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
ARAB AMERICAN FAMILY SERVICES
AAFS is a culturally grounded multi service agency promoting access to a range of supports to Arab American and other immigrant low income families in the southwestern suburbs. Our services include intensive case management, domestic violence, senior meals and services, immigrant legal services and citizenship, behavioral health and community health services. We have been a critical entity in COVID-19 response and recovery in the southwestern suburbs, leveraging more than $7 million in COVID-19 health resources and food, cash, and housing assistance. In addition to responding to the pandemic challenges, AAFS has been mobilized to provide services to the recent Afghan refugees arriving in the Chicago area. This is a new service line for AAFS and these individuals and families require a tremendous amount of support, from the basic food, health and shelter, to navigating U.S. education, health, legal, and employment systems, to the much more in-depth trauma counseling and overall support for integration. We are requesting overall general operating funding to support our expansion in this area.
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Grant Recipient
Northern Illinois Food Bank
We are requesting $150,000 to support our vision that our neighbors will have the food they need to thrive. In FY20, we met the meal gap in 99% of our service area, yet recognized that we were not yet reaching all neighbors in need, particularly with the increased food insecurity due to COVID-19. In FY21 we responded to this increased need by distributing 100 million meals across our service area, a 25% increase over the previous year. We could not have done this without the support of federal programs that provided food and funds and the generosity of our many donors. For FY22 we are faced the challenge of continuing to meet the increased need for food assistance without the government support that we saw last year and with rising food and gas costs and supply chain disruptions. Although we saw a slight decline in numbers of neighbors facing food-insecurity in the summer of 2021, since November the numbers have been rising again and we are serving at least 20% more individuals than we were pre-COVID. For the first six months of FY22 we distributed 38 million meals; 24% was purchased, a big increase from the 10% we were purchasing before the pandemic. As we continue to pursue the goals of our strategic plan UNITE we are focused on providing a better experience for our neighbors, with more choice, better access and less stigma.
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Grant Recipient
Kids Above All
Kids Above All (KAA) is requesting funding to expand our therapeutic counseling services for families enrolled in our Chicago Early Childhood programs. KAA will use a trauma-informed approach to heal children, families & the community through therapy, along with other modalities & supports, to address stressors exacerbated by the pandemic.
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Grant Recipient
ILLINOIS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS
Despite our significant successes in policy advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels, permanent immigration policy solutions are still needed. ICIRR’s evolving analysis and approach is now focused on developing innovative partnerships that support not only immigrants and refugees but all low-income BIPOC communities. We believe an integrated strategy that lifts all boats is the way to create economic equity. We will: 1. Develop the capacity and leadership of our institutional members; 2. Conduct intentional relational organizing with BIPOC-led organizations and people directly impacted by immigration policies and the racial/ethnic wealth gap; and 3. Build integrated campaigns that support Black/Brown unity and economic justice.
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Grant Recipient
HCP OF ILLINOIS INC
HCP will advocate for homeownership opportunities with the Housing Choice Voucher Working Group, led by CAFHA. HCP brings national expertise on public housing authority (PHA) best practices, key national partnerships, and co-facilitates committees of the Working Group. As a partner on CAFHA’s 2020 CCT Advancing Equitable Homeownership grant and a national advisor on PHA programs that promote equitable access and support for long-term wealth building, HCP will take program/policy recommendations and advocate for change. The aim is to scale up PHA homeownership programs to increase awareness and meet the desires of voucher holders, and create a means to repair past harms caused by federal and local housing policy and the real estate industry.
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Grant Recipient
WINDOW TO THE WORLD COMMUNICATIONS INC
Window to the World Communications respectfully requests The Chicago Community Trust’s consideration of a renewed and generously increased grant of $200,000 to support WTTW News, our local affairs and journalism platform that has been serving the greater Chicago region for more than 35 years.
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Grant Recipient
NAMI Chicago
NAMI Chicago seeks continued funding to bring coordination and networking to Chicago’s fragmented mental health crisis system, diverting people with significant mental health needs away from arrest and hospitalization towards mental health recovery. We will organize and coordinate acute mental health care providers like hospitals, living rooms and triage centers, and build the necessary capacity, infrastructure and policy solutions to make them an effective alternative. Within this approach, we will use our Helpline as a tool to increase proactive recovery work and intensive case management within the mental health crisis and acute care system.
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Grant Recipient
MANO A MANO FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER
Mano a Mano is requesting general operations funds in support of overall agency goals to empower our immigrant community to reach their best immigantion status, to have access to health call and education leading them to pursue opportunities and success within an integrated community.