It looks like what I’m attempting to make (a women’s center that is NOT affiliated with a university) is pretty rare. Either that, or they’re all really bad at putting themselves out there on the intarweb. The only centers that are both in Illinois and on the web are either a)affiliated with a university or b)dedicated pretty much exclusively to family violence/sexual assault issues. On the one hand, this could be good for me, because it means I’d be serving an unmet need. On the other hand, this could be bad for me, because it might mean that my perception of what is needed could be flagrantly off-base, or that there’s no funding out there for what I’m trying to do. It also means that I’m going to have to pretty much invent a form of wheel.

OK, now I’m going to start going through the questions.

Q 1: Who will the center serve?
I know the age group I want to serve: 13+. Hopefully I’ll be able to tailor the services in a way so that they’ll appeal to women of color in addition to whites. I also want women of different ability levels to have footing. Thus the question can be narrowed down to, what geographic community of women will the center serve? And that’s something that not only do I not know, I don’t know how to figure out. It’s going to need to be somewhere in the Chicagoland area, in order for me to get to it easily. Beyond that… well, it’s important to go where the need is greatest. How do I figure that out? What sort of statistics could I use to determine which Chicagoland community I should base the center in? At this point, I have no idea.

Q 2: Who will provide services?
It’s a little early in the game to be worried about this one, I think.

more to come later