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
AIDS Foundation of Chicago
Support from The Chicago Community Trust will support AIDS Foundation Chicago’s (AFC) work to protect and advance access to high-quality healthcare for people living with or vulnerable to HIV and other chronic conditions, particularly centering on Black and Latinx communities who are disproportionately impacted by chronic conditions. In order to achieve such, AFC staff will: 1) monitor and respond to threats to health reform and access to care; 2) advocate for a state budget that ensures sufficient and equitable resources for people living with HIV; 3) monitor discriminatory practices among health insurance plans and advocate as needed; and 4) advocate for policies within the Illinois Healthcare Feasibility Study that increase affordability and accessibility for AFC’s focus populations.
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Grant Recipient
Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) seeks support to increase the capacity of its Afghan (Refugee) Transition Program to serve the academic and non-academic needs of refugee students impacted by humanitarian crises. While the University Board of Trustees approved supporting up to 17 qualified Afghan evacuees who have settled in the Chicago area with tuition and housing waivers, these students have a host of other needs that must be met if they are to begin to heal and lead normal lives while pursuing an education at NEIU.
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Grant Recipient
ACCESS COMMUNITY HEALTH NETWORK
The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the level of mental health issues experienced by children and youth living on the south side of Chicago. Poor mental health can directly translate into negative health outcomes. Access Community Health Network (ACCESS) uses a patient centered approach to address the total health of the communities we serve and we are working to meet the critical physical and mental health needs of children and youth living on the south side. The focus for this proposal will be to: (a) expand ACCESS’ capacity to deliver integrated, trauma-informed primary and mental health care services, including psychiatry, to pediatric patients aged 5 to 21 years living on the south side of Chicago. Care delivery will be provided either onsite at an ACCESS health center or via telehealth, using ACCESS’ patient-centered model of care; and (b) address the growing rates of suicide in youth of color by implementing screenings and follow up. Education will be provided to ensure staff know how to conduct culturally sensitive screenings for suicide risk in the primary care setting and how to work with patients who screen positive. The funding will support the piloting of these strategies at five ACCESS health centers, including one school-based health center, located in the following communities on the south side of Chicago: Greater Grand Crossing, Englewood, New City, Back of the Yards, South Chicago, Auburn Gresham and Grand Boulevard. Learnings from this pilot will be used to replicate similar services across our other health center sites in the Chicago region.
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Grant Recipient
Communities In Schools of Chicago
Educational attainment is the social factor that is the greatest predictor of a person’s health and well-being across the lifespan (The Dropout Crisis: A Public Health Crisis and the Role of School-Based Health Care 2018). Adults who do not graduate are more likely to die from preventable diseases (American Public Health Association 2018). The rates of self-reported poor health and chronic disease are often higher among individuals with lower levels of educational attainment (CHNA 2019). The Alliance for Health Equity cites that education is an important determinant of health because poverty, unemployment, and underemployment are highest among those with lower levels of educational attainment. People with high school diplomas earn almost $600,000 more over a lifetime and are less likely to live in poverty. They are also less likely to be the victim or perpetrator of violence. (For the Record: The Costs of High School Dropouts 2011). Achieving graduation drives greater positive health and life outcomes. Yet, students from low-income backgrounds, who are at the core of our work, are historically up to six time more likely to dropout from school than their more affluent peers (The Conditions of Education 2017). To that end, we prioritize working with schools in communities that face systemic inequities, which disproportionately affect our students and families, as demonstrated by lower educational attainment, employment, and household income. Our mission is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. For 33 years, we have challenged health and resource inequities that disproportionately impact BILPOC students. We advance our mission through our evidence-based programs with a proven impact on student outcomes. In the 2021-2022 school year, we are partnering with 175 public schools, primarily in economically distressed neighborhoods where poverty, violence, and limited access to health care adversely affects quality of life. Each year, we reach 50,000+ students through our combined programs. Partnership Program: At 175 schools, we connect whole-school services across six domains: health & wellness, counseling & supportive guidance, parent & family engagement, academic support, college & career readiness, and arts & culture. In the Partnership Program, we co-create a School Needs Assessment in collaboration with school leadership. We work together to identify the types of services that would be most impactful for students, and we look for resources that can support the whole child. We amplify the strengths of our school partners, maximize community resources through our trusted and robust network of community partners, and mobilize those supports to schools to reach students who face limited access to services. Examples of the health services we connect to students include asthma management, immunizations, vision and hearing screenings, sexual health education, and nutrition education. Counseling, mentoring, and stress management services help students manage anxiety, trauma, and the stressors in their lives, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In school year 2021–2022, we plan to reach 50,000 students through whole-school services. Intensive Program: At 30 of these schools, we also provide direct and intensive support, including counseling, mentoring, and case management to 1,350 of these students with the highest risk of falling off track in school. A CIS Student Supports Manager (SSM) is a full-time member of the school community at each Intensive school, providing targeted support to approximately 45 students on a caseload, helping to foster a positive school culture, engaging students and parents, and coordinating requested services that reach students across the entire school. All SSMs have achieved master's degrees in counseling, expressive therapies, social work, youth development, or a related field.
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Grant Recipient
Star Farm Chicago
This request is to support the construction, landscaping, and pre-development costs associated with rehabbing the Star Farm Fresh Market and Community Kitchen. We are requesting $180,000 to support architect and engineer fees ($15,000), installing black iron HVAC in the shared kitchen ($60,000), installing a set of metal rear exit stairs ($40,000), fencing and landscaping of the side lot ($40,000), and installation of a concrete slab driveway ($25,000).
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Grant Recipient
NeighborSpace
The project, a partnership between NeighborSpace (NBSP) and Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC), will provide support to implement actionable land access strategies for growing local food on underutilized land in Chicago and Cook County using a community-based framework rooted in values of equity, sustainability, and collaboration.
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Grant Recipient
I AM ABLE CENTER FOR FAMILY DEVELOPMENT
I AM ABLE has demonstrated significant growth this year, after receiving a 590 Crisis Care System grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services and Department of Mental Health Services. This allowed us to create a new program, Wellness H.E.A.L.S. (Helping Everyone Anytime Live Supported) which is consistent with our goal to assist residents as they deal with trauma and crises in their daily lives. This program will be operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. The funding received does not fully cover administrative costs related to this opportunity. The support that we are requesting from CCT would help to cover accounting and facility management costs.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Collaboration On Youth
For more than 45 years, the Illinois Collaboration on Youth has advocated on behalf of children, youth, and families, and the community-based organizations that serve them. Our mission is to promote the safety, health, and success of Illinois’ children, youth, and families by acting as a collective voice for policy and practice, and by connecting and strengthening the organizations that serve them. Over the past three fiscal years, we have worked intentionally to make our coalition and advocacy agenda more inclusive of the communities that our members serve by establishing the Equity and Access Fund, in which our members subsidize memberships for BIPOC-led CBOs that otherwise would not have the resources to join a membership association.