Nuestro Futuro Awards $360,000 to 25 Organizations in Chicago Region Focused on Immigration and Early Childhood Initiatives

Nuestro Futuro (“Our Future”), an initiative of The Chicago Community Trust, is the largest affinity fund in the nation dedicated to Latinx philanthropy. Since its founding in 2003, it has awarded $3.1 million in grant support to more than 70 nonprofits throughout the Chicago region.

In 2023, the fund granted a total of $360,000 to 25 organizations working in the Chicago region in the areas of immigration and early childhood. With the arrival of an unprecedented number of people seeking asylum in the area, this year Nuestro Futuro decided to make a sizable contribution to a newly established mutual aid fund, the Solidarity Fund, at Crossroads Fund to help with basic needs such as clothing, food, and shelter for migrants arriving from border states.   

Nuestro Futuro awarded its 2023 grants in July to the following organizations: 

Early Childhood Education Portfolio 

Total amount: $115,000 

• Children’s Center of Cicero-Berwyn: For general operating support, including hiring a speech therapist for language development for children ages 3 – 5 years. 

• El Hogar del Niño: For general operating support, including their Music & Movement Initiative that addresses defiant behavior among students ages 0 – 5 years with music and exercise programs. 

• Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago: For general operating support, including a bilingual evidence-based early childhood development program, Abriendo Puertas, and bilingual clinical services for uninsured immigrants. 

• Friends of the Highwood Public Library: For general operating support, including their Early Childhood Literacy programming. 

• Mano a Mano: For general operating support, including their Kindergarten Readiness Initiative. 

• National Museum of Mexican Art: For general operating support, including Listo para el museo, a program geared toward using Mexican culture and artmaking to support cognitive development in young children. 

• Northwest Side Housing Center: For general operating support, including their Parents as Mentors Program. 

• Tuesday’s Child: For general operating support, including positive parenting programming for families with children with disruptive and maladaptive behaviors. 

Immigration Portfolio 

Total amount: $245,000 

• Chicago Worker’s Collaborative: For general operating support, including the Working Families Legal Clinic. 

• Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project: For general operating support, including community legal education and outreach efforts. 

• Immigrant Solidarity DuPage: For general operating support, including the Chicagoland Immigrant Struggle Solidarity Project. 

• Latino Policy Forum: For general operating support, addressing a broad range of immigration issues through community engagement, advocacy, and education. 

• Latino Union: For general operating support, including developing immigrant community leaders in Chicago among the day laborer and household worker populations. 

• Logan Square Neighborhood Association: For general operating support, including place-keeping efforts, leadership development, and immigrant legal services. 

• Mujeres Latinas En Accion: For general operating support, including the Community Engagement & Mobilization program, and a Bilingual Advocacy Coordinator. 

• Northern Illinois Justice for Our Neighbors: For general operating support for legal immigration services.  

• Organized Communities Against Deportations: For general operating support, including providing mental health support for OCAD members. 

• P.A.S.O. – West Suburban Action Project: For general operating support, including legal immigration services clinic, support for asylum seekers and recent arrivals, and leadership development. 

• Partners for Our Communities: For general operating support, including immigration relief and wrap-around services for immigrant families.  

• PODER: For general operating support, including the Four-Phase Pathway for integrated English instruction and workforce development to Spanish-speaking adult immigrants. 

• Spanish Community Center: For general operating support, including their Access to Justice and New Americans Initiative programs. 

• Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project: For general operating support, including their People’s Clinic. 

• Telpochcalli Community Education Project: For general operating support to provide support, resources, and assistance to marginalized and vulnerable populations in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. 

• Youth and Family Services of McHenry County: For general operating support to enhance and increase YFC’s existing programming for youth and adults and assist YFC in providing critical services to the marginalized Latinx, largely immigrant, community in McHenry County. 

• The Solidarity Fund at Crossroads Fund: For the Solidarity Fund at Crossroads Fund, in support of mutual aid funding for groups working to provide emergency relief and resources to recent asylum seekers in Chicago.