Past Programs
Agape Youth Foundation
Located in East Garfield Park, Agape’s Victory Club after-school program provides personalized needs assessment and opportunities for education enhancement, homework assistance, crafts, performing arts, physical fitness and social development. A past grantee, Agape conducts innovative, resident-led programs to achieve resident-based solutions.
AKArama Foundation, Inc.
Created in 1994 and administered by the AKArama Foundation, F.A.M.E. (Families As Mentoring Entities) is a community service, after school program serving students, grades 3rd through 6th, in the Dixon and Pirie elementary schools in the Chatham neighborhood.
American Indian Center
Positive Paths provides a safe and culturally appropriate learning environment for Native American students (the “Students”). We increase the Students’ knowledge about their cultures and communities. While facilitating positive interactions between the Students. We strongly encourage and help prepare the Students to participate in higher education.
Bethany Brethren Community Center
Bethany Brethren Community Center runs youth programs focused on improving student achievement in the East Garfield Park community. The Center provides homework assistance and arts education four days a week during the school year and five days a week during school vacations and the summer for 100 elementary-age children.
Blessed Sacrament Youth Center
Blessed Sacrament Youth Center began in response to the North Lawndale community’s need for a safe, healthy environment to counter the streets. The center challenges its youth through guidance and opportunities to promote values and develop maturity and skills necessary to become responsible adults and leaders. Please visit our website at www.bsyc.org
Blue Sky Inn
The Blue Sky Inn provides creative, recreational and educational activities to at-risk adolescents in Chicago. All of our work is carried out by trained, committed volunteers. Our programs take place in domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, and community center. Please visit our website at www.blueskyinn.org.
Breakthrough Urban Ministries*
Breakthrough Urban Ministries was created in 1992 to provide neighborhood-based holistic services that empower individuals, families and urban communities in the Edgewater/Uptown neighborhood to overcome poverty, addiction and isolation. Please visit our website at www.breakthroughministries.com.
Chicago SCORES
Chicago SCORES mission is to inspire a lasting dedication to education, healthy living and civic responsibility in urban children. Please visit our website at www.chicagoscores.org.
Chinese Mutual Aid
Chinese Mutual Aid’s Youth Department provides after-school tutoring, leadership development, and other recreational activities for 94 immigrant and refugee children and youth, ages 4-19, in the Uptown community.
Gads Hill Center
Gads Hill Center is a community-based family resource center serving Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Its Learning Connection program provides educational assistance to at-risk elementary school students. A past grantee, Gads Hill recently began the Primero, La Ciencia, program in collaboration with The Chicago Botanic Gardens. This urban environmental science camp for 7th-9th graders was awarded one of six national Leadership Awards from The United States Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Please visit our website at www.gadshillcenter.org.
Girls In the Game
Girls in the Game (GIG) provides and promotes sports and fitness opportunities, nutrition and health education and leadership development to enhance the overall health and well being of all girls in Chicago. Please visit our website at www.girlsinthegame.org
Girls on the Run - Chicago
Girls on the Run-Chicago (GOTR) uses the power of running to educate and inspire girls for a life time of self-respect and healthy living. Please visit our website at www.gotrchicago.com
Institute for Positive Living
Institute for Positive Living with its Open Book program is designed to build early adolescents’ reading, literacy, analytical and communication skills through exploration of literature and self-expression. In conjunction with several Chicago public schools, students read culturally significant books, participate in writing workshops then plan and present a performance based on their readings.
MusicAlive!
Using a direct instructional approach that connects everyday life to music, the MusicAlive program helps students improve perceptive listening, critical thinking and creative participation skills.
New Horizons for Youth
New Horizons for Youth serves 50, impoverished children and youth, ages 6-17, living in Chicago's South and West Sides through out-of-school-time tutoring, life management skills workshops, recreational activities, and counseling. Meals and snacks are provided as well as parent education services.
Pros Art Studio
Pros Art Studio is a community-based multi-arts organization serving the Pilsen neighbourhood dedicated to enhancing individual and community life. Pros Arts brings artists and communities together while offering workshops and classes in crafts, performing arts and theatrical productions. Please visit our website at www.prosarts.com
San Miguel School
San Miguel School is an alternative school for grades six through eight which offers after-school, evening and family outreach programs that provide mentoring, tutoring, scholarship support, sports and field trips. A past grantee, San Miguel now has two south-side campuses: one in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, and the new Gary Comer Campus in Austin. Please visit our website at www.san-miguel.org.
Saving a Childhood Foundation
Saving a Childhood Foundation is organized to encourage children to chase their dreams and be productive members of their communities, SACF programs target at-risk youth, ages 7-18. Combining job training (culinary arts) with academic programs, character-building workshops, arts, sports and field trips, SACF aims to positively impact the cycles of negativity afflicting the Humboldt Park and surrounding communities.
South Chicago Art Center
The South Chicago Art Center’s mission is to provide a safe place for children after school by bringing arts education to Chicago's most impoverished schools and to stimulate the imaginations of participants of all ages in order to decrease incidences of crime and substance abuse. Please visit our website at www.happyartcenter.org
South Harper Montessori School
Based on the Montessori Philosophy, the South Harper Montessori School cares, nurtures and educates children utilizing hands-on, minds-on activity oriented strategies.
Southside Educational Center for Youth*
The Southside Educational Center for Youth is committed to helping youth become responsible, productive, and engaged citizens. The program offers educational and recreational activities during out-of-school hours to children aged six to thirteen from the Roseland, Pullman, and Riverdale communities.A past grantee, SECFY recently finished a successful capital campaign, enabling the organization to move into a larger space and help for more children. Please visit our website at www.secy.org.
Starfish Learning Center
Starfish Learning Center provides a safe, nurturing environment where at-risk children and teens learn, are encouraged and have fun. Please visit our website at www.starfishchicago.com
Sue Duncan Children's Center
Sue Duncan has been teaching kids at her South Side Chicago after-school Children's Center since 1960. On a daily basis, an average of 40 children attend the Center to receive one-on-one tutoring, participate in educational group discussions on a variety of topics, receive a nutritious meal and enjoy recreational activities. Please visit our website at www.sueduncanchildrenscenter.org
The Beloved Community
The Beloved Community's Excellence in Education program provides evening and weekend tutoring, academic enrichment, college exploration, college application and admission support, college test preparation, and scholarship and financial aid counseling for 50 African-American youth, grades 6-12.
The Learning Network Center
The Learning Network Center, serving the Austin community, arguably the city's largest and most troubled neighborhood, the Learning Network Center has helped kids beat the odds since its founding in 1972. Providing a community-based, alternative school to students ages 4-14, the Learning Network Center offers a full in-school curriculum, as well as after school programming focused on tutoring, youth outreach, workshops and recreational activities to fill the programming void that currently exists.
West Humboldt Park Center for Performing Arts
West Humboldt Park Center for Performing Arts was created to address the severe lack of child and youth programming within the west side community, the West Humboldt Park Center for Performing Arts offers after school and summer camp programming in drama and the theatre arts. Students take part in artistically-oriented field trips and performances, including road shows, while gaining valuable career training.
Program Spotlight
The Young Men’s Educational Network (YMEN) is a dynamic youth leadership organization established in 1996 to address the academic and social needs that cripple the futures of many young men who grow up in the North Lawndale community on Chicago’s West Side. YMEN offers advanced academic classes, entrepreneurial training, career planning, mentoring, tutoring, and a wide variety of community service opportunities as it seeks to fulfill its mission: “to prepare young men in North Lawndale for leadership by helping them grow in their faith and character, develop a love of learning, and use their gifts to serve the broader community.” For the past 14 years, YMEN has provided effective alternatives to academic apathy and gang membership and is recognized as a grass-roots community organization that is producing indigenous leadership in the next generation of African-American young men.
Website: www.ymenchicago.com
Parents miss an average of eight days of work per year due to a lack of afterschool care. Decreased worker productivity related to parental concerns about after school care costs businesses up to $300 billion per year. (Community¸ Families and Work Program at Brandeis University¸ 2004; Catalyst & Brandeis University¸ December 2006)