This week, Amina and Hafsa envision what their J-Corps reporting series will encompass.
In our LISTEN sessions last year, we asked for volunteers to continue to report on their communities. A grant gives us the opportunity to provide two of aspiring community journalists with training and professional editing. It also helps us better understand our neighbors.
Amina Rahman: I'm looking forward to learning more about the sources that I'm going to deal with and researching that. I started reaching out to a few people. For example, I reached out to Dr. Edward Curtis, who's a history professor in Indiana. He happens to have been born in Cairo, Illinois. His ancestry is Lebanese.
He did a whole book called Muslims in the Heartland. It's the history of Muslims in the Midwest. He came a few years ago to Springfield. He presented at the Lincoln Museum (ALPLM), and I happened to catch that. I asked him if he'd be willing to give comments, and I'm really excited to speak to him about that. And he said he probably could.
I've also been reaching out to members of the Muslim community that have been here the longest that I know of, talking to different segments of the community to see what sorts of things they would like to have covered. I'm trying to think about journalistically and making the program interesting. I know a few people who just have these really colorful stories talking about growing up.
There is a family who became Muslim. They accepted Islam, but they grew up in the community amongst immigrants, Indian and Pakistani immigrants, who used to wear a lot of bangles. She talks about how when she prayed she used to hear the music of the prayer, which is the bangles clinking, so she has a very nice way of talking about things and imagery.
I'm looking for those kinds of diverse and rich perspectives to include so people can get a picture because this is radio. What it's like growing up in Springfield as a Muslim in the past, and also in the present. Hafsa is probably a better person to talk about the present, and her friends.
Hafsa Rahman: I'm mostly thinking that with the topics we're gonna do for different episodes, I'm gonna talk about how the youth in our community in Springfield tend to see certain things, the way it affects us, or how it's a little different maybe for other generations in our community.
I'm definitely excited to learn more from people about the past of the Muslim community. I've known a little bit of it from some elders in our community that I've talked to. My grandparents actually lived here in the 70s. I've learned a little bit from them as they helped develop the community in Springfield, but I'm excited to hear all the different perspectives that we get to learn from.
Amina Rahman: People are excited. They have a lot of questions. You see them thinking about, "Oh, what is she going to talk about?" And I always ask them, 'What do you think I should include?' So you see them really thinking about it. They're really looking forward to it and kind of processing what sorts of things they could recommend to me.
Going back to what's going on currently, January is Muslim heritage month in Illinois. It started back in 2021 when the governor declared it as a historic month. We've been celebrating that. We just had two counties, the counties of DuPage and the counties of McLean, that did official proclamations on that. We had somebody from our Muslim community here in Springfield go to McLean County to receive the proclamation, be part of the ceremony. The people who attended those were actually also part of another group called the Muslim Civic Coalition, which is another source that I'd be interested in interviewing because they're a big part of our community here in Springfield.
They do a lot of advocacy for Muslims, not just Muslims, but they, they are in coalition with over 80 different non Muslim community groups as well. They try to do things like pass legislation on making sure different faith communities have their foods available. Different institutions, those are interesting things for me to talk to my students about.
I teach Sunday school in my community. I am a teacher as well, but I don't work as a professional teacher right now. But I do run the Islamic studies curriculum at the Sunday school. We really try to include community learning as well. That's another part of the story down the line, showing the connection between the Muslim community and the greater Springfield community, because that's always been something very significant in the history of the community.
Hafsa Rahman: I'm hoping to start getting the topics for each episode more planned out, getting to see who we're going to interview and how we're going to talk about everything. I'm meeting up at a youth event at our community center this weekend. Hopefully, I'm going to talk to a bunch of the youth in our community, see what they want to be heard. Keep planning it out.
Randy Eccles: We appreciate you updating us on where you're at. This is only the second week of this project. Thanks for letting us watch you as you go along.
Follow along each Friday through May with this J-Corps Audio Journal.
Press Forward Springfield is awarding its first project grants. NPR Illinois along with the Illinois Times and Capitol News Illinois are each receiving funding to report on different untold stories in our community. The three reporting projects will be posted in May.
Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln in collaboration with the Field Foundation and the Illinois Department of Human Services are leading this project as part of their Healing Illinois program.
NPR Illinois is using the grant to test its vision for community reporting and journalism training — the Journalism Corps or "J-Corps."
