Meet Our Grantee-Partner: ConTextos Chicago
ConTextos uses the power of personal narrative to promote healing and reflection and to foster critical thinking and dialogue.
ConTextos authors with facilitators Lisa and slm on the day of their publication event. Photo courtesy of ConTextos.
Mission: ConTextos uses the power of personal narrative to promote healing and reflection, and to foster critical thinking and dialogue. We seek to lift up the voices and insights of people affected by trauma, to challenge assumptions, and to provoke change.
In 2011, ConTextos co-founders Debra Gittler and Zoila Recinos launched a pilot teacher-training program at three schools in El Salvador, which had been identified as “the homicide capital of the world.” Their goal was to transform traditional, rote education into dynamic learning environments that promote deep thinking, engaged dialogue, and expression.
After two years of the pilot program, the ConTextos team had documented meaningful changes. Students were engaged in dialogue and debate about their lived experiences navigating the violence and trauma of poverty, migration, and gangs. They asked more questions in class, wrote their personal stories and ideas, read more books, and their parents were more involved in their education.
The findings from the pilot program led to the development of ConTextos’s Authors Circle (“Soy Autor/a” in Spanish). The intensive writing and social-emotional learning program is designed to foster healing and reflection amongst victims, witnesses, and perpetrators of violence and trauma. Authors Circle soon expanded from schools into juvenile detention centers and gang and civilian prisons in El Salvador.
ConTextos staff implement poetry into programming because it offers opportunities for personal expression in ways that differ from memoir writing and prose. Poetry leaves more room for interpretation, allowing readers to find meaning based on the context of their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. ConTextos shares writing from Authors Circle participants with teachers, law enforcement, and thought-leaders to help them learn about the sentiments and challenges facing vulnerable young people, and to serve them better.
In 2016, Gittler spoke about ConTextos’ efforts in El Salvador at an event in Chicago. Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart invited Gittler to implement programming within the Cook County Department of Corrections (CCDOC) as part of his vision for criminal justice reform. ConTextos adapted its Soy Autor program to meet the needs of Chicago’s violence and trauma-exposed individuals within the CCDOC system under the name “Authors Circle.” Programming soon expanded to partner organizations and schools throughout Chicago, primarily community-based violence prevention organizations.
Community advocate Trevor Lester and executive director Johnny Page at a publication event for young men who participated in a ConTextos Authors Circle in partnership with the Firehouse Community Arts Center. Photo Courtesy of ConTextos.
Receiving an Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation allowed ConTextos to continue creating spaces for reflection, interpersonal connections, and storytelling in the form of Authors Circle. It also helped fund programs operating out of ConTextos’ home base in Chicago, the artist workshop series, and the Emerge, Elevate, Empower program that includes open mic events, art workshops, and field trips for ages 16-24.
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