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
Basils Harvest
Basil’s Harvest seeks a grant to promote regional agriculture by integrating locally sourced produce into National Guard units in Illinois and Minnesota. BH will also create a service for designing medically tailored meals using local ingredients.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Women in Trades
Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT) requests a Middle Skills Grant of $150,000 from the Bridges to Brighter Futures Fund to support advancing women in the construction trades. Founded in 1981 and a provider of pre-apprenticeship training since 1987, CWIT has placed thousands of women, particularly women of color, in the construction trades. CWIT offers three different workforce development programs at no cost to participants. Two focus on bridging women to construction apprenticeship programs, including the 12- week/180-hour Technical Opportunities Program (offered during after-work evening hours since 1987) and the 10-week/280-hour Women Build Illinois Program (offered during daytime with stipends since 2022), both certified by North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU). The 10-week/280-hour Women in Welding Program (established in 2014), which includes daytime beginning classes and evening advanced skills open shops, builds skills in all welding processes (MIG, Stick, and TIG) and metal working processes (cutting, bending, and finishing), which leads to American Welding Society Certification that is in demand across many sectors of the economy. Our training provides the math and workplace readiness instruction, strength training, and the hands-on exposure needed to become an electrician, plumber, sprinkler fitter, bricklayer, laborer, pipefitter, sheet metal worker, painter, drywall finisher, millwright, and welder. Job placement and retention at a living wage that advances to building wealth is our goal. The primary focus of CWIT's training programs is placement into a construction trades apprenticeship program, which, on average, offer first year apprentices a wage of $22 per hour. Some programs, such as the ironworkers and laborers, start apprentices at wages exceeding $25 per hour, but, in general, a new apprentice would not be expected to achieve this goal until the second year of their program. CWIT's training programs are designed to prepare women to be competitive applicants for these programs, and funds from the Middle Skills grant will continue to support the expansion of the agency's workforce development team, which both facilitates placements of graduates into apprenticeship and other nontraditional jobs and provides an array of retention services including regular follow up, re-placement assistance for unemployed tradeswomen, career and leadership development workshops, support for advanced certifications, provision of barrier reduction funds, connection with tradeswomen mentors, and staffing for women's committees and the Tradeswomen's Council. Specifically, a Middle Skills Grant would support: 1. Placement in apprenticeship/Nontraditional Employment - In FY '24, the program placed 70 participants in apprenticeship and 89 graduates and unemployed tradeswomen in construction and other nontraditional jobs, impacting 159 women. This work, which includes everything from application assistance for new graduates to re-placement assistance for experienced tradeswomen, is critical to launching women's careers in the industry and helping them to sustain the consistent employment needed to retain and advance in the industry. Under this initiative, the agency was able to hire a dedicated retention specialist with the goal of connecting greater numbers of women to opportunity. 2. Barrier Reduction - 25% of the grant will be used to provide direct support to women transitioning to apprenticeship or returning to employment. Common needs include transportation assistance, childcare, union application, initiation, tool and book fees, and stipends for the unpaid full-time pre job programs required by many apprenticeship programs. 3. Career Advancement and Leadership Development Workshops - To support women in the building the skills they need to advance into leadership roles on the job and in the union, CWIT is proposing to offer a range of workshops in partnership with the Tradeswomen's Council. The addition of the retention specialist in August 2024 greatly improves the agency's capacity to expand this work which, in the coming year, will minimally include mental health awareness, know your rights, "Stepping up to Foreman", public speaking, organizing, business development, and home inspection. This list will be expanded based on the outcome of a planning meeting scheduled for later this month (September 2024). 4. Additional Skills & Certifications - In the construction trades, having the right certifications can open doors to a greater range of work and advancement opportunities. To eliminate the barrier of cost, CWIT is proposing to dedicate $10,000 to cover fees associated with a range of industry certifications. In the past year, this has included certifications/licenses in OSHA-500, welding inspection, CDL and backflow. Again, the recent addition of retention specialist will greatly expand the program's capacity to administer the fund and connect tradeswomen to training providers. 5. Harassment Prevention - As women's numbers have grown in the industry, so too have the incidents of harassment, and a priority for the coming year is to improve its internal capacity to support and guide tradeswomen experiencing harassment on the job while providing contractors with the tools and technical assistance to ensure safe and equitable worksites for women and other under-represented workers. To accomplish this goal, CWIT is contracting with Brave Path Strategy to co-create a trauma-informed protocol for CWIT frontline staff and leadership to follow when assisting women with harassment complaints and develop and deliver a comprehensive training to support staff and tradeswomen leaders in understanding the societal factors contributing to workplace harassment and the trauma-informed practices that help recover from harassment's impact. In addition, Brave Path Strategy is working with staff, tradeswomen, contractors and unions to create a gold standard harassment prevention policy tailored to the construction trades.
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Grant Recipient
LIFT
LIFT-Chicago's mission is to break the cycle of poverty by investing in parents. We do this by partnering with parents to achieve economic stability and mobility through our holistic, two-generation coaching model with wraparound support, including financial capabilities workshops and quarterly cash infusions. With the support of Bridges to Brighter Futures, LIFT-Chicago will: (1) Engage 75 student-parents annually over two years in LIFT’s coaching program to provide cash assistance and help young parents enroll and persist towards their education goals (2) Expand our capacity to track members’ education outcomes so that data can be leveraged to support policy and advocacy centered on the experiences and needs of student-parents.
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Grant Recipient
Inner-City Muslim Action Network
Since 2013, the Granville T. Woods Academy has stood vacant, vandalized and a blight on the surrounding community. Englewood is home to two of the ten zip codes receiving the highest number of returning citizens every year. Multiple studies establish housing, health care, and employment as the critical components of successful reentry, yet many returning citizens struggle to access all three, creating instability at the individual, family and neighborhood level. The Regenerator, a project of the Go Green Development Group - comprising IMAN, Teamwork Englewood, Resident Association of Greater Englewood and E.G. Woode - will remediate and repurpose the Woods Academy to tackle these three integrated components with a robust health and wellness ecosystem, permanent supportive housing and workforce development opportunities, along with a range of reentry services. IMAN will be the owner and operator of the health and wellness ecosystem at The Regenerator. IMAN is requesting pre development funding from CCT for the interior buildout of this wellness ecosystem which includes a Federally Qualified Health Center, urgent care and pharmacy, bringing critical primary, behavioral and oral health care access and jobs to the entire community. This project is phase II of the Regenerator buildout.
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Grant Recipient
Inner-City Computer Stars Foundation
The Inner-City Computer Stars Foundation (i.c.stars) requests $300,000 across two years from Bridges to Brighter Futures to fund our Chicago program implementation. These funds will support our 4-month hybrid technology job skills training, resulting in thriving wage jobs, and our 24-month residency program, where participants receive continued case management, career advising, and professional skills development while working in the tech sector and assessing our cutting-edge curriculum and skill assessments. i.c.stars' vision is to break barriers and create transformational opportunities for one million untapped learners and leaders to reach and advocate for economic freedom and generational wealth by 2030. The support of the Bridges to Brighter Futures will ensure i.c.stars has a direct impact on our participants and an indirect impact on all the lives they touch in their families, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Community Self-Help
The Center for Community Self-Help (Self-Help), in partnership with The Resurrection Project (TRP), the Hope Center Foundation of Chicago (HCF), and Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LCDC), requests $40,000 to support our proposal to Advance Sustainable Homeownership in the greater Chicago area. These funds will supplement our second-year funding, allowing our collaborative to increase the geographic reach of our program by adding a new partner (HCF) - a trusted community organization serving greater Roseland - while minimizing the financial shock to existing collaborative members. Together, our two funding proposals seek to directly complement and enhance the work of the Reclaiming Chicago Initiative (RCI), a campaign organized by United Power for Action and Justice to help families in the South and West Sides of Chicago build wealth through homeownership. For this iteration, the collaborative will build on the learnings of our first year of funding and support the RCI vision by providing counseling services to individuals across the home purchase spectrum, utilizing referral channels to connect potential homebuyers to affordable financing solutions, forging new relationships to increase homebuyer DPA access, and piloting an expanded reserve program to protect new owners against unforeseen financial emergencies that may threaten their new ownership status. Through these efforts, we will work towards our long-term Reclaiming Chicago goal of increasing and sustaining the number of Black and Latino homeowners across the South and West Sides of Chicago.
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Grant Recipient
Metropolitan Planning Council
MPC is committed to building equity in Chicago's built environment by tackling systemic challenges that have historically marginalized communities of color. This organizational grant will support three key initiatives: 1. Great Rivers Chicago focuses on collaborative governance and community engagement to improve riverfront development and environmental stewardship. MPC will work with the River Ecology and Governance Task Force to enhance co-governance, community involvement, and long-term river asset management. 2. The Chicago Citywide Land Use & Zoning Assessment aims to facilitate comprehensive land use planning and reform Chicago's zoning regulations. MPC will conduct public engagement, evaluate Planned Developments, and develop accessible resources to guide community stakeholders and policymakers. 3. The Home Lending Partnership Implementation Program is part of MPC's Change Lab and seeks to create equitable pathways to homeownership for underserved communities. By fostering collaboration between financial institutions and community-based organizations, the program will address systemic barriers to economic stability and homeownership for residents of color. The requested general operating support will enable MPC to sustain and expand these initiatives, driving lasting community revitalization and economic inclusion for communities of color.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance
During year 1 of our program, CAFHA, Breakthrough Urban Ministries, and NHS built a new program, as part of the 3C initiative, from the ground up. The HCV Homeowner Mentor Program, was designed by and for housing choice voucher holders. Homeowner Mentors are housing choice voucher holders who have the lived experience of using a voucher to purchase a home of their own. They serve as guides for prospective homeowners and provide one-on-one support throughout the homebuying process by working with their housing counselor counterparts to help participants meet program requirements and set personal goals. An additional component of this program was the establishment of a Homeowner Club for Housing Choice Voucher Homeowners to offer peer support, tips, and resources on an ongoing basis. The Club is a place for HCV Homeowners to access trusted resources and recommendations for everything from grant programs and free homeowner resources, to home maintenance and reliable and affordable contractors for home repairs. For our year 2 of the program, we will continue our main services of mentorship and building up the Homeowner Club, all while creating greater efficiencies and nimbleness into the program design. Year 1 was defined by building and learning; we envision Year 2 as a time for deepening and expanding our impact.