Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
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.
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Grant Recipient
Colaj
Colaj will organize youth workshops and events during the week of June 12th, including two-day art workshops in drawing, digital illustration, and photography. These activities will foster creativity and artistic expression among participants. Additionally, we will host an end-of-school-year celebration on June 21st to commemorate children's achievements and provide a fun-filled experience for families at South Chicago Public Library. The funds will be used to supply necessary equipment, materials, and prizes for the activities. Our skilled staff members will facilitate the workshops and oversee the event to ensure its success.
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Grant Recipient
Fuller Park Community Development Corporation
School’s Out 2023 Youth Film Festival Fuller Park Community Development Corporation proposes to fill the gap between June 6th and June 26 for our neighborhood youth with a School's Out Youth Film Festival. Neighborhood children will be recruited prior to June 6th to enroll in our mini filmmaking day camp at Eden Place Nature Center and Eden Place Farm. These are our two community-focused family outdoor learning facilities, with a 20-year history of providing meaningful non-formal education on Chicago’s South Side, and where we will use our decades of experience working with neighborhood youth, teaching and involving them in real-life projects in environmental education and stewardship, STEM education, animal husbandry, forestry, and land ethics, to make this gap time safe, productive, and enjoyable. We will draw upon our in-depth experience with media production to teach the youth to use iPads, camcorders and computer systems to write a simple film script. Campers will then create a 5-minute video about their 2023 school year and what they want to achieve during the summer. The mini film and technology camp will end with a neighborhood film festival screening the new films created by the camp film creators. The community will be invited to witness the work of our youth to see and hear the voices of our next generation of Chicago directors and filmmakers, who will be following in the footsteps of Melvin Van Peebles, Robert Townsend, Larenz Tate, Shonda Rhimes, and others. We will follow the Seven Field Principles model in this film festival program, with youth from ages 11 – 18 eligible to participate. We also have been partnering with Comcast and other funders for several years to create a media production curriculum and center, and our state of the art production booth will be available during the gap period, so this grant opportunity comes at a perfect time for us to help young people during this critical gap in services.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Juneteenth Planning Coalition
The Chicago Juneteenth Planning Coalition, in partnership with the Black Remembrance Project and Adelmarieproduction, is coordinating two dance labs/auditions and a Juneteenth dance competition for African American youth in June. The dance competition will include two styles of dance that have cultural significance to Black Chicagoans: Footworking and Hip Hop dance. The Chicago Juneteenth dance competition will have two regional battles on Saturday, June 17, 2023: a Westside battle in Garfield Park and a Southside battle in Bronzeville. Winners of the regional battles will compete in a final battle by June 24th. A small dance coordinating team of four will engage in outreach and lead dance labs for youth between June 6th - June 10th (the week before regional battles). During the dance labs, youth will take part in free dance workshops, build comradery with other dancers, and receive feedback on their performances.
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Grant Recipient
The Garden of Love
The Garden of Love has two community gardens that are open and accessible to the community. We host book clubs, garden days, movie nights and more events and activities throughout the year. During the course of the year the Garden of Love works with a number of families and individuals looking for ways to come together in a safe environment and we love to provide that for them. Over the June 6-26 period the Garden of Love will work with 25 youth ranging from ages 5-18. As we begin to incorporate our summer activities the hope is to be able to take our young people on field trips in and around the Chicago land area to provide exposure and education allowing our participants the opportunity to learn not just about their community but also the surrounding areas. The hope is that they will take the experience and find creative ways to bring what they have learned back to the garden thus incorporating new activities and starting new conversations during our RJ circles. Additionally, we will work with our young people to bring in new ideas and assist with the garden and our newest project the incorporation of the Nature Play Garden, giving them something to be proud of and talk to people for generations to come.
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Grant Recipient
Superior Block Club Association
Funday at Funway Family Park, youth will have the opportunity to have a fun-filled, activity-packed day. They can choose from over 8 activities which include bowling roller skating, laser tag, and so much more. Youth can use this time to build positive relationships with other youth in their community. Building a Better Community Bike Ride. Superior Blk club has partnered with faith-based organizations, to not only get the community out but to get them active. Divvy will provide bikes for adults, however, children are not able to ride Divvy. Superior would like to provide 25 children with bikes not only to ride in the event but to take home with them so they can ride in the community safely.
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Grant Recipient
Institute for Positive Living
The goal of the Institute for Positive Living is to provide programming for inner-city youth during out of school time. Our programming provides extracurricular and social-emotional programming that caters to the whole child. Our intentional goal for gap programming during the dates of June 6-26 has been intentionally created to provide a safe space for youth between the ages of 5-17. Through programming students will gain a better sense of identity and agency by way of being given the tools to form new passions and create positive relationships. It is our intention to serve as many as 40 youth....which we currently house in our afterschool programming. Our data reveals that youth flourish when they are given a safe space to be themselves and are surrounded by vested stakeholders who want to see youth grow socially and academically.
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Grant Recipient
THE BASE (BOSTON ASTROS BASEBALL CLUB INCORPORATED)
The funding of $5,000 will help expand Friday and Saturday hours for youth programming to expand hours from 4pm to 9pm for activities (Fri. and Sat.) to expanded hours of noon to 9pm.In June for over 100 teenagers in West Garfield Park. BASE Chicago will also host an end of the year celebration highlighting our 8th grade and High School graduates. In addition, youth will help organize a Community Peace Day -- both events will take place during June. The "Community Peace Day" will be a day of neighbors meeting each other for food, fun, and music. The goal is to help build strong community relationships with youth, adults, family members and community seniors.
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Grant Recipient
Nehemiah Trinity Rising
The funding received under this application will allow us to enhance the summer experience already planned for youth and young adults under our original application. Specifically, as part of our summer initiative we are providing a camping experience in Tower Hill Michigan for approximately 30 youth and young adults from June 22-26, 2023. This additional funding would allow us to provide a preliminary period of activities (Operation Get on the Bus) earlier in June which assists the participants in getting to know each other and provides space for a larger number of community young people to participate in activities around learning about our city, career opportunities and exploring their own creativity. It would also allow us to expand upon the number of participants we could include in the camping experience or provide a small stipend to youth or young adults who will serve as leaders.