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
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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
Chicago Community Foundation
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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
Centro De Trabajadores Unidos United Workers Center
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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
YEAR UP INC
Year Up respectfully requests an investment of $150,000 from Bridges to Brighter Futures to fund our workforce development program operations in Chicago in 2024. In one year or less, our evidence-based and innovative technical training programs connect low-income young adults to careers with living wages of at least $25/hour. Your gift extends far beyond the short-term impacts of our program; it plays a fundamental role in extending opportunity to talented young adults and unlocking access to career pathways that offer ongoing opportunities for economic mobility for our graduates, their families, and communities. With Bridges to Brighter Futures’ investment, we will enhance our integration into the Workforce Development space in Chicago, addressing a critical gap and positioning Year Up as a key player in this sector. Your contribution will enable us to deliver our research-validated training, coaching, and career navigation services to 250 young adults, connecting them to meaningful, living-wage careers and strengthening our role in the broader workforce development ecosystem.
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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.