Grants

Grant Recipient

Rush University Medical Center

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $59,802

Grant Recipient

DEEPLY ROOTED PRODUCTIONS

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $30,000

Requested funds will help Deeply Rooted Dance Theater (DRDT) strengthen and expand its organizational infrastructure, programming, and impact in the coming year. This will include the company’s important progress toward a full-time company and staff of equitably compensated employees, the development of a South Side Center for Black Dance and Creative Communities, and a significant expansion of programming on the South Side.

Grant Recipient

New LIfe K.N.E.W. Solutions Mental Health Community Center

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $20,000

New Life Knew Solutions is a minority-owned and operated Community Mental Health Center established in 2019. NLKS's current client population is 90% comprised of the target demographic for this funding opportunity. Treating individuals and families desiring therapeutic services is an investment in Chicago's Westside neighborhoods. Operational funding through the Mental Health Strategy will support the need for accessible mental health services while addressing the challenges. Challenges include inadequate numbers of Licensed practitioners who specialize in Cognitive Behavioral, Expressive Art, Behavioral Health, and Emotionally Focused therapies and a lack of online access for people seeking treatment.

Grant Recipient

PROJECT EDUCATION PLUS

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $30,000

Project Education Plus is looking to continue our expanded, exemplary programs that benefit students’ grades K-12. Our program demographic includes 75% African American children who come from low-income residences such as Near North Cabrini-Green, and West Town. We also service 10% white, 10% Hispanic, 5% Asian, American Indian, and other nationalities. PEP's request will be used to fulfill the goals and objective of these educational services that help combat anger, frustration, and negative attitudes while encouraging positive outlooks. Our educational services consist of mentoring, after school activities, STEM, and high school tutoring/e-tutoring. Baseball was added to our program as of last year and has essentially become an extension to our after school program; the students who attend our after school program are also active members of the baseball team. These expanded programs are helping us revert back to pre-covid operations.

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

Light of Loving Kindness

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $12,500

Light of Loving Kindness (LOLK) has a successful track record of creating, developing, implementing, and managing programs. The communities we serve are often victimized by poverty, high violence rates, and lack of resources. We work within communities that are low-income and underserved. Many residents in these neighborhoods lack resources, which can fuel violence. We all know how difficult teenage years can be. Today, many children in our schools are living lives filled with trauma of one sort or another, trauma that is often beyond their control, according to the Center for Disease Control. For the youth population that Light of Loving Kindness serves from underserved and underrepresented areas on Chicago’s West and South sides, society’s most strenuous challenges are also interwoven into that young adult’s every day life. Our programs address the Mental Health Challenges of violence, poverty, toxic stress, stigma, and provide for the mental health needs of African Americans, youth affected by COVID-19, and LGBTQ. To address the challenges and respond to the needs of mental health services, we have a growing network of community programs rooted in holistic trauma-informed care and social and emotional learning: 1. Self-Love Bootcamps for Teens 2. Leadership Internship for Teens 3. Paz Mental 4. Just As I AM 5. Mindful Youth Ambassadors We visualize a future in which young people, regardless of race, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, and/or background see themselves as unique, creative, and powerful human beings. At LOLK, we are trained, certified, and experienced practitioners specializing in science-based integrative, complementary, and alternative solutions for mental and physical wellness. We emphasize understanding, respecting, and responding to the effects of trauma in individual and group settings with trained psychologists and mindfulness-based practitioners. Our interactions are to help youth believe in themselves, to develop resilience and to heal in a gentle way that allows them to release layers of trauma, while focusing on a brighter future. Over the years, we are pleased to share that LOLK has become a hub for convening community partners to create collaborative solutions around the health and well-being of our community’s youth. LOLK teams with local organizations and practitioners to offer opportunities for our youth in need, from mental and physical health to lifestyle education. Once a client is within one of our programs, they have access to all of our programs - meaning we provide wrap-around services but more importantly, connectivity and longevity to a youth’s care. The construct of our program is made to support activities that are proven to reduce involvement in the criminal or juvenile justice system, while reducing symptoms of mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, self-harming, suicidal ideations, and trauma recovery, and support related mental health services for youth, and in extension, their families and communities. The substantial collaborators we are partnering with for the African American Legacy Fund Initiative are YourPassion1st and Insight In You. All three organizations involved in this proposal are Black-Led and Black-Serving, committed to improving the quality of life of Black people throughout Chicago’s metropolitan region. Light of Loving Kindness is a 501(c)3, non-profit organization, whose mission is to empower the next generation of conscious leaders by providing access to internal streams of awareness, through holistic solutions, mindfulness-based tools, social-emotional learning, and human connection, delivered through specialized programming and community services, culminating in the self-esteem and confidence needed to pursue their life’s purpose. To strategically plan our impact and organizational direction, we follow an Operating Model, and have External Goals and Objectives for our work in the community, as well as Internal Goals and Objectives for our work as a business entity. A philanthropic contribution from African American Legacy Fund and Chicago Community Trust towards our operating dollars will facilitate both the programming and collaborating aspects of our Operating Model. LOLK’s approach to qualitative and quantitative data collection and data management is strategically tied to our program delivery, community responsiveness, and directional goals and objectives. We conduct formative assessments, cumulative assessments, Strength Deployment Inventory, and Personal Data Collection with our participants. The use of our data provides a big-picture overview of how LOLK is currently performing. This results in a more well-intentioned nonprofit and influences our decision-making going forward.

Grant Recipient

AAMPA AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM OF PERFORMING ARTS INC

Awarded: September 2022 Awarded Amount: $30,000

AAMPA respectfully requests $30,000 in general operating funds to support our 2022/23 season, our second full season of programming since our founding.

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.