Grants

Grant Recipient

A Step Ahead Chess

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

We are at an exciting time at A Step Ahead Chess, where our program is growing and our partnerships are expanding. With over 100 young people on our waiting list, we have a responsibility to grow, and in order to evolve strategically, require more general operating support. One of our primary focuses is to attract and retain highly skilled coaches and managers who can continue to lead our organization and deliver exceptional educational experiences. We understand the challenges facing the educational field, as data indicates a concerning trend of teachers are leaving the profession. To ensure that we can recruit and retain top-notch instructors, we are striving to offer competitive compensation packages that reflect the value and expertise they bring to our organization. In addition to prioritizing quality instructors, we are also committed to promoting diversity and representation within our organization. As a black-led organization, we recognize the importance of hiring and empowering black and brown individuals who can serve as role models for our participants, are passionate about chess education and share our commitment to academic enrichment and STEAM fields. As we celebrate 5 years since our launch in 2018, ASAC continues our dedication to creating an inclusive environment and providing quality programming and joy to youth everywhere.

Grant Recipient

Provident Foundation

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

The Provident Foundation is seeking a General Operating grant in the amount of $10,000. The Provident Foundation’s mission, vision and activities align with African American Legacy’s Arts and Science focus area. The Provident Foundation recently completed a strategic planning process through the Community Programs Accelerator at the University of Chicago. The foundation is now positioned for growth and is seeking to scale up its activities in order to better fulfill its mission to provide access to education, mentorship and scholarship opportunities for underrepresented Chicago area youth pursuing careers as next generation doctors, nurses, and other health professionals in keeping with the historical legacy of The Provident Hospital and Training School and its founder Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. A General Operating grant from African American Legacy will enable Provident Foundation to continue to build its infrastructure on the path of renewal and growth. Currently, the Provident Foundation is run by a working board consisting of Ryan Priester, Program Officer at MacArthur Foundation as Board Chair; Myetie Hamilton, Executive Director of City Year as Board Vice Chair; Dr. James Woodruff, Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine; Dr. Abdullah Pratt, Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago; and Dr. Ethan Molitch-Hou, Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago. Cheryl Heads, our program administrator, has over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She is charged with handling the organization’s day-to-day programmatic and operational functions and working alongside the board of directors to assist in developing long-term organizational strategy, partnerships, and fundraising opportunities. Measures of Progress In order to expand our operations and increase our impact in the coming year, The Provident Foundation is seeking to 1) hire an executive director; 2) develop and expand foundation board of directors; 3) strengthen community engagement and advocacy; 4) expand scholarship and pipeline programs; and 5) build awareness and knowledge of the historical legacy of The Provident Hospital and Training School and its founder Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. Goal 1: Hire an Executive Director. Provident Foundation seeks to hire an Executive Director to ensure the organization operates with a sound infrastructure designed to support the organization’s growth. The Executive Director will develop and lead long-term organizational strategy, partnerships, and growth efforts. This position will report to the Board of Directors and will provide direct supervision to key staff members as they are hired. This is a unique time and opportunity in the Provident Foundation’s history, and we seek a new Executive Director to continue to build upon our legacy, be inspired by our mission, and motivated to lead the organization to its next great horizon. Goal 2: Development and expansion of Board of Directors. The board of directors currently acts as a working board, performing volunteer administrative and operational activities in addition to governance. It is the goal of Provident Foundation Board of Directors to become solely a governing body for the foundation once permanent staff are in place. Adding new board members will allow the board to better provide the framework for the organization to achieve its mission and goals, ensure accountability and transparency, manage risk, and maintain the stability and continuity of the organization. Having a highly effective board of directors focused exclusively on governance will also ensure that the organization has the resources and leadership needed to continue its mission and goals, even as board members and staff change over time. Goal 3: Strengthen community engagement and advocacy. The Provident Foundation plans to strengthen its community engagement and advocacy through panel discussions, forums, educational workshops, commissioned reports, and partnerships with organizations doing similar work. Strengthening our community engagement and advocacy can help us identify and understand the specific health needs of communities of color. By engaging with community members, healthcare professionals, and students interested in pursuing careers in the healthcare field, the Provident Foundation can gain a deeper understanding of the social, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to health disparities in our communities. This knowledge can inform the development of targeted programs for our scholarship recipients who are committed to working in under-resourced communities once they have completed their education. Goal 4: Expand Provident Foundation Scholarship Program and other Pipeline Programs. Scholarships awarded through the Provident Foundation Scholarship Program are granted each year to minority students enrolled in their senior year of high school, or in their freshman, sophomore, junior or senior year in college in recognition of outstanding academic achievement, leadership, community service and interest in urban health. Studies prove that African American and Latino medical students are more likely than white students to express the intention to work in high-poverty, minority communities. The Provident Foundation Scholarship Program serves to increase the number of underrepresented minority physicians, nurses and other professionals in the healthcare field. Over the past six years, the Provident Foundation has provided 22 scholarships to students from underrepresented communities pursuing medical careers. As the foundation continues to grow, the number of scholarships awarded will also increase. Increasing the number of scholarships, expanding our mentorship program, and providing support for job readiness and academic enrichment programs will enable us to help more students realize their dreams of becoming doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Goal 5: Build awareness and knowledge of the historical legacy of The Provident Hospital and Training School and its founder Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. The Provident Foundation retains ownership of a rich archive of documents and artifacts from the Provident Hospital and Training School dating back to the late 1800s. A small portion of the archives was on display at the International Museum of Surgical Science a few years ago. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC is displaying copies of several of our documents. This exhibition showcases the history and remarkable legacy of Provident Hospital and Training School and of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the first open heart surgery in 1893. For more than a century, Provident Hospital survived as a private community facility serving those in need of healthcare. Through two World Wars, race riots and national epidemics, thousands of Chicagoans were treated within its walls. The exhibit was created by the Provident Foundation and made its debut October 20, 2001 at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. It is currently housed at Chicago State University under partnership with the foundation. The Provident Foundation will seek opportunities for exhibition as well as a permanent location and modern digitization of the collection for easy online access.

Grant Recipient

Automotive Mentoring Group Inc

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $20,000

The Automotive Mentoring Group (AMG) is a non-for-profit 501(c) workforce development program designed to be proactive against gang and gun violence in Chicago. We provide workforce training in the art of automotive restoration of classic cars from the 1930’s to 1972. This includes metal fabrication, paint work, auto interiors, and complete mechanical restoration. The goal is to work with the City’s gang population to reduce shootings, murders, and car jackings in Chicago’s troubled black and brown neighborhoods. AMG helps the participants earn their high school diplomas and enroll in automotive technology programs at community colleges to obtain jobs and apprenticeships in the automotive industry and beyond. Working together with our 83 hiring partners we can place them in well-paying jobs in the automotive industry with a future and hiring commitment of five years. AMG is rebuilding lives one life at a time by helping support black and brown youth and adults develop work and life skills as they restore classic cars. We feel that is important to address the untreated trauma that a lot of these participants have experienced so we have reserved the use of a child psychologist to spend one-on-one counseling time for those who need it to address the mental health issues that many of them have. As many of our mentors are retired law enforcement officers that will be working one-on-one mentoring these young black men and women, the idea is to allow healing between not only the victims of police violence, but also to allow these law enforcement officers to heal in a positive way. We see this as a positive fair exchange and necessary for both sides. Our program continually stresses entrepreneurship where we encourage the participants to work closely together so that they could hopefully start small businesses together. We continuously talk about having a family legacy and the importance of being able to hand something down to their son or daughter. In addition to the many goals we have, through our mentoring efforts and partners we plan to eliminate the desire for these black men to be attracted to gang life in Chicago. We want to reduce the gang population and to have a sizable impact in decreasing the number of shootings and murders in Chicago by teaching the participants to use better reasoning skills and negotiation tools to avoid violence to give them long lasting tools that the next generation will benefit from. We use peace circles to facilitate peace by teaching participants how to peacefully resolve conflict and respect others.

Grant Recipient

Osmosis Education Mentoring Initiative

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

For over two decades Osmosis Education Mentoring Initiative, hereafter Project Osmosis, has been at the forefront of the call for diversity and inclusion in the art/design professional by providing youth, teens, and aspiring young designers from historically underrepresented populations, currently African Americans represent less than 5% of art/design professionals, with the tools, resources and support required to successfully navigate the barriers and obstacles impeding them from entering this critical profession. As we say at Project Osmosis, art/design is a problem solving tool and all human beings have the right to be creative! Therefore, if entire segments of society are denied access to one of the most influential and powerful professions, a profession which directs and impacts every single aspect of human existence, simply because they lack education, exposure, creative spaces for expression, and mentoring, Project Osmosis stands boldly in that gap and serves as a bridge into the art/design profession for hundreds of traditionally underrepresented and excluded members of society. We are committed to expanding opportunities for creative and artistic expression to everyone with a specific emphasis on African Americans and women. In our view, the lack of diversity and inclusion in the applied arts has crippled global efforts to end wars, violence, poverty, hunger, starvation, sexual exploitation, and other ills which negatively impact our planet. For when we silence and ignore certain voices and viewpoints we stifle our collective creative energies and deny creative expressions which may save us all some day. Creativity cannot be harnessed or confined to corporate board rooms or design studios, because by its very nature art/design is expansive and explosive, and if not given space to express itself, it will show up as graffiti, tags of trains and buses, and in music and poetry. In reality there is no container or box which can retain human creativity. Project Osmosis is a safe haven and breeding ground for creatives who are traditionally excluded from the applied arts due to lack of exposure, education, and opportunity. We use the applied arts to open dialogues with young people about the challenges they face on a daily basis, changes like unprecedented violence, generational cycles of poverty, gender and sexual orientation bias, and global warming with its focus on climate change. Yes, we recognize that art/design is a problem solving tool, but we as know that those closet to those challenges and/or problems are best equipped to design solutions. We are ready to take our understanding of then creative process to new levels and award of this grant will allow us to collaborate with like-minded organizations and share what we have in over two decades of service.

Grant Recipient

Health and Medicine Policy Research Group

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $66,000

Grant Recipient

Light of Loving Kindness

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

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 black and brown communities that are low-income, disenfranchised, suffering through health disparities, 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 everyday life. Our programs address the mental health challenges and social-emotional needs perpetuated by violence, poverty, toxic stress, stigma, racism, unequal resources, trauma, health disparities, and other elements negatively affecting people of color. We provide integrated, holistic tools for the mental and physical needs of African Americans and BIPOC communities, youth, and women. To address the challenges and respond to the needs of mental health services, we have a growing network of community programs and partnerships, rooted in holistic trauma-informed care. This year, we will be adding a program for women, who are the nexus of families and communities. Prioritizing a woman’s health alongside their children will help to create a springboard in which entire families and communities develop a keen focus on their mental and physical wellness. At LOLK, 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. Soon, we will expand these services to focus on Black women. 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. 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, a Strategic Plan, now in year two, 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 the African American Legacy Fund and Chicago Community Trust towards our operating dollars will facilitate both the programming and collaborating aspects of our Operating Model, while helping us to launch A Woman’s PEACE Gathering and our newest youth program, Teen Mental Health First Aid Certification.. 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

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

Awarded: October 2023 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 retention and growth for mental health professionals of the BIPOC community.

Grant Recipient

MUSICAL ARTS INSTITUTE

Awarded: October 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

In response to the AACL strategy that supports STEAM through arts enrichment programs, the Musical Arts Institute is requesting general funding to support continued services for the "Chicago Music Reach" CMR and the Musical Arts Institute Music Conservatory.