3C Community Profile: Humboldt Park
Take a stroll down the Paseo Boricua corridor on Division Street and it’s easy to see why Humboldt Park is one of Chicago’s most vibrant…
Grants
Featured
Our Grantmaking Strategy
For more than 100 years, The Chicago Community Trust has convened, supported, funded, and accelerated the work of community members and changemakers committed to strengthening the Chicago region. From building up our civic infrastructure to spearheading our response to the Great Recession, the Trust has brought our community together to face pressing challenges and seize our greatest opportunities. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
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Grant Recipient
Logan Square Neighborhood Association
We are requesting $20,000 for our core general operating grant, along with $20,000 in capacity building support for Mental Health and $10,000 for Leadership Development. We are undertaking placekeeping efforts so that the land we live on is for joy, health, and sustainability and facilitates political power for targeted Latinx and immigrant communities and fosters indigenous autonomy over the built environment; we are investing in the leadership development of our Latinx staff to ensure our people and communities have the skills, knowledge, and power to build communities and institutions that represent them; we are supporting immigrants to apply for and renew applications for DACA, I-90s, and other legal services; and we are connecting our Latinx and immigrant communities to mental health resources.
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Grant Recipient
TUESDAYS CHILD
The Behavioral Intervention program is our flagship program and is an 8 week bilingual program, for families with children between the ages birth to six years and is the original and core program of the organization. This program is provided on a weekly basis with parents and their children simultaneously receiving counseling and classroom intervention at the onsite Parent Training Room and Behavioral Classroom. These services are offered for an 8 week program on Saturdays for working parents. Parent Training The Tuesday’s Child approach believes intervention should take place in the context of a caregiver/child context (vs. focusing solely on the caregiver or the child) by using a functional family system premise. Parent training involves using a Social Learning Theory model with one-on-one education from peer mentors, group workshops and group counseling from a Clinical Psychologist. Our parenting program helps parents identify ineffective parenting strategies in their home, and provide positive behavior management techniques to change inappropriate behaviors in their children. Parents enrolled develop confidence, knowledge and the skills to develop behavioral goal plans that help their children successfully navigate the world. Behavioral Classroom The Behavioral Classroom is the child-based approach to behavior modification through a classroom structure. It utilizes a curriculum/classroom structure that emphasizes overall social proficiency and school readiness. The philosophy is to use this structure to provide opportunities and support for children’s innate drive for exploration, growth and mastery of their environment while providing them clearly articulated choices and structures providing growth in early childhood milestones. The children spend the 1.5 hours in the classroom in structured free play working on compliance, time on task, socialization, participation, motor skills, language/literacy and cognitive skills. The next hour the children participate in clean-up, snack, story-time, gym and music.
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Grant Recipient
The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture
The National Museum. Of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture is seeking a total of $40,000 to enhance its work and services beyond the Puerto Rican community. The Nuestro Futuro / Hispanic Federation funding will allow the museum to continue new ways of supporting the needs of all of our communities.
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Grant Recipient
Partners for Our Communities (POC)
POC, an immigration services agency, respectfully requests $20,000 in general operating and $20,000 additional funding for building capacity for leadership development. The funds will support hiring an Operation Manager for the Community Resource Center (CRC) in Palatine to oversee the front desk receptionists' professional development and interns (5 from Harper, UIC, Loyola, D214). They will provide job skills development and work with the executive director on intern professional goals and marketable skills. The person will be bilingual from the Black or Latinx community and elevated to a mid-level manager and build their leadership skills, giving them opportunities for professional growth and increased income. The leadership development funding will support workshops and training for Latinx staff members newly promoted (over 1 year ago) to case managers and intake coordinators from volunteers and bilingual liaisons. POC wants to help these staff build sought-after skills by giving them access to the service provider and professional networks to increase their competencies and hiring power. They will have access to the executive, financial, program directors, and board of directors for mentoring.
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Grant Recipient
CHILDRENS CENTER OF CICERO-BERWYN INC
The Children’s Center of Cicero Berwyn is requesting for $20,000 to hire a part-time bilingual support staff as an additional adult in a classroom to support development aspects such as social, emotional, cognitive, physical, cultural and linguistic in a classroom with challenging behavior issues due to COVID impact. Additional person will lend a hand to teachers in a classroom of 20 children from 3 to 5 years of age, especially during the occurrences of challenging issues. Children are returning to classrooms from COVID aftereffects, there have been an increase in challenging behavior issues in classrooms. The Children’s Center of Cicero Berwyn serves about 950 families in the Chicago area communities, largely Latinx communities and service Latinx population. Over 80% birth to five children are Latinx; over 73% staff serving children re Latinx. The Children’s Center has nine locations in Cicero, Berwyn, and Stickney with the capacity to serve 950 birth to five.
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Grant Recipient
Northern Illinois Justice for Our Neighbors
NIJFON's vision is a world where all immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees are welcomed, supported and able to live without fear. NIJFON works towards its vision everyday through its mission of providing free immigration legal services to low income immigrants throughout Northern Illinois, providing education and advocacy on immigrant rights and building cross cultural communities. Racist systems perpetuate the advancement of immigrants by keeping them in poverty, silent and vulnerable. NIJFON works on uplifting immigrants and integrating them into society by providing them their day in court and building a quality of life through just policy and challenging and dismantling racist systems. NIJFON fights against harmful legislation that threatens to permanently separate immigrant families, educates and trains on the challenges faced with the immigration system, and advocates to increase political will to make needed reforms. NIJFON's respectfully requests operating funds of $20,000 to support its operating costs for legal immigration services and $10,000 of capacity building support for the leadership development of its senior staff and legal staff. Support will help us fund our current legal staff and will also support the addition of a third attorney to our team. Over the last 2 years NIJFON has increased its capacity by adding legal staff, specifically a legal administrative assistant that helped the legal team triage cases and lower our caseload significantly. With this request, NIJFON will continue to lower its caseload and continue allowing our legal team to provide free consultations and respond to immigration emergencies like those seen with Afghanistan refugees, Black immigrants that are discriminated against in the immigration courts and other emergencies that experienced by various immigrant groups.
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Grant Recipient
MANO A MANO FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER
Mano a Mano’s Successful Children Program’s main initiative is the Kindergarten Readiness. KRI’s objectives are to build skills of children ages 3-5, build parent’s capacity to be their child’s first teacher; and identify learning disabilities/special needs to make appropriate referrals ensuring early intervention. The goals are parents will learn to engage with their children to foster early childhood learning and school readiness, and that children will develop skills to successfully transition to kindergarten and benefit from formal education. The program offers 1:1 session for a parent and child with a staff or volunteer tutor who provides information, instruction, and support to immigrant parents to enable them to better prepare their children to enter kindergarten. Program staff teach children basic skills needed to succeed during their first year of formal education. Services can be delivered virtually and/or face to face. In FY23 KRI will serve 400 participants with 80% improvement in each of the following: Child participants will increase the number of things they can count after participating in KR sessions. Child participants will increase the letters of the alphabet. Parent/guardian participants will increase daily reading activities with their child. Add-On Capacity Building Opportunities: Proyecto de Salud Emocional / Mental Health Project: The pandemic altered all aspects of life generating significant stress, impacting the ability of some people to cope with the situation in a healthy and balanced way, generating fear, anguish, and unhealthy reactions. Adding to the fear of contracting the COVID is the impact of significant changes in daily life caused by efforts to contain and slow the spread of the virus, working from home, temporary unemployment, homeschooling, and lack of knowledge and misinformation Stigma, service cost, lack of insurance coverage and systemic social inequities and discrimination are the most frequently cited reason for not using mental health services. To meet identified needs MaM provides a weekly Facebook mental health-oriented livestream that included self-care strategies, healthy relationships, stress, and anxiety management, as well as communication networks, via zoom; promotion of self-care messages; design of infographics with self-care messages and preventive actions; and dissemination of referrals on the emotional and mental health. The project includes weekly support groups that included self-care strategies, healthy relationships, stress, and anxiety management, as well as communication networks, via zoom; promotion of self-care messages; design of infographics with self-care messages and preventive actions; and dissemination of resources focused on the emotional and mental health. In addition to continuing our Proyecto de Salud Emocional with this grant, it is also our plan to incorporate Primeros Auxilios de Salud Mental / Mental Health First Aid Training (MHFAT) for our CHW staff and volunteers equipping them with skills and knowledge to help community members deal with mental health issues/crises. BIPOC community members suffering from mental health issues are victims of public policies that perpetuate the criminalization of people with mental illness. Mental Health First Aid is an international education program proven to be effective in teaching adults how to recognize and respond to signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges. The goal is empowering the community with knowledge and information to get them the help they and/or a loved one needs. Peer-reviewed studies show that individuals trained in the program. Grow their knowledge of signs, symptoms and risk factors of mental illnesses and addictions. Can identify multiple types of professional and self-help resources for individuals with a mental health or substance use challenge. Increase their confidence in and likelihood to help an individual in distress. Show increased mental wellness themselves. The course teaches how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives the skills needed to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem or experiencing a crisis. Our bilingual/bicultural CHWs will be prepared and able to assist community members in identifying a mental health crisis, reduce/eliminate mental health stigma in Latinx community, and provide information/resources for treatment. We will achieve this by doing the following: Train four CHW staff and 17 CHW volunteers in MHFAT. Assist 250 community members in identifying a mental health issue/crisis. Attend 10 Community Outreach Events to help reduce/eliminate mental health stigma in Latinx community and provide information/resources for treatment. Mental health equity will be achieved when all people can attain their full health potential, and no one is impeded from doing so because of socially determined circumstances. Our Proyecto de Salud Emocional will provide early intervention and comprehensive community mental health resources which are essential to help improve the lives and circumstances of our Latinx community. Leadership Development: MaM seeks to provide professional development options to our leadership team to ensure their continued growth and support as individual professionals and as a team. Building their skills will not only impact them but will also have positive ramifications throughout their teams and the organization. Focusing on five Latinx women and one Latinx male being relatively new to management, the executive director will perform individualized assessments for each and with each leader make recommendations for professional development options in FY23. Some training options include project management, coaching and leadership skills, leadership of hybrid teams, promoting health and wellness in teams, and other more technical/program-specific training. To provide access to trainings that will empower leadership team members to be strong, stable managers within the organization and leaders within the sector and the field, each leadership team member will participate in at least 2 professional development activities/trainings in FY23 that advance their individualized professional development plan leadership style, executive priorities. The past two years have been a testament to MaM’s resilience as an organization adapting methodologies with rapid shifts of conditions to provide support and services needed within the community. MaM was a local and regional leader in terms of access to health care, fiscal support, and prevention education early in the pandemic and continued to lead the way in education about and access to vaccines as the pandemic progressed, while meeting CDC safety requirements as well most core programing goals. As we are moving into the endemic phase, leadership continues to enhance the skills, processes, and resources within the organization to maintain internal organizational health needed to sustain the quality of services delivered to the immigrant community. As funders like Nuestro Furturo are demonstrating their awareness of the need for capacity building/re-building and offering funds in support of capacity building activities, MaM is enhancing professional development, potential new positions, a more adaptive database all of which will enhance MaM agility and adaptability and the services delivered to the community. FY23 Nuestro Futuro grant funds will sustain MaM’s Successful Children programming, providing mental health information and resources for immigrant community members, as well as coaching for agency leadership which will enhance the quality and scope of services in our organization.
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Grant Recipient
NORTHWEST SIDE HOUSING CENTER
Northwest Center's request for the Early Childhood Support is an expansion of our Parents as Mentors Program (PMP). Our PMP is an essential tool to foster and advance the education of our students in Belmont Cragin schools. Our program, which is part of the Statewide Program run by the Parent Engagement Institute, focuses on helping and training parents (mostly Latinx mothers) to help fill persistent equity gaps in early childhood education through volunteering in early childhood classrooms. Our Parent Mentors offer our teachers and students extra support through one-on-one interactions with students and supporting teachers with any additional assistance. Upon completing an initial leadership and mentorship training, Parent Mentors are assigned a classroom for the school year, where they work with students one-on-one or in small groups for two hours per day, 5 days per week. On Fridays, the Parent Mentor cohort comes together for ongoing professional development training. Our Parent Mentors are not just an extra set of eyes and ears; they function as teacher aides committed to helping students who are behind in any subject as they provide one-on-one attention as well as group support to early childhood students in pre-k and kindergarten. Through research conducted by the Parent Engagement Institute we have seen better attendance, family participation, and increased grades and test scores in reading, writing, and math as a result of our programs. Equally important is the development of confidence from the early childhood learners and parents because of the program. In addition, Parent Mentors develop leadership skills necessary to create positive change in their school and community. Finally, Parent Mentors are not only an essential support in our schools but also in the Belmont Cragin community as they work to share additional early childhood and leadership resources to the community. For example, during the pandemic, Parent Mentors have shown us what mutual aid looks like through over 5,000 instances of individual support such as emergency funds; support for navigating unemployment, SNAP, food pantries, grocery delivery, the provision of tech devices, and immigration assistance.