INNER-CITY MUSLIM ACTION NETWORK
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Mission Statement
IMAN is a community organization that fosters health, wellness and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts and operating a holistic health center. IMAN incorporated as a nonprofit in December 1997 with the drive of leaders directly affected by, and personally invested in, the profound sense of isolation and difficulty confronting low-income communities of color living on Chicago’s South Side. Since that time, IMAN has mobilized a cross-section of these communities to organize for social justice, deliver a range of direct services and cultivate the arts in urban communities. IMAN serves a diverse working-class community on Chicago’s South Side comprised primarily of African Americans, Latinos, and Arabs, as well as the broader Muslim community who reside in nearby suburbs.
About This Cause
Established in 1997, the Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) is a community organization that fosters health, wellness, and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center. IMAN arose in direct response to the prevalence of violence, poverty, social inequity and health disparities on Chicago's South Side, specifically Chicago Lawn, Englewood, and West Englewood communities. In 2016, IMAN opened a second office in Atlanta. IMAN employs integrative holistic interventions to address structural and systemic injustices through our Green ReEntry program, Organizing and Advocacy department, Arts and Culture department, Health Center, and Strategic Initiatives department, all of which serve to increase the quality of life for people in marginalized communities. Green ReEntry is IMAN’s multipronged holistic job training and leadership development program that provides transitional housing for housing insecure participants, cognitive behavioral interventions, life skills education, job readiness and career experience in a specialized area of the construction industry, workshops on substance abuse, and case management for formerly incarcerated/returning citizens, and youth on Chicago’s south side who are at highest risk of becoming either victims or perpetrators of violence. Green ReEntry equips its Participant-Leaders with a myriad of tools to allow them to break the cycle of violence and incarceration so prevalent in the disenfranchised communities they hail from. IMAN’s Community Organizing and Advocacy framework seeks to build power by strengthening relationships based on trust by facilitating programs that allow participants to learn each other’s stories, cultural contexts, dreams, and desires, which ultimately builds relational power and strengthens communities, individually and collectively. These efforts directly contribute to the success of many of the organization’s Organizing and Advocacy programs, its weekly Power Hours, and its various campaigns, including campaigns around immigration reform, criminal justice reform, and food justice reform. Our staff intertwines arts programming with all programming. Dynamic presentation and expression of the arts have been integral to IMAN’s work of organizing for social change and fostering health, wellness and healing in inner city Chicago since the organization’s inception. Through multicultural Arts Presenting, collaborative Community Arts programming including our Beloved Community Ceramic Studio, a dynamic Artist Roster and Sacred Cypher Creatives fellowship program, IMAN Arts & Culture provides vibrant, unique forums that facilitate radically reimagining the world as it could be, connect disconnected communities, and nurture transformative healing. The IMAN Health Center provides cross-spectrum care through primary and behavioral health services by a culturally competent and linguistically diverse staff. In September 2019, IMAN was the only organization in Illinois to receive the New Access Point 330 Grant award, earning IMAN the prestigious status of a federally qualified health center. The FQHC designation has brought forth the dynamic and immediate challenge to increase and expand services to meet the overwhelming need for quality affordable care to underserved and vulnerable populations. IMAN’s Strategic Initiatives department along with several community partners has embarked on one of our most ambitious community revitalization models in an initiative known as Go Green on Racine. The goal of this multi-phased development is to create transformative spaces that are otherwise lacking in Chicago’s long-neglected Englewood neighborhood. The first of these developments, The Go Green Fresh Market, opened in 2022. IMAN acquired and transformed a two-story facility into a fresh produce market and grocery store in the heart of Englewood, and it now plays a critical role in promoting IMAN’s larger vision of community well-being, local ownership, and economic revitalization, with regular artist pop-ups and other activities aimed at actively engaging with the surrounding community. Although each of IMAN’s programs was established to address different needs within the community, they are interconnected and seamlessly work together to provide a connection and continuum of needed and essential services to the community. Across IMAN’s programming, our work is geared towards addressing both the larger structural inequities as well as the equally important but more acute day-to-day needs of our community members.