When Weinberg sophomore Asha Mehta found herself disheartened by the lack of time and resources she had as a college student to make an impact on issues under threat by the Trump administration, she shared these frustrations with her friends at the end of Winter Quarter.
She realized many of them shared her sentiments. The issue was not that people didn’t want to make a change, but rather that they didn’t know how to find a good cause to support that could make a visible change, she said.
In late April, she and her friends at Northwestern launched Five for Good, an activist network empowering people to make local change in the Chicago area. Together, they assessed what issues in the news are most pressing and surveyed what issues people in the Chicago area specifically care about.
The group decided to focus on five main issues: sustainability, safety of LGBTQ+ youth, migrant rights, living essentials for all and healthcare accessibility.
The group’s goal is for Chicago area residents — including students — to donate $5 to a local organization and dedicate five hours toward volunteering each month to mobilize effective changemaking. Five for Good evaluates potential organizations by how local they are, how many people their mission impacts and how direct the impact is.
“We’re not super as much of a politically-motivated group as we are (a) social welfare, social goodness-motivated group,” Mehta said. “But these are all five causes that are threatened under the Trump administration and generally threatened in our current day.”
The nascent group announced their first organization to collect donations for this weekend: The Chicago Refugee Coalition. Mehta said Five for Good plans to announce new organizations to collect donations for on a monthly cycle.
The group will also post about different volunteer opportunities and organize ride shares to get to volunteer events. Currently, Five for Good has an “activist map” on their website which details over a hundred local volunteer opportunities. Five for Good also plans to post about rallies, protests and marches on social media for members to attend.
“Initially it was just going to be $5 a month, and then I was talking to friends, and then they were saying it could be nice to have there be a more personal side, to have people be able to meet each other and also volunteer in person,” Mehta said.
McCormick sophomore Maria Ziegler, head of recruitment and marketing for Five for Good, said that, like Mehta, she felt helpless against the Trump administration and wasn’t sure how else she could educate people beyond posting on her personal Instagram story.
With Five for Good, Ziegler has helped the club reach a larger audience through Instagram posts, flyers and the group’s TikTok.
Weinberg sophomore Liz Aaseng, Five for Good’s outreach coordinator, is also helping to expand this audience. She said she has been communicating with professors and student groups at NU and other universities to create a unified network of volunteers across Chicago.
“It’s so much more empowering when you can do things with other people, and you have a friend with you,” Aaseng said.
Ziegler echoed Aaseng’s goal of unifying people and organizations throughout the Chicago area. At organization meetings, Ziegler said many people voiced that there are many small organizations throughout Chicago, but not one that brings their overlapping goals together.
Ziegler hopes Five for Good can be that centralized organization, helping coordinate collective action across social issues.
“I really hope that people realize they have so much more power than they think they do,” Ziegler said. “We are so much stronger together than we are separated, and I hope that people can realize that they really can do so much more than they think they can.”
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