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
BEDS, Inc.
BEDS Plus Care is interested in applying to the Chicago Community Trust's Addressing Critical Needs: Essential Services Program for general operating support. BEDS is a leading homeless services agency in Southwest Suburban Cook County (Berwyn, Cicero, Lemont, Lyons, Orland, Palos, Proviso, Riverside, Stickney, and Worth Townships). It provides evidence-based Stabilization, Emergency, Interim Housing, Transitional Housing, and Supportive Housing services and partners with community healthcare, behavioral healthcare, and human service providers to offer wraparound support. Over the past 34 years, BEDS has become a capable, experienced, and fiscally sound provider of Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD programs and wraparound care. In 2022, it served more than 2400 people experiencing homelessness and imminent risk of homelessness. BEDS work directly aligns with the CCT Addressing Critical Needs: Essential Services priority strategy and activities around housing insecurity and homelessness, as well as healthcare access, food insecurity, and essential provisions. In the wake of COVID-19 and its socioeconomic effects, it has seen growing demand for its services. If invited to apply, BEDS will seek a three year, $225,000 grant to meet these increased needs.
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Grant Recipient
Y2Kwanzaa Org
The Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival Revived will introduce Kwanzaa to a new generation of Chicago area youth. This dynamic, and colorful multi-media presentation teaches the tenets, and principles of Kwanzaa, the African American holiday celebration of family, community and culture. Harambee is based on the songs from the classic recording called “Seven Principles”, composed, and produced by Kwame Steve Cobb and Chavunduka, the first complete contemporary collection of original songs, dedicated to the celebration of Kwanzaa. HPKF showcases a talented cast of young musicians, vocalist, actors, and dancers, who will animate Kwanzaa’s principles, and tell the story of African American unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, co-operative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. HPKF continues the African tradition of storytelling through song and theatrical display, which has been a mainstay of African and African diaspora, cultural traditions throughout history. From the oral traditions practiced by griots of West Africa to the modern day djeli, our hip hop and spoken word artists, storytelling through music, and performance is a way of transmitting to the community the good news, values and ethics. Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival Revived is steeped in this storytelling tradition, with a dynamic multi-media theatrical production, that incorporates a live music ensemble, contemporary music forms, a dazzling lightshow, a thematic set design, ornate costuming, traditional West African dance and drumming, an issue focused pantomimed skit, video, and pictorial imagery, that create a colorful presentation of historical context, with audience participation throughout. While the shows performances provide a direct service to the participating audience, additional to the performance of the show, Y2kwanzaa.Org plans to also offer live streaming. With the revival of the Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival, Y2Kwanzaa.Org will kick off the filming of a broadcast quality documentary, chronicling the background and highlights of 23 years of Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival performances and the making of the 2023 revived concert itself. Once completed it is Y2kwanzaa.org's intent that the program will be distributed for broadcast, aired annually, and archived for posterity. We also anticipate that through its airing the program Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival will find a new audience and become institutionalized as an ongoing annual cultural event in Chicago and beyond. Harambee Pre-Kwanzaa Festival Revived is scheduled to take place at the Dusable Museum of African American History, on December 8, 2023, for two day-time presentations.
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Grant Recipient
ALEXIAN BROTHERS HOUSING AND HEALTH ALLIANCE
The Ascension Alexian Brothers Housing and Health Alliance seeks a three-year grant of $180,000 ($60,000 a year) in general operating funds to support its continuum of transitional living programs, site based permanent housing, and scattered site permanent housing. Although our core mission is to move homeless individuals on a permanent path to housing stability, our programming also addresses the three other basic needs highlighted in this Building Pathways to Stability RFP: decreasing food insecurity, increasing access to health care and providing emergency assistance to clients in need of clothing, supplies and other basic needs. Recognized as a leading and innovative housing provider to the most vulnerable populations, we provide evidenced-based services that together, represent a comprehensive approach to addressing the intersectional needs for stable housing, nutritious food, access to primary and behavioral health services, and emergency assistance. Because of our innovative and comprehensive programming, we are a sought-after housing partner, selected by HUD to expand scattered site housing in Lake County and by the Better Health Through Housing collaborative pilot to house chronically homeless cycling through emergency departments. A previous grant from the Chicago Community Trust funded a pilot to provide occupational therapy to clients served by housing providers in the Better Health through Housing collaborative. Our continuum of supportive housing responds to diverse needs of chronically homeless populations. For those needing a more structured, sober-based living environment, we offer two-year transitional living programs in Chicago and Waukegan that together provide 43 units of supportive housing. Our permanent supportive housing provides both site- based (23 units in South Chicago) and scattered site supportive housing in Chicago and Lake County (162 units) Our clients can step down from a more structured environment, such as Bettendorf Place, to our scattered site housing program. Additionally, two housing navigators at Bettendorf help find safe and affordable housing for community members living with HIV. Since the onset of the COVID pandemic in spring 2020, we have witnessed a higher level of acuity among our recovery home clients. The uncertainty and unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 dramatically increased anxiety, stress, and depression among our residents. Many experienced acute feelings of isolation and several lost jobs, since many were employed in food services that cut back or closed. Social and peer supports disappeared as recovery groups such as AA and NA were no longer meeting in the community The increased stress is reflected in a dramatic rise in our client relapse rate for our Bonaventure House residents during this time. In 2019, there were 5 residents who relapsed. In 2020, that number jumped to 14, and in 2021 there were 17 residents who relapsed. Those who relapsed were referred for substance use treatment. To address this increased need, we expanded our occupational therapy services, intensified case management, and added a clinical director to our Bonaventure House staff. Funds requested will help us sustain and strengthen existing programming for our vulnerable clients, helping them maintain stable and safe housing, improve health outcomes, access primary and substance use treatment acquire life skills, and when appropriate, move to independent housing. Now, we have expanded our occupational therapy programming to our Lake County clients and intensified our services to help clients cope with increased stress and anxiety associated with re-entering the community after long isolation brought on by COVID pandemic. In FY 22, our programs reached 335 unduplicated clients, including 231 housing clients and 104 clients and community residents reached by our housing navigation services. Among scattered site housing clients, 96 percent maintained housing; 100 percent of Bettendorf Place clients remained stably housed. Among Bonaventure House clients, 91 percent transitioned to stable housing.
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Grant Recipient
Color Farm Media LLC
Color Farm Media is requesting support for a multi-level social impact campaign to inspire and build a growing movement for common sense, locally driven reparations policies, to help remedy the impact of centuries of racial discrimination against Black Americans.
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Grant Recipient
Project Purity
My work has been a series of trial by fire attempts to connect and reach young adults in the city of Chicago. As a lifelong Chicagoan my work is deeply rooted in the desire to balance the disinvestment scale that happens in black and brown communities. As a non profit leader, rest does not come without major cost. It often requires deep sacrifice of resources, time and self. Rest becomes evasive, almost a figment of a well imagined dream. In my application, I will attempt to lay out the vision that I steward for my community, honor those whom I stand on the frontlines for everyday and articulately describe the well needed rest that is essential for effectiveness in my work and wholeness in my community.
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Grant Recipient
FAITH IN PLACE
Faith in Place’s “Engaging Faith Communities to Advance the Local Food System” project builds on work to 1) sustain, strengthen, and expand our Congregation-Supported Agriculture (CSA) network and 2) pilot a Community Incubator Kitchen at Greater St. John Bible Church in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Grant period activities include 1) continue to provide technical assistance, mentoring, and access to resources for our seven existing CSA program farm partners; 2) community outreach to explore adding more faith-based sustainable farms to our CSA network; 3) provide technical assistance, mentoring, and related support to the Community Incubator Kitchen project team at Greater St. John Bible Church as they ramp up shared kitchen operations to serve the public; and 4) education and advocacy engagement with policymakers to remedy policies detrimental to CSA farm operations and to launching Community Incubator Kitchens at other houses of worship.
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Grant Recipient
Nourishing Hope
For more than 50 years, Nourishing Hope has connected people facing hunger with nourishing meals. What started with a few individuals getting together to make sure their neighbors had enough to eat has grown into an efficient, innovative, and action-driven organization that meets people facing hunger exactly where they are. We work throughout Chicago, serving clients from every neighborhood in our city, from Rogers Park to Morgan Park. Thanks to our generous supporters, we served 130,000 clients last year, and are currency serving nearly 50% more families that we were at this time last year. To achieve this level of growth, we have needed to operate strategically, introducing the staff, systems, and structures necessary to work efficiently. This has enabled Nourishing Hope and to pivot quickly to respond to new, immediate and emerging needs. We have established partnerships across the city, collaborating with food companies, community organizations, and philanthropic supporters to source and distribute healthy meals where they are most needed. Staff regularly assess our operations to ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible. Our work goes beyond sharing meals. Nourishing Hope offers a wide variety of private, cost-free social and mental health services to our community, recognizing that hunger may be a symptom of other challenges. We also serve as a key thought leader in Chicago’s human services ecosystem, sharing strategic insights and connecting key stakeholders to advance local efforts to support people in need toward a brighter future. Nourishing Hope is one of Chicago’s largest and longest-running food pantries, providing 4 million meals to Chicagoans facing hunger annually.
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Grant Recipient
REVOLUTION WORKSHOP
Revolution Workshop (RW) provides a 12-week Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Job Training Program to individuals between the ages of 18 - 30+ from Black and Brown communities across the city. Trainees earn middle-skills certifications and are then placed into jobs and career pathways like carpenter, plumber, electrician, and more. Yet we know that landing a job is only the first step of their journey to living-wage, family-sustaining careers. RW’s Career Growth Services (formerly known as Alumni Services) is a multi-pronged approach to engaging graduates in ongoing educational, network-building, and transitional employment opportunities that will help them not only grow in the construction field but also build wealth and break cycles of poverty for themselves and their families.