Grants

Grant Recipient

Live Free Chicago

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $30,000

Live Free Chicago is requesting general operating support to strengthen and advance our organizing and advocacy efforts in Chicago and across Illinois. In 2016, the city of Chicago lost 762 lives due to gun violence. Over 80% of the victims were Black men and women. Church leaders in Chicago were deeply pained by the growing number of funerals of young people in their communities and were frustrated with the absolute absence of a coordinated strategy by city leaders and their own faith community. In addition to gun violence, black communities continue to suffer from divestment, over-policing, and criminalization of black bodies, and other forms of structural violence. This drove them to help found Live Free Chicago in March of 2017. Live Free’s goal is to end all forms of violence against black people, specifically mass incarceration, gun and police violence.

Grant Recipient

Rush University Medical Center

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $59,802

Grant Recipient

Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $30,000

SOUL is looking to strengthen civic engagement and build power in Black communities and neighborhoods in Chicago's Southland. These areas experience disproportionately high rates of crime, unemployment, failing schools and infrastructure, community divestment, incarceration, police violence and systemic poverty. We wish to further advance our racial and economic equity platform by creating opportunities for residents to be engaged in rebuilding their communities by creating spaces to have meaningful conversations, building accountability-centered relationships with their elected representatives, and offering public education around policy – giving the most marginalized in our communities the tools to impact the legislative lens that governs their daily lives. Those familiar with our organization’s work over the past five years might describe SOUL as a group focused on criminal justice reform. Although much of our work has indeed centered the criminal legal system through an abolitionist lens, we have broadened our analysis and the analysis of our base around what it takes to shrink systems of policing and incarceration in Cook County. Moreover, we are clear that we need real economic equity – abundantly-resourced neighborhoods, fully-funded schools, housing security for all, etc (especially for Black and Brown folks) --in order to have real safety and ensure that our communities are not over-policed and not reliant on punitive carceral systems that have historically been ineffective. Unlike many organizations, we pride ourselves on the fact that as SOUL has rebuilt itself, we are who we organize. Our staff, board, and community leadership represent the most marginalized parts of society. Many of us are Black and Brown, queer and trans, organizing alongside faith leaders and those deeply engaged in the work of the church. Together, we struggle with our truths, understanding that those closest to the problems are closest to the solution. Through regular meetings, teach-ins, listening sessions and one-on-one conversations, we are able to get to the core of South Cook County’s inequity problems and allow our members to inform our analysis, campaign strategy and shifts, and priorities.

Grant Recipient

The Black Star Project

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $25,000

The Black Star Project (TBSP) is a 501c3 organization founded in 1996 by the late Phillip Jackson to close racial academic achievement and wealth gaps in communities of color. This work aligns with the African American Legacy’s “education” strategic priority: Long-term educational losses of Black students as a result of limited in-person schooling. As such, TBSP is proposing to enhance its Saturday University programs by expanding the work of its current Kimberly A. Lightford Saturday University (KLSU) program based in Maywood to other locations in the City. Saturday University is an enrichment program that began 12 years ago in several Chicago locations to improve education outcomes for elementary and middle-school students in areas such as STEM, history, foreign languages and language arts. Many of these programs ended when TBSP’s founder, Phillip, became ill. Parents and educators have asked TBSP to bring back many of its mentoring and tutoring programs as a way to address some of the violence, anxiety and despair currently running rampant on the South and West sides of the city. KLSU recently shifted its basic curriculum focus to take on an interdisciplinary format. In this scenario, students’ social experiences, cultural and political knowledge, and social justice activism meet grade-level academia. This past semester, KLSU entailed multidisciplinary art forms along with critical thinking and analyses of cultural environments. Students participated in gardening (science experiments), financial literacy (worked with banking managers), emotional health (hosted dialogues after watching videos), community outreach (cleaned space outside DuSable Museum for Earth Day), and more activities as part of their hands-on curriculum. Students also learned about Brazilian culture and began Portuguese language instruction with Maria Drell, director of the Brazilian Cultural Center of Chicago. This is important as we support students to become the global, well-rounded individuals we wish to see in the world. It is our hope to nurture students into becoming empathetic, social justice advocates who not only understand the issues that face our communities, but also how to uproot them, and set a better stage for the coming generation. Another example of the impact of TBSP’s work is with the Williams’ triplets (Aaron, Brandon and Christopher) who participated in TBSP’s math homework hotline with master teacher, Sirat Al Salim of the Math Literacy Project. They have been part of Black Star programs since second grade and served as valedictorian, salutatorian and number three in their eighth-grade graduation class last year and they continue to excel during their first year of high school. TBSP will continue and expand this interdisciplinary approach to learning as it begins its Fall program in September 2022.

Grant Recipient

The Chicago Community Trust

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $28,000

Grant Recipient

Chicago Community Foundation

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $2,500,825

Grant Recipient

Chicago Community Foundation

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $3,766

Grant Recipient

The Chicago Community Trust

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $3,115