A coalition of passionate East St. Louis residents have banded together through WePower to launch Elevate ESTL, a campaign aimed at bringing quality jobs for residents to the city.
WePower is an organization that works to engage communities for social change by providing education and other resources for activists, entrepreneurs and change makers.
Elevate ESTL has three main missions: persuade East St. Louis City Council to pass a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance; that the city and newly formed Community Committee develop and monitor a first-source hiring program, and to establish local hiring requirements that developers must follow.
Group members, many of whom are lifetime residents, took time this year to survey residents and take the pulse on what is needed to create economic development. Their findings can be boiled down to a few simple words: Access to safe, quality jobs and job training located in East St. Louis.
Debra Wiley is part of WePower and worked on collecting that information.
“We had 110 responses on our survey and heard from over 150 community members over the course of our campaign,” she said.
“We had to ask questions — one was ‘How would you describe the economic opportunities in East St. Louis?’
“Eighty percent of the people said there are few jobs and no economic opportunities in East St. Louis. That’s why we decided on this campaign.”
In addition, 68% of respondents ranked lack of jobs as the number one barrier to improving their economic standing.
Danielle Washington is one of the campaign’s coordinators. She said their first step is lobbying the City Council to pass a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance, which will require future development agreements to be negotiated and approved by a Community Committee.
The negotiation will work to ensure the developer brings accessible jobs to the city, and keeps them there.
“The residents should always have the first say and option to apply because we are the ones paying taxes and voting,” she said.
Kamina Loveless, the campaign’s other coordinator, said this data was collected both before and after the coronavirus pandemic, with a substantial amount of surveying done in one-on-one.
“We were actually able to go out and canvas in the neighborhood, and we created these small campaigns and that’s where we got most of our data from,” she said.
“And the other half came from Census points … and so collectively we’ve come up with all these wonderful ways to collect data from people right here in the city. “
Alice Moore, who has lived in East St. Louis since 1961, is also part of the effort to bring jobs, economic development and opportunity to the city.
“These past seven, eight, nine months have truly been a fascinating learning experience,” Moore said.
She added: “It’s just fascinating to watch a program in its infancy grow into early adulthood with a concept that can bring economical improvement to East St. Louis.”
As of right now, the campaign will work to get City Council to pass the ordinance. The organization is conducting a letter-writing campaign and asks supporters to visit wepowerstl.org/elevate-estl to participate. A virtual meeting to discuss more about the campaign and its goals is scheduled for 5 p.m. Dec 2.
To register for the Dec. 2 meeting, visit bit.ly/elevateestlstrategy.