J-Corps / Community Voices

Team Rahman shares experience of being the first NPR Illinois J-Corps citizen journalists

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS | By Amina Rahman,

Published June 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM CDT

Amina Rahman, Hafsa Rahman

Amina and Hafsa Rahman completed their project as the first NPR Illinois J-Corps citizen journalists. Before the recognition dinner on June 17, we reviewed the experience with our mother-daughter team.

Links to the partners, video, audio journals, and the final reporting series are at the end of this post.

Randy Eccles: This is Community Voices on 91.9 UIS. I'm co-host Randy Eccles, and I'm joined by our first J-Corps citizen journalists. Hasa and Amina Rahman. Thank you for joining us, and thank you for the work you've done on your four-part series.

We wanted to get a sense today of how this worked for you since you are our first cohort of community journalists through the J-Corps program, which started with a LISTEN session we did last year at the mosque. You came forward afterward. You both indicated that you would be interested because we ask at the end of a LISTEN session who would like to continue to report out on their community. You both responded positively to that. Why did you respond positively to that?

Hafsa Rahman: As a high schooler, I'm starting to think about college and what I wanna do for my career. I have been interested in journalism for a few years now. When I had the opportunity to join that LISTEN session and talk about my community, which I know about, but getting to share about it with more people was interesting. I was glad I got to do that. Knowing that there was an opportunity for me to report more and start getting some understanding of what the journalism field is like was exciting. To be able to look into the field and get a hands-on approach to it from an early time, when I'm not even studying it yet.

Randy Eccles: How about you, Amina?

Amina Rahman: I enjoy the experience of hearing other people's perspectives on the community. We did one (a LISTEN session) with the interfaith community as well, and their perspective. Also, there is a big wave of Islamophobia, unfortunately, that's been ongoing for a while. It's been my experience that there are a lot of communities in Illinois where Muslims are very welcome. I wanted to show that picture to people who may not have large Muslim communities or who may not be familiar with the Muslim community, because it's been my experience that people are very welcoming. Getting to know each other is a good way to combat that kind of negativity.

Randy Eccles: One of the things we learned during the series is that Illinois has the highest Muslim population per capita in the country.

Amina Rahman: Yes.

Randy Eccles: Very relevant. It took a little while, but after the LISTEN session in 2024, but this year, Press Forward Springfield, the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln, came forward with this opportunity for a reporting project. They were looking for partners. They came up with Capitol News Illinois and Illinois Times along with the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield, and us. We found it a great opportunity to test our vision for 'community' journalists. We call it the J-Corps. The idea is to take folks who may not have a journalism background and provide resources to train them. To get them out to start talking to their community and report back what they're hearing. Fortunately, the Field Foundation provided a grant that allows us to compensate everybody involved. We also brought on Priyanka Deo to be the editor of the project. She provided a lot of information as you went through the project. How did it feel?

Amina Rahman: Putting yourself out there in the public without necessarily having the training is a little scary. I was excited to learn and to put my best foot forward. I relied on my essay writing and fact-checking skills. I have a lot of respect for journalism. I knew I was coming in here as someone who's not an expert. I knew I had a lot to learn, going through the process, and understanding the process of fact checking and double checking, and going back to primary sources to make sure that you represent the ideas that you're putting across correctly and the kind of impact that it can have if you don't do that. I got a whole new respect for journalists and what they do.

Randy Eccles: How about for you? How'd the process go? Hafsa?

Hafsa Rahman: It was also scary at first. It felt like we were jumping into something I didn't have any experience with — recording and doing all these interviews, trying to figure out our story. I'm glad I got to do it. It's a learning curve because you have to understand. Something I didn't expect was the amount of information you can collect, then sorting through it and trying to find the true storyline. It's hard to limit all the interesting facts that you get and put it into an amount that can be followed by a line of reasoning. It was hard to break down all of that and get to the real story, but it was helpful to learn how to do.

Randy Eccles: Four or five minutes of audio is a long time for us during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. That's a feature-length segment. When you look at the amount of text in a script and all the facts you want to jam into that, it requires editing, editing, editing. You must repeatedly edit to get it down to that core piece. Then ask yourself, "Am I getting across what's most essential that people want to know or will want to know once we get it out?" I'm glad you got through that process and learned about that. That's one of the biggest tricks. It was also one of the reasons we started doing weekly audio journals. It was to have you relate your journey as you did your research and became comfortable voicing what you discovered.

It's one thing to write a news story; it's another to have to figure out how to voice it. The important part is adding the interview sound from other people or the ambient sound of places. I'm glad you both had the opportunity to figure it out. What we hope in the future is to have more LISTEN sessions where people can identify that they'd like to continue to report on their community. If we secure significant funding, a longer training process like this is possible. If we don't secure additional funding, a more concentrated training to report on unheard parts of the community would occur — that could be rural towns, different political views, or different ethnic or religious backgrounds.

Thank you for getting this started. We're happy with how it went. Press Forward Springfield was excited, and so was the Field Foundation, and Healing Illinois has run these stories and promoted them. Illinois Times is not only running their story about the state of the Black population here in Springfield, but they're also running your Muslim community reporting. It looks beautiful with your pictures included.

Amina, you took a lot of the pictures. That was another part of this. It's, "Oh, I'm doing a radio thing, so I've got a report. But oh wait. I need pictures. I gotta make sure the audio works." How was it trying to figure that part out?

Amina Rahman: It was challenging because we were hesitant to put ourselves out there. There are people in the community who are shy or don't wanna be public. It was challenging to understand where we could take pictures, how to get permission, but we wanted to give a taste of our community to the public. So we made an effort to get these little snippets, visuals, and audio commentary from people, their perspectives. I tried to think of it as multimedia as possible so that people could have a little bit of an experience of what it's like to be visiting the community.

Randy Eccles: Hafsa, how about you?

Hafsa Rahman: Having all those different elements in one story and the different stories we followed, it was hard to choose. "Oh, we have to make sure we get pictures of this at the right times when people were around." For example, there were some pictures during prayer when we didn't wanna do it during, when there were so many people there, because we know there are also a lot of people who aren't comfortable being in pictures. It was hard to figure out, "Okay, when's the right time to do this to make sure we get the pictures?" Then we make sure we have the right audio to represent the ideas we were trying to display. It was a lot to put all of those elements together.

Randy Eccles: Did you get any reaction from either the Muslim community or the community at large?

Amina Rahman: I've had some of the people we interviewed, their colleagues or their neighbors or people they knew, mention to them, "Oh, I heard you on the radio." They were interested. Some people said, "Oh, I started tuning in regularly because it was really interesting to hear about your community."

Even within the Muslim community, initially people were hesitant to come forward, but as they started hearing the audio journals, they started to feel like, "Hey, I wanna get my perspective out there too." That was exciting because it is important to have people come and say, "Hey, what about this? What about that?" That was a great thing to see.

Randy Eccles: Did you get a reaction from classmates? What was it like in high school?

Hafsa Rahman: There were a few times where some of my classmates or friends were, "Hey, were you on the radio the other day?" I had to explain about the project, and they were interested. It was surprising to them that I was able to do this, for me too. "Oh wow, you have this big opportunity as a high schooler. " I had a few teachers and a few friends who were surprised. Also from our community, everyone was reaching out and saying, "Oh, you guys are doing a good job representing, you can include this and that." It was good to hear all that feedback. People were very excited to see this new idea come around.

Randy Eccles: It's helpful as a journalist to get community input. It helps you get the full story, hopefully. We touched on this in the audio journals, but not as much in the final reports. Tell us a little bit about your perspective on what it is like to be a Muslim in high school here.

Hafsa Rahman: Being a Muslim in high school in a less concentrated Muslim area, like Springfield and Chatham, is hard sometimes because people don't understand what Islam is, and it's less about people being rude and more about people not knowing the information about what a Muslim is. I become like a teacher for them to explain certain things that, for me, are simple because I've been living this way my whole life. For example, a lot of questions are about why I wear a scarf, why I'm fasting, or why I go to pray. Even though it gets difficult to answer those repetitive questions and sometimes rude ones too, it feels good to know that people are getting to know a little bit more about others in the world. I get to bring them that information even when it's a little difficult for me.

Randy Eccles: You're not just members of the Muslim community, you're also members of Chatham's community. Chatham went through a heartbreaking event during this time. Did you feel yourself being pulled to report on it at that point because of what you were doing? How did you feel about that?

Hafsa Rahman: When the accident happened, we were editing and getting our final episodes done. It was hard to see this tragic event in the community and focus on finishing the series. It was interesting to see the community come together in a different way that I hadn't experienced before. Even though it was a tragic event, there was so much support from people, for everyone, because it was so shocking, out of the blue. If we had more time to report on it, like during our audio journals, I would've wanted to include that. Unfortunately, it wasn't the right time.

Randy Eccles: How about you, Amina?

Amina Rahman: I have a mom's group, we text each other, and everybody was reaching out, checking on everybody. There were people in our neighborhood who were directly affected with their children, unfortunately. We tried to see where we could be supportive without being intrusive. It was good to see that coming together. There were also some memorial services we attended. I texted you while I was at one memorial, saying, "Hey, should I take pictures?" I didn't want to be intrusive, but I wanted to reflect what I was seeing in my community, that people were caring for each other, reaching out, being conscious of being there for one another.

Randy Eccles: We appreciate the pictures. That was helpful. It's difficult, but what we're hoping with the J-Corps program is to develop people in the community who can help us get the word out about what's going on. If you had to do something right now, report on your community, any stories you'd want to cover? Or would you do it again?

Amina Rahman: I would like to do it again. I need to organize myself a little better to do it more effectively. There's still a lot of learning to do, but currently, we're about to celebrate the second Eid. There's one Eid after Ramadan, and then this is the second Eid that happens. It coincides with the hajj, which is when people do their pilgrimage to Mecca, to pray there, and do the rites of pilgrimage. There's going to be a big event on Friday for the community with prayers, fun activities for the kids, then they do dinner. That's exciting for our community and it brings people from all over central Illinois, not just the Springfield area. There are people who don't have a mosque in neighboring communities. That would be something I would report on.

Randy Eccles: Hafsa, what would you report on? Or would you do this again?

Hafsa Rahman: I would like to do something like this again. I would have to organize a little better because now I know how I have to do certain things. I would definitely be interested in doing more about the Muslim community or the Chatham community. I don't think there's anything specific other than Eid coming up right now that I would want to report. It's interesting to see the community changing, and we found a little more insight on how it's changed from before we lived here to recently, with different national or worldly events, to see the different things happening in the community. There's always something that could be looked into.

Randy Eccles: You mentioned, you are a mother and daughter. That's a little unusual. We don't usually pair people up that way, but it worked well in this case. Did you do all right together, working through this?

Amina Rahman: There was some tension, but I think that's normal anytime you're doing something, and I don't know about you, Hafsa, but I put a lot of pressure on myself because I want to make sure I represent the community in the best possible way — meaning accurately, and make sure I get everybody's voices in there. There was a lot of pressure to bring that all together succinctly. Sometimes, Hafsa had a different perspective from me, which is fine. That's part of it, too. We had some strong discussions.

Hafsa Rahman: It was nice because it was easier to work on it, like when we randomly had time at home, instead of having to schedule everything. It was a little easier for us to collaborate. ,We have different views on how things should be done, or little arguments about what to place where.

Randy Eccles: It's tougher to collaborate, right?

Hafsa Rahman: Yeah, there are pros and cons, but it was a good experience. I'm glad we got to do it together.

Randy Eccles: We appreciate you doing it. What would you tell someone else who has a community they feel we're not hearing from, that might be interested in doing something like this?

Amina Rahman: I would love to expand this into other communities because part of our Muslim community is that we do a lot of collaboration with other communities. We're a small community, so a lot of our needs are similar to other communities' needs. We get to know other, community members who are not in the Muslim community. There are so many great stories, characters, and people out there doing amazing things. I hope that they see that, if we can do it, they can do it too. I would love to have their voices out there so everybody can hear what they're doing.

Randy Eccles: We're hearing back from the people who help fund the project that they're happy with it. Anyone to go to nprillinois.org and liten or read all the audio journals and the final reports. Thank you, Amina and Hafsa Rothman, for being our first J-Corps citizen journalists.

Hafsa Rahman: Thank you.
Amina Rahman: Thank you so much for the opportunity, and thank you to Priyanka too. She did an amazing job of coaching us and bearing with us, both of you, so thank you.

Muslims in central Illinois reporting series

J-Corps Audio Journals

Video

This post is part of the Healing Illinois 2025 Reporting Project, “Healing Through Narrative Change: Untold Stories,” made possible by a grant from Healing Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Field Foundation of Illinois that seeks to advance racial healing through storytelling and community collaborations.

After a recent central Illinois case gained national media attention, prompting almost daily protests, this project sought to engage diverse rural communities with information that brings neighbors together and moves us forward.

Managed by Press Forward Springfield, this project enlisted 3 central Illinois media outlets to produce impactful news coverage on the disparities and tensions within and among the region's diverse communities while maintaining editorial independence.

The citizen and student NPR Illinois J-Corps, or Journalism Corps, is a vision and project to identify and train people in communities throughout central Illinois to cover or increase coverage of under-covered areas.

Healing Illinois reporting project partners