Reflection #2

Our plans for the semester started out as we would be working with Daizjah from Heartlands but collaborating with JJK as well with the data we collect. We planned to make surveys and make informational flyers to hand out to community members to educate the community, as well as collecting data on what trees they preferred to see and what interests they had in trees. The event we were going to attend and hand these out at is a Saturday football game at JJKFan so we could connect with the East St.Louis community and family. We also planned on attending a community event that Heartlands was planning which was going to be in East St.Louis, with the main focus on getting community members to care about be involved with trees as well as trying to recruit people for our tree equity project. This tree equity project is a project that Daizjah was managing in which they were trying to get community members to do a paid volunteer job of planting trees in the community. We wanted to help recruit members but also get feedback on what type of trees they want to plant. At this event they also wanted to encourage the community to plant their own trees in their yard. The last event we planned for was to attend a meeting with Daizjah and the East St.Louis government board, so we could express our concerns and importance of trees being implemented in the city.  I think these are still our plans but our project feels very delayed. Something that changed was that we haven’t went on our site visits with Daijzah, which I felt was a key step for the development of our project and our understanding of trees. Also, we went to the archives to meet Daijzah and we went through East St.Louis government archives to learn more about the past of East St.Louis laws and implementations. We found a lot of interesting information to share with the East St.Louis board because before they had a tree implementation plan. A lot of our project is us waiting until the city approves our plans. I hope to do all of the plans for our project and see trees actually planted in East St.Louis. I hope to be able to volunteer and plant trees as well as connect with the community and hear their point of view on trees. What I have been enjoying was definitely the archival research because I thought it was interesting to look back on the history of East. St.Louis and make connections to explain why the town is the way it is currently. I don’t like the uncertainty of the project, because we do not know when the project will get approved. We are sitting around waiting which is good as a break, but not enjoyable when I am interested in the evolution of our project. I think these experiences will make me be more patient in upcoming research as well as understand how systems work better.