End-Of-Year Giving 2019:
eQUITY-ORIENTED NON-PROFITS
A House in Austin
A community of parent support. We're a group of parents, caregivers, professionals and neighbors that believe in empowering each other in the most challenging task given to us — raising our children. We desire to nurture and strengthen the bonds in families and be supported in all we do.
https://www.ahouseinaustin.org
A.P.P.L.E.
African-American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education is a 501c3 non-profit organization committed to Equity, Scholarship, Advocacy, and Resources in the Oak Park and River Forest High School Community. APPLE takes continuous donations for the A.P.P.L.E. S.E.E.D. Scholarship, awarding $500 annually.
Austin Coming Together
Austin Coming Together (ACT) is a network of community leaders, non-profit organizations, churches, businesses, and public agencies that share a common vision for a thriving Austin community. Our mission is to establish a comprehensive community development system with the capacity to improve the quality of life for Austin residents.
https://austincomingtogether.org/
Beyond Hunger
We provide hunger-relief programing and services to 13 zip codes across Cook County, including portions of Chicago and its near-west Suburbs. Our service offerings seek to provide the food, resources, knowledge, and skills people need to live healthy, active lives.
https://www.gobeyondhunger.org/
Build Chicago
For nearly 50 years, BUILD has worked in some of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods to stem the violence that takes away the positive potential – and, far too often, the very lives – of our youth. In 1969, BUILD started working with fewer than 200 gang-affiliated teens in one neighborhood and today BUILD serves nearly 3,000 youth annually, offering targeted services to enhance our impact in four priority communities - Austin, East Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and Logan Square - while continuing to provide support in other Chicago neighborhoods and throughout Cook County.
BUILD’s programs are designed to meet both the immediate problem of preventing at-risk youth from joining gangs as well as working with gang-involved youth to develop alternatives to this destructive lifestyle. Our service population also includes youth who have come in contact with the justice system to prevent and/or provide alternatives to detention and assist with successful re-entry into their communities. BUILD also provides mentoring in Oak Park D97 middle schools via YEMBA.
Collaboration for Early Childhood
The Collaboration is a model public/private partnership that leverages the resources of more than 40 local agencies to create a community-wide system of high-quality programs and services that foster physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development during the critical first five years of life.
Our mission is to make sure that all children in our local community (birth to age five) arrive at kindergarten safe, healthy, ready to succeed, and eager to learn. Our key initiatives include the advancement of:
Parent Information and Support
High Quality Preschool for all Children
Professional Development for early program staff
Developmental Screening for all children birth to five years
E-TEAM
E-Team is a grassroots coalition of families, educators, and community members working together to provide the resources and support our children need to be successful.
https://www.e-teamoakpark.com/donate
Echo Center
The Echo Center helps to realize the vision of an inclusive, diverse, and equitable Oak Park by creating an intentionally designed space for exploring the narratives of marginalized people and coalescing the community’s equity efforts. We’ve established a multi-purpose space that brings the community together. Our non-profit Center promotes art, theater, and other modes of storytelling; serves as a hub for nonprofits and initiatives led by people of color, and advances equity and social justice efforts. This inclusive, creative space is intended to strengthen the fabric of our community, fortify our diversity and better equip us to solve – together – the most pressing issues of our time.
405 S. Euclid Ave., 2nd Floor, Oak Park, Illinois 60302
Echo Theater Collective
Founded in 2017, Echo Theater Collective strives to redefine community theater by choosing works that give voice to those in our community that need it the most. Echo Theater Collective (ETC), is an artistic initiative designed to promote unity and cultural understanding in our community using theater and music. We are based in the Oak Park/Forest Park area.
https://echotheatercollective.org/
Farther Foundation
Farther Foundation enables students to break free from the constraints of poverty and experience the wider world through travel. They become immersed in new cultures, provide community service, cultivate leadership potential and attain personal growth. Inspired by their experience, Farther Foundation alumni return home with new skills, confidence, and enthusiasm—ready to take on new challenges in school and in life.
https://www.fartherscholar.org/
Hephzibah Children’s Association
Hephzibah Children’s Association serves more than 1,000 children and their families each year with group homes for neglected and abused children; services for families struggling with issues such as poverty, chronic disease, mental illness, substance abuse or homelessness; foster care and adoption programs for children in need of loving homes; Head Start and Early Head Start programs to give infants, toddlers and preschoolers from low-income families the best possible start in life; and award-winning after-school daycare on a sliding scale for families of all income levels.
Housing Forward
Our mission is to transition people from housing crisis to housing stability. We offer a full range of programs and services that are 1) participant-centered, 2) integrated, 3) modeled using best practices and 4) designed to reduce the length of time and impact of trauma associated with homelessness and housing instability. Housing Forward impacts the lives of over 2000 adults and families with minor children each year.
https://www.housingforward.org/
Institute for Nonviolence Chicago
Through the teachings of Dr. King, Nonviolence Chicago infuses high doses of nonviolence through community members and role models to change the prevalence and status quo of violence. Using a collaborative community-based approach founded on the theories and practices of nonviolence and relationship building, Nonviolence Chicago works with the highest risk ("in-risk") individuals and the communities in which they live.
Kingian Nonviolence is a philosophy and methodology that provides the knowledge, skills, and motivation necessary for people to pursue peaceful strategies for solving personal and community problems. This approach is critical if the epidemic of violence is to be eradicated. Nonviolence is a systematic framework of both conceptual principles and pragmatic strategies to reduce violence and positive peace.
http://www.nonviolencechicago.org/
Kidz Express
Operating from our Center at 5221 South Congress Pkwy, Kidz Express provides Kidz with a safe place to learn and grow. Our staff, most of whom are Kidz Express alumni now enrolled in college, provide a nurturing environment where our Kidz see the actual positive outcomes from making good choices in life.
Our results speak to the success of our unique programs: increased academic performance, improved school attendance, decrease in behavioral problems, increased submission and quality of homework, less than 4% teenage pregnancy rate, and increased number of participants enrolling in college.
Maywood Fine Arts
Maywood Fine Arts Association (MFAA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to providing high quality arts instruction to the children of Maywood and surrounding communities.
http://www.maywoodfinearts.org/
NAMI Metro Suburban
NAMI Metro-Suburban is an affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental illness. We are a grassroots family and consumer self-help support, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with mental illness, their families and friends within the communities of west suburban Cook County, Illinois
New Moms
We believe in the strength, skills, and potential of all families and communities to pursue and achieve audacious possibilities.
Guided by our mission, to share the love of God by surrounding young moms and their children with everything they need to transform their lives, New Moms’ takes a 2-Generation approach to engagement that puts families in control of their goals and unleashes their potential.
Together with families, we construct the foundations of wellbeing by strengthening brain architecture, incorporating early childhood development supports, building pathways to and preparation for education and employment, and expanding positive social networks and access to community resources. 97% of the young families that come to New Moms are experiencing extreme poverty, and want to write a new story for their future.
Oak Park Education Foundation
The Oak Park Education Foundation brings hands-on STEAM opportunities to youth that inspire a life-long love of learning. OPEF develops and supports programs that embody these guiding principles: equity and inclusion, a sense of belonging, inspiration, real-world connections, innovation, community engagement, and fun.
Oak Park Regional Housing Center
The OPRHC works to counteract steering and to promote pro-integrative choices through affirmative marketing. We market Oak Park as a community for all races, attracting people who respond to and strengthen that kind of climate. Oak Park’s aspirations have evolved to promote a welcome and inclusive community for African American, Asian, Latino, and White households. The OPRHC promotes Oak Park as open to all and educates minority home seekers on their fair housing rights.
We work with the Village and other local agencies to coordinate a multifaceted effort to promote and sustain the community’s rich diversity. More recently, OPRHC has launched a targeted effort to research fair housing policy, share our findings with other municipalities, and create a universal, “best practices” guide, so they too can experience the benefits of an inclusive, integrated community.
Opportunity Knocks
The Opportunity Knocks (OK) mission is dedicated to providing opportunities and resources for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities so they may pursue their educational, occupational and social interests.
https://www.opportunityknocksnow.org/
PASO – West Suburban Action Project
(Proyecto de Acción de los Suburbios del Oeste)
A community-based social justice organization that works to engage community members to address issues that affect them, their families, and neighbors with the mission to build stronger communities where all residents can live dignified lives regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic or immigration status.
PASO builds strong communities through intersectional organizing, leadership development, education and civic engagement so people can live and thrive, regardless of race, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation or socioeconomic level. PASO was founded on the core belief that ordinary people – people directly affected – have the power to make extraordinary change when acting collectively with others. PASO serves West Cook County suburbs and some of DuPage county. PASO is based in Melrose Park, Illinois.
PRO BONO NETWORK
Like most places in the country, the legal bar in northern Illinois is unable to provide enough free legal assistance to satisfy the growing demand by those in need.
The irony is that many attorneys in Chicagoland want to provide pro bono legal services, but lack a workable model to do so. This is especially true of attorneys who have decided to take time off to raise children, who retired, or who maintain law practices outside the Chicago city-limits.
Out of the clients' need and the attorneys’ desire, an idea was born—group these experienced attorneys together and remove barriers to volunteering to make it easier for attorneys to help those in need. As a result, more people in dire need are receiving help. Over 250 volunteers, more than 15,000 hours of legal service and counting -- join us and let's do our part to bridge the justice gap together.
https://www.pro-bono-network.org/
ROYAL
We are the Revolutionary Oak Park Youth Action League (ROYAL). We began at Julian Middle School in the fall of 2018 as the Social Justice Club (SJC) and today we continue to provide a powerful transformative environment for organizing in schools and community. We have been working to make OP more equitable and inclusive. Our organization is guided by multiple frameworks centered in liberation, healing, and self-determination. Our organization ensures that our voice is centered and that issues that affect us are at the forefront.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/fund-oak-park-youth-social-jusour-fall-operations
Sarah’s Inn
Our mission is to improve the lives of those affected by domestic violence and to break the cycle of violence for future generations.
Suburban Unity Alliance
Suburban Unity Alliance was created in the summer of 2016 to showcase the diversity of suburban communities, raise discrimination awareness, and bring entire communities together based on empathy, collaboration, and equitable philanthropic endeavors. S.U.A. is about promoting the welfare of each member of a suburban community through creating fellowship that results in common interests and goals for the betterment of the community. The backbone of the S.U.A. is the Suburban Unity Pledge which asks community residents and local businesses to take a stand against all forms of discrimination.
https://www.suburbanunity.org/
United Cerebral Palsy Seguin of Greater Chicago
We believe that all people, regardless of ability, deserve to achieve their potential, advance their independence and act as full members of the community.
So we stop at nothing to provide life skills training, assistive technology, meaningful employment and a place to call home for people with disabilities. We place and support them in community jobs throughout the Greater Chicago area, including in our own social enterprises Seguin Auto Center and Seguin Garden and Gifts.
We ensure that adults with disabilities can live and socialize within their community, by offering residential services in multiple small, community-based homes. And we support their physical and mental well-being and vocational needs with training centers across the region.
We also give a home to children and adolescents, with nurturing foster care from birth to 21, including specialized care for children with behavior or medical challenges.
In addition, our specialized assistive technology and accessibility services allow us to serve more people, advancing independence and promoting inclusive opportunities for thousands of children and adults with disabilities. Infinitec, with its partners, provides invaluable information about assistive technology, as well as training, equipment and access to specialists and resources.
Our innovative programs leverage the latest technology, but the individuals we serve come first in everything we do.