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Dear Subscriber First Name,
One year ago today we officially launched Cicero Independiente! We launched with a celebration together with our community on a beautiful summer evening with food, music and a documentary screening. At the event we unveiled our mission to create a bilingual, independent news outlet that brings together people of diverse media backgrounds to co-create local news coverage and provide information that is useful and necessary for residents of Cicero, Illinois. Our aspirations are simple, but important, especially in a working-class community of color like Cicero that is at the epicenter of several crises including the COVID19 pandemic. The need for strong local journalism in our community is more apparent than ever. In just a year we’ve already made a big impact. We’ve produced a total of 51 original stories, publishing about one article a week. Most importantly, tens of thousands of Cicero residents are actively reading and sharing our stories, sending us feedback and participating in resource sharing in our Facebook group. We also received grants from the Field Foundation, the Mccormick Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Crossroads Fund, the Social Justice News Nexus at Northwestern University, and the Community Listening and Engagement Fund. This funding allowed us to expand our capacity to serve the Cicero community and grow our team. Co-founder Irene Romulo was able to commit to Cicero Independiente full-time after receiving the Voqal Fellowship. April Alonso, another co-founder, was able to begin working part-time for us after pandemic restrictions were put in place. We hired our first community reporter, Leslie Hurtado and welcomed Sam Diaz, Luis Velasquez, and Abel Rodriguez through our new summer fellowship program. We’ve also been building a pool of freelancers, many of them high-school and college students from Cicero who have never reported before, who are receiving mentorship and also contribute stories. Our team is small, but mighty. If you love what we do consider supporting us by making a small donation today in honor of our birthday. At a time when the journalism industry is facing difficulties financially and struggling to meet the needs of their communities, it’s truly an honor to be able to do the work we do and continue to grow. We are thankful for all the people and organizations who have encouraged and supported us along the way. A special shout out to Tomas, Estefany and Jesus--some of the first Cicero residents to join the team as volunteers. Year 1 was great. Year 2 will be even better. Onwards, Ankur Singh Co-Founder (he/him) Cicero Independiente
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