Grants

Grant Recipient

Ann & Robert H Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $100,000

Lurie Children’s requests $100,000 from the Chicago Community Trust to deliver social work services for the patients in our Siragusa Transplantation Center. The experience of transplant is highly stressful for both the child and their family. Transplant, compounded with financial or insurance barriers to paying for medications or bringing a child to medical appointments, can impact the level of adherence to a treatment plan and negatively affect the child’s health. Low-income patients in the process of receiving or having already received kidney, liver, heart, intestinal or stem cell transplants will be connected to community resources, public assistance and emergency financial aid. Such assistance is key to addressing the social determinants of health and ensuring that all patients have the best chance of a successful organ transplant.

Grant Recipient

Center for Community Progress

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $150,000

Building on our current partnership with the Chicago Community Trust (Trust) in 2022-23 to pass vital legislation to reform the Illinois property tax system (2022-23 Reforms), the Center for Community Progress proposes to provide the following services to: (1) support the Trust and its community partners, including, but not limited to, Cook County and statewide stakeholders in their efforts to implement the 2022-23 Reforms; (2) assess and help to educate the Trust and its Partners on the potential impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Tyler v. Hennepin County (Tyler) on the Illinois Property Tax Code (PTC), including identifying the need for, and helping to assess, proposed legislative responses to address concerns regarding the Supreme Court decision; and (3) conduct research, identify, and design a range of potential legislative and policy solutions to enhance the ways in which Illinois counties, cities, and their partners can more equitably, effectively, and efficiently leverage the PTC to keep vulnerable families in their homes and to minimize the harms imposed by vacant, tax delinquent properties on neighborhoods across the Chicago region and throughout the state.

Grant Recipient

The Chicago Community Trust

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $107,391

Grant Recipient

NORTHWEST SIDE HOUSING CENTER

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $10,000

Northwest Center's request for the Early Childhood Support is an expansion of our Parents as Mentors Program (PMP). Our PMP is an essential tool to foster and advance the education of our students in Belmont Cragin schools. Our program, which is part of the Statewide Program run by the Parent Engagement Institute, focuses on helping and training parents (mostly Latinx mothers) to help fill persistent equity gaps in early childhood education through volunteering in early childhood classrooms. Our Parent Mentors offer our early childhood classrooms extra support through providing reading and math classroom support to students. Our trained parent volunteers do this through providing one-on-one and small group interactions with students for two hours per day, 5 days per week. Our Parent Mentors are not just an extra set of eyes and ears; they function as support for teachers committed to helping students who are behind in any subject as they provide one-on-one attention as well as group support to early childhood students in pre-k and kindergarten. Through research conducted during the 2021-2022 school year we have seen better attendance, family participation, and increased grades and test scores in reading, writing, and math as a result of our programs. Equally important is the development of confidence from the early childhood learners and parents because of the program. Finally, parents are empowered to carry out improvement campaigns in their schools and communities. We have a school that is organizing a campaign to fix the potholes in the street outside the school and have organized meetings with parents and community residents. They have also meet with their local Alderman and have a commitment to fix the street and they continue to fight for improvements in their community and school. We continue to work alongside these parents to ensure that they have sufficient support and resources to achieve their goals.

Grant Recipient

Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $15,000

We are requesting $25,000 for our core general operating grant this year. We are undertaking placekeeping efforts so that the land we live on is for joy, health, and sustainability and facilitates political power for targeted Latinx and immigrant communities and fosters indigenous autonomy over the built environment; we are investing in the leadership development of our Latinx community members; and we are supporting immigrants to renew applications for DACA, I-90s, and other legal services.

Grant Recipient

Goldin Institute

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $130,000

With the support of the Chicago Community Trust, the Goldin Institute will continue to collaborate with the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities to host the Chicago Peace Fellows program to promote real and authentic community safety in the neighborhoods most impacted by violence. In particular, we will host a annual cohorts of Chicago Peace Fellows while expanding the Mutual Aid Collaborative as an ongoing platform for shared learning and collaboration for the network of 60 Alumni and growing.

Grant Recipient

Viator House of Hospitality

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $50,000