Community Connections Center
Maria Ortiz remembers her first years in Mount Prospect as the toughest of her life.
"You don’t know where to go," explains Ortiz, who moved to Mount Prospect from Mexico 21 years ago. "You don’t know if you can go to the hospital, if someone will help you. I had to start from the bottom."
Today the single mother holds an administrative position with Pace Suburban Bus Service. When the Village of Mount Prospect began exploring ways to remove barriers for immigrant populations, they started by asking Ortiz and others with stories like hers.
Out of these discussions was born the new Mount Prospect Community Connections Center, opened in August 2009. A $50,000 grant from The Chicago Community Trust helped bring the Center to life.
More than a quarter of Mount Prospect’s population is foreign born. The majority live on the Village's South Side, a low-income area where public services are scarce. Ortiz and others involved in the Center hope it will offer a vibrant neighborhood space, helping residents and spurring economic development.
The Center boasts a library branch with materials in six languages, homework help by library staff and volunteers, free health screenings and counseling provided by Northwest Community Hospital, a meeting space for local organizations, a Spanish-speaking police officer and a social worker. Eventually, District 214 Community Education plans to offer citizenship preparation and naturalization assistance and English classes.
Student Jonathan Alegria, 17, believes the center "will be a great thing for the community." Jonathan spends his afternoons taking care of four siblings while their mother works. "This will give us a place to go and get help with our homework, check out books and work on the computer—and not be hanging out with the bad people in the neighborhood."
Clare O'Shea, senior planner with the Village of Mount Prospect, reports an average of 200 visitors a day—a sign that the Center is filling a genuine need. "We stumbled over how are we going to pay for it, how are we going to staff it, where will it be located," she said, "but the Trust money helped us figure all of that out. It really was the seed money that made this possible."
“I think we’re going to keep seeking new partners and trying to offer more and more services from the center,” O’Shea added. “I’m hoping that this is just the beginning.”