living in Illinois?

Funding Use

Applicants should make clear how CIRPC funds will assist with costs of the projects from materials, supplies, printing, public presentation expenditures (venue rentals, props, etc.), group travel, speaker honoraria, or similar expenditures. CIRPC funds may not go toward purchase of permanent equipment, salaries and stipends, library or museum acquisitions, indirect costs of the organization, prizes, food or beverages, expenses incurred before the grant award, or projects for advocacy or social action.

How to Apply

Applicants should submit a proposal of up to five typed pages that:

• describes the project in detail;
• explains how the project fits the criteria above;
• provides a tentative timeline;
• provides a proposed budget and explains how the CIRPC funds would be used;
• gives background information about the organization and those who will be administering the project;
• provides contact information.

Send applications to: Jean Ladendorf, Lincoln Land Community College, P.O. 19256, Springfield, IL 62794-9256.

Highest consideration will be given to applications received by June 10, 2005; applications received after that will be considered if funds are available.

For more information, call 217-786-2582, or e-mail jean.ladendorf@llcc.edu.