Grants

Grant Recipient

The Chicago Community Trust

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $5,000

Grant Recipient

LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $70,000

LCDC requests funding to help close the racial wealth gap through creating Black homeownership. LCDC will do this with new construction, manufactured housing, rehabs for ownership, and homeownership counseling to ensure Black working families can access safe and affordable financing and are ready to purchase and retain their homes. North Lawndale is on the brink of extensive redevelopment and it is essential to increase homeownership now before prices are driven too high. In addition to other pending developments, Invest South/West is supporting two large scale developments and a 606-type project is unfolding near Homan Square. We are standing at a tipping point that will determine the future of the community.

Grant Recipient

Afamefuna Inc.

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $100,000

Okpara House is a 12,000 sq ft multipurpose Igbo Cultural center that is being developed in Humboldt Park, Chicago, envisioned by Nigerian architect Obiora Nwazota. The development seeks to serve the racially and ethnically diverse population of Humboldt Park, paying special attention to supporting the community’s black and Hispanic populations through cultural programming, safe arts focused events, delicious West African food, and the maintenance of a publicly open nature focused courtyard space. Okpara House transforms a currently undeveloped building into an elegant, inspiring homage to West African culture, focused around traditional Igbo architecture. The multifaceted project simultaneously bridges West Africa’s traditional sculptures, paintings, and design styles, with the vibrancy, and artistry that has been cultivated in Chicago’s African American communities for generations, through creative collaborations and partnerships. Due to its carefully envisioned indoor/outdoor design, the Okpara House project will support gathering and community engagement year round. As such, we expect to serve at least 70,000 people per year, numbers based around comparable carefully curated, similarly sized cultural centers in other cities around the US. Our visitators will be drawn in from all over the city of Chicago, and other major cities in the United States, through a combination of restaurant visitation, free programming, paid events, conferences, dinners and academic seminars. However, the digital component of the Okpara House project, which can be viewed on our project website at https://www.okparahouse.com/, has the potential to serve a far wider population, both in the United States and abroad, through online teaching opportunities, digital seminars, and the selling of sacred objects, books and cultural items. In addition to the outdoor courtyard, and indoor/outdoor dining experience, the project will be complete with a Nigerian restaurant, an indoor event space, outdoor performance spaces, and a retail shop. Okpara House’s profitability will stem not only from the wide variety of events and performances held there, but from elevated catered dinners, art showcases and large scale academic conferences. These conferences will be especially significant, because they will draw together leaders in the field of African and African American Indigenous studies around the globe, from HBCUs in the United States, to renowned universities in West Africa like the University of Nigeria. The mission of Okpara House is to create a deep sense of rootedness and connection, by harnessing the powers of design, dialogue, and academic research as transformative agents to stimulate, reactivate, elevate, and reimagine black culture. What Okpara House needs most are the pre-development funds to be used towards producing architectural plans and designs that fully capture the vision of the project (we have a simple preliminary concept, but not a full out project design), business consulting, program planning, environmental strategy (we are looking to design an environmentally sustainable project, and would like to work with black owned Chicago based Environmental Strategy firm Sesenergi Eco Solutions ), legal expenses, and construction planning. Founder Obiora Nwazota already own the building and courtyard space in which Okpara House will be located, but we have not begun any construction whatsoever.

Grant Recipient

Center for Community Progress

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $20,000

Since 2010, the Center for Community Progress has impacted the lives of millions nationwide by transforming vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties into assets for neighbors and neighborhoods. As the leading national, nonprofit resource for urban, suburban, and rural communities seeking to address the full cycle of property revitalization, we work with state and local governments, national partners, and resident leaders to reform vacant property systems and policies, ensuring these properties are returned to productive use that benefit the surrounding community. The Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference (RVP) is the only national conference dedicated to strengthening urban, suburban, and rural communities through equitable solutions to transform vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties into community assets. RVP attracts a mix of government, nonprofit, community, and private sector leaders from urban, suburban, and rural communities that are struggling with areas of disinvestment, decline, and inequality, including places experiencing population loss as well as growing communities where some neighborhoods find themselves left behind. Attendees include housing experts, city attorneys, elected officials, local, state, and federal officials, CDC staff, land bank leaders, urban planners, academics, police officers, code enforcement officials, neighborhood association leaders, developers, representatives from lending institutions, urban policy experts, and more. RVP is expected to draw more than 1,000 people to Chicago for 60+ engaging sessions and other learning opportunities. Established in 2007 and held every eighteen months, RVP has traveled to Pittsburgh, Louisville, Cleveland, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Plenary speakers have included The Warmth of Other Suns author Isabel Wilkerson, artist Theaster Gates, Evicted author and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond, Congressman Dan Kildee, Alan Mallach, and other remarkable leaders. RVP has lifted up ideas and strategies that work, many of which have been replicated across the country, leading to major policy and legislative reforms.