Grants

Grant Recipient

Youth and Family Center of McHenry County

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

YFC requested $25,000 to help maintain its program enhancements that were made to address the unprecedented challenges brought after COVID-19. YFC is anticipating that children will have significant academic, social, and emotional needs due to COVID-19 and will continue to adapt to meet these increased needs. The request will allow YFC to partner with more than 600 youth and adults to achieve its mission. The goal of YFC’s Family Services Youth Program is to equip, empower, and encourage youth to grow emotionally, socially and academically. The objectives are that at least 80% of youth will report the following: They learned new things at YFC; they are doing better in school because of their attendance at YFC; YFC has helped when they had a problem; and they have a sense of belonging while at YFC. YFC operates after-school and summer programs for youth that incorporate evidence-based methodologies, including trauma informed practices, to coordinate and facilitate educational, social, emotional, and recreational activities. The goal of YFC's Family Services Adult Program is to increase the youth's parents' and other adults' skills and knowledge. Activities include English as a Second Language classes, parenting classes and more. YFC's Bilingual Service Navigation (BSN) program goal is to improve participants’ knowledge of and ability to access and navigate community resources. The objectives are that at least 80% of BSN clients will report the following: The assistance of navigators they were able to learn of new services offered; they have the skills and knowledge to independently access resources in the future; and the services rendered at YFC have helped them with their needs. The Service Navigators provide one-on-one navigation services to individuals and families to provide linkage and support to access medical and mental health services, child care, employment, education, basic needs, interpretation, and more. YFC plans to keep utilizing those funds in closing service gaps within our community, particularly to serve Hispanic/Latinos and the low-income population. Likewise, YFC is actively soliciting additional funding from a variety of sources to sustain the increase in its service navigation capacity made possible by a one-time grant from the Illinois Public Health Association and to explore possible expansions to Harvard, IL and other areas to provide youth after-school and summer programs. YFC expects an increase in need, unfortunately, due to the hardships caused by COVID-19 that exacerbated already marginalized communities. Additionally, there is a critical need in McHenry County and at YFC for a bilingual (English/ Spanish) and culturally competent licensed clinical social worker to address the disparate impact the pandemic and the recession has had on the Latinx population. Funding from Nuestro Futuro would provide $25,000 of general operating support to enhance and increase YFC’s existing programming for youth and adults and assist YFC in providing critical services to the marginalized Latinx, largely immigrant, community in McHenry County.

Grant Recipient

Ann & Robert H Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $100,000

Lurie Children’s requests $100,000 from the Chicago Community Trust to deliver social work services for the patients in our Siragusa Transplantation Center. The experience of transplant is highly stressful for both the child and their family. Transplant, compounded with financial or insurance barriers to paying for medications or bringing a child to medical appointments, can impact the level of adherence to a treatment plan and negatively affect the child’s health. Low-income patients in the process of receiving or having already received kidney, liver, heart, intestinal or stem cell transplants will be connected to community resources, public assistance and emergency financial aid. Such assistance is key to addressing the social determinants of health and ensuring that all patients have the best chance of a successful organ transplant.

Grant Recipient

Center for Community Progress

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $150,000

Building on our current partnership with the Chicago Community Trust (Trust) in 2022-23 to pass vital legislation to reform the Illinois property tax system (2022-23 Reforms), the Center for Community Progress proposes to provide the following services to: (1) support the Trust and its community partners, including, but not limited to, Cook County and statewide stakeholders in their efforts to implement the 2022-23 Reforms; (2) assess and help to educate the Trust and its Partners on the potential impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Tyler v. Hennepin County (Tyler) on the Illinois Property Tax Code (PTC), including identifying the need for, and helping to assess, proposed legislative responses to address concerns regarding the Supreme Court decision; and (3) conduct research, identify, and design a range of potential legislative and policy solutions to enhance the ways in which Illinois counties, cities, and their partners can more equitably, effectively, and efficiently leverage the PTC to keep vulnerable families in their homes and to minimize the harms imposed by vacant, tax delinquent properties on neighborhoods across the Chicago region and throughout the state.

Grant Recipient

NORTHWEST SIDE HOUSING CENTER

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

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 early childhood classrooms extra support through providing reading and math classroom support to students. Our trained parent volunteers do this through providing one-on-one and small group interactions with students for two hours per day, 5 days per week. Our Parent Mentors are not just an extra set of eyes and ears; they function as support for teachers 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 during the 2021-2022 school year 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. Finally, parents are empowered to carry out improvement campaigns in their schools and communities. We have a school that is organizing a campaign to fix the potholes in the street outside the school and have organized meetings with parents and community residents. They have also meet with their local Alderman and have a commitment to fix the street and they continue to fight for improvements in their community and school. We continue to work alongside these parents to ensure that they have sufficient support and resources to achieve their goals.

Grant Recipient

The Chicago Community Trust

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $107,391

Grant Recipient

Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $15,000

We are requesting $25,000 for our core general operating grant this year. 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 community members; and we are supporting immigrants to renew applications for DACA, I-90s, and other legal services.