Chicago Beyond’s Rapid Response Fund quickly delivers resources to hyperlocal community organizations and individuals creating a better future for our young people and communities. There is no application process to become a Rapid Response Fund partner, which allows organizations more time to focus on the critical work of advancing their missions. The investment is unrestricted to help leaders to do what they deem is most critical and impactful based on their experience working with their colleagues and living in their communities. Rapid Response Fund partners also receive:
- A healing stipend, to help leaders care for themselves and their teams.
- Access to space, Chicago Beyond’s Home for Social Innovation, for meetings and special events.
- Extended visibility to their organizations.
- Invitations to Chicago Beyond events.
To date, over 160 organizations have become our Rapid Response Fund partners.
The Rapid Response Fund is also an example of how the Abundance Movement can be brought to life. The Abundance Movement is a nationwide movement that asks funders to acknowledge that there are numerous Black-led organizations working to overcome systemic inequities and to address the funding disparity for Black-led organizations by shifting how philanthropic dollars are allocated. Chicago Beyond recognizes that there is a multitude of Black-led community organizations in Chicago and supports some of these organizations through the Rapid Response Fund.
One of the ways Chicago Beyond identifies and reaches these hyperlocal community organizations, is through Chicago Beyond’s People’s Assembly. The People’s Assembly is a group of Chicagoans who share their experiences about impactful organizations doing invaluable block-by-block work in their own communities. This group plays a crucial role in recommending organizations that often go unnoticed and unfunded to receive support as a part of the Rapid Response Fund.
Read on to learn more about the critical work of our Rapid Response Fund partners.
Hover your mouse over any image below to read a description of the organization. You can click on any image or any organization’s title to visit their websites or Facebook pages.
A New Day Mental Wellness Center
Mental health and social justice-focused private practice counseling group, established for the purpose of offering individuals, couples, family, and other group therapy to teens and adults.
Black Researchers Collective
Black Researchers Collective is a collective of Black women taking research to the streets. Black Researchers Collective's mission is to train communities with research tools to be more civically engaged and policy informed.
Amor Al Arte
Amor Al Arte builds community by providing art activities to the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
1863FWD
Helping people exact their free will and determination by centering their strengths to overcome adversity and create wellness in all aspects of their lives for the whole person and the systems in which they engage.
360 Nation
Emphasizes relationship building, gifts, and talents to promote self-determination in the Black community. 360 Nation’s philosophy calls for returning back to the essence of the human experience, but through a critical lens.
ACCESS FREEDOM
Access Freedom's vision is to empower, equip, and encourage the youth to unlock the greatness that has been placed on the inside of them and mobilize them from a place of poverty to an oasis of prosperity in every facet of the word.
Acting OutSide
Working to heal communities and selves through performance art grounded in liberatory theory and practices. Members are scholars & artists, builders & philosophers, poets & people of the theater, activists & organizers, students & teachers, healers, survivors & shapers whose existences have been criminalized, bodies caged.
ACT Yoga
ACT Yoga is steeped in Awareness, Change and Triumph. We assist people with building and maximizing a pathway to mental, physical and spiritual balance.
Affinity Community Services
Affinity Community Services promotes the wellness of the Black LGBTQ community through advocacy, education, and health services.
AirGo
AirGo is a weekly podcast and movement media hub in Chicago that reshapes the culture of the city and beyond for the more liberatory and creative.
Allen Metropolitan CME Church
Allen Metropolitan CME Church seeks to improve the quality of life of families and the community. The Church under the leadership of the pastor, responds creatively to the needs of the community offering innovative, wholistic social ministries that address injustices, relieve suffering and brings healing to the masses.
The Answer Inc.
The Answer Inc. is dedicated to providing support, resources, education, recreation, advocacy & workforce development for families living with autism/developmental & intellectual disabilities.
Ayodele Drum and Dance
Ayodele Drum & Dance exists to foster community from a feminine perspective through the study and performance of diasporic African drum and dance.
Black Brown + Breathing
Black Brown + Breathing hosts healing-centered activations at sites of resistance, protest, and collective trauma throughout Chicago. BBB holds space for people in the city to gather, breathe, create, and celebrate in community. Through these activations, we come together to reclaim these spaces as our own, to share in one another’s healing, and to spread awareness of ongoing injustices.
Black Roots Alliance
Blackroots Alliance is an organization committed to the safety and liberation of all Black people, promoting Black leadership and Black-centered community transformation. They are a capacity-building network that supports institutions that share their vision for Black liberation and they work to dig deep into the pressing issues facing communities while building power to heal and shift society towards greater expressions of Black liberation.
Blck Ink
Working to give students the tools for writing stories and ideas they want to share. Blck Ink believes that one day the South Side of Chicago will be known for producing Black writers.
Blocks Together
Blocks Together was started by a group of residents in the West Humboldt Park community working to address crime and safety issues. The group responds to the needs of the West Humboldt Park and Garfield Park communities by focusing on Community Health, Prevention, Protection, and Planning/Organizing for the long-term.
Black Community Collaborative
Black Community Collaborative works to examine and dismantle structural racism to create equity for African Americans. We conduct research and gather data to inform and empower our community. We provide a platform to create community based solutions. We collaborate with institutions and organizations to disseminate resources and advocate for high quality public schools, housing, jobs and health services.
Blue Freedom Project
The Blue Freedom Project works to prevent human trafficking by bringing awareness to the issue through creative events. The Blue Freedom Project Career Development Program assists survivors of human trafficking in finding their passions and creating a career around it.
Boxing Out Negativity
Boxing Out Negativity empowers at-risk youth to realize the best within themselves in a safe and supportive environment. The group connects young people to summer sports, activities and programs with local organizations and the Park District.
Brown Books & Paintbrushes
At Brown Books & Paintbrushes we educate young children and families about Black culture through high quality literacy, art and cultural programming.
Bronzeville-Kenwood Mutual Aid
Bronzeville-Kenwood Mutual Aid (BKMA) is a grassroots group of neighbors, friends, and families who use mutual aid and exchange principles to address, heal and acknowledge community strengths, gifts, and needs. BKMA is based in the Bronzeville and Kenwood neighborhoods of Chicago.
Brave Space Alliance
Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ center dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us-by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ individuals on the South and West sides of the city.
Burst Into Books
Burst Into Books envisions a world transformed by cultural literacy through education. They are committed to helping the youth deepen their love of reading by integrating the arts, providing opportunities for them to engage with those connected to the literacy field, and creating a space for them to express themselves.
Centreville Citizens for Change/Flooded and Forgotten
CCC seeks to become the go-to local organization advocating for environmental justice. CCC’s advocacy has already prompted much media attention, raising the profile of these injustices to a national level and fighting for sustainable, equitable infrastructure solutions.
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos: United Workers Center builds power among low-wage and immigrant workers and advances systemic change to stabilize low-income immigrant communities and communities of color. We strive to build a powerful, member-led organization on the southeast side of Chicago that educates workers on their rights, develops leadership within the immigrant community, supports and organizes all workers as they fight for their rights in the workplace, and advocates for policies that improve security and standards for all workers.
Celestial Ministries Association/School of Fine Arts
Celestial Ministries offers a progressive art education and resource center where youth develop the social skills needed to become productive citizens and leaders in their community. This is being achieved through hands-on music and art instruction, dance, mentoring, tutoring, leadership training, and referrals to supportive services.
Chicago Adventure Therapy
Chicago Adventure Therapy (CAT) provides access to adventure sports and outdoor resources for children, youth, young adults, and families from under-resourced and marginalized communities in Chicago. CAT uses these programs as a medium and catalyst for increased physical and mental health, personal growth and healing, helping participants reach their full potential.
ChiFresh Kitchen & Urban Growers Collective
A collaboration of urban farms, food operators, worker centers, policy advocates, and other community organizations led by people of color on the South and West Sides of Chicago, who come together to promote food sovereignty, racial justice, and equitable food access in the City.
Chicago Black Doula Alliance
The Chicago Black Doula Alliance is a community of Black doulas who celebrate and support each other and discuss various ways of how to help families reclaim their power and indigenous practices by providing them with the resources to make informed decisions.
Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition
The Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition (Chicagoland DPOCC) is a group founded by, centered around, and run by disabled, Deaf, autistic, and neurodivergent people of color in the Chicagoland area. We are an organization that promote disability community advocacy, pride, inclusion, and acceptance in communities of color throughout the Chicagoland area.
Chicago Peace Initiative
Chicago Peace Initiative seeks to bring peace throughout our disinvested communities by providing gainful employment to the very ones perpetrating the crimes.
Chi City Foods
Chi City Foods is a farm and eco-campus located on the Far South Eastside of Chicago.
Chi-Nations Youth Council
Chi-Nations Youth Council creates safe spaces for Native youth, through arts, activism, and education. We built the The First Nations Garden to provide a healing space for Chicago’s First Nations Communities and promote public knowledge and appreciation of Chicago’s Indigenous landscape and ecosystem.
Circles & Ciphers
Circles & Ciphers is a hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by and for young people impacted by violence. Through art-based peace circles, education, and direct action, they collectively heal and work to bring about the abolition of the prison-industrial complex.
Clippers Change Communities
Clippers Change Communities travels to communities impacted by poverty, incarceration, and trauma to provide free haircuts and mentorship on hygiene and sanitation practices. We are grooming our communities to be better.
Coalition on Urban Girls
The Coalition on Urban Girls is an alliance of individuals, agencies and organizations with the mission to advocate for gender equity and improve the health, safety and wellness of all girls who reside in Chicago. The organization employs a 24-hour care line for girls ages 11-24, who are in immediate danger, in need of gender-responsive services, or trauma care.
Concrete Rose 773
Concrete Rose Chicago uses art, education, mentorship, and volunteering to combat inequity in the Chicagoland area. Concrete Rose Chicago has coordinated and held multiple events to shine a light on young and multi-talented leaders from the inner city of Chicago.
Community Healing Mercado
Community Healing Mercado creates an intimate experience with healing, wellness, culture and community. Community healing mercado is all about collaboration and community building. We want to create and offer accessible healing and wellness for those in need. Our motto is "Accessible healing for all."
Communities In Schools
Communities In Schools (CIS) of Chicago collaborates with a vast network of community partners to address the priorities of students and families at 175 public schools across Chicago. These community partners offer a range of no-cost programs in areas like academic support, arts and culture, college/career readiness, counseling and supportive guidance, health and wellness, and parent and family engagement.
The Cost Of Dignity
The Cost of Dignity is committed to supporting Black women who are justice impacted in their leadership development.
Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices
The Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices seeks to transmute the effects of violent crime and mass incarceration, on communities of color by providing trauma-informed therapeutic support to those who have been directly impacted.
Dion's Chicago Dream
Dion’s Chicago Dream creates food security for Chicagoland residents by stabilizing community access to free-of-cost fresh produce.
Dream Hustle Code
Dream Hustle Code aims to inspire Black and Brown youth’s confidence and interest in CS and Computer Coding Education and show them that creating and shaping technology is possible for them. They believe that all kids should have access and opportunity to Computer Science & Coding Education and ultimately to the Economy.
DEMOISELLE 2 FEMME, NFP
Demoiselle 2 Femme, NFP (D2F) supports the transition of girls to successful women by providing holistic youth development programming, college access services, and service-learning. Since 1994, D2F has helped over 1,000 girls become first-generation college graduates and awarded nearly $65,000 in academic scholarships to teen girls in the Chicagoland area.
The Dreamcatcher Foundation
The Dreamcatcher Foundation seeks to end human trafficking in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Our nonprofit organization works to prevent the sexual exploitation of at-risk youth and helps them find confidence and stability through education and advocacy. We offer individualized care by partnering each participant with existing survivors that will assist them in their journey with care and compassion.
El Paseo Community Garden
El Paseo Community Garden empowers through nature by fostering community and stewardship.
Earth's Remedies
Earth's Remedies (E.R.) develops resource hubs by connecting disenfranchised families to free financial literacy, health & wellness, business development, and conflict de-escalation resources. Serving as a community resource hub, allows E.R. to combat the lack of resources on the Westside of Chicago, which is the driving force behind our youth’s gravitation toward crime, as a means of financial stability.
EXxperts
EXxperts is dedicated to changing narratives by connecting professionals, returning citizens, and the at-risk population to decrease violence and empower community.
En Las Tablas Performing Arts, NFP
En Las Tablas aims to provide an open, safe, healthy and affirming space to explore artistic expression through community connection.
Education Justice Project
The Education Justice Project supports the development of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated leaders through providing higher education in prison. EJP also produces reentry guides and other resources for individuals and families facing release.
Elevate
Elevate designs and implements programs to ensure that everyone has clean and affordable heat, power, and water in their homes and communities — no matter who they are or where they live. Through our Water Reconnection Program, Elevate helps residents with plumbing repair and restoration of water services as part of our vision to ensure access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water.
Englewood First Responders
Englewood first Responders believes in encouraging youth to be a better individuals than they were yesterday. Our motto is “We can’t be what we can’t see.”
Equity and Transformation
Equity and Transformation (EAT) strives to uplift the faces, voices, and power of individuals that operate within the informal economy. Part of their strategy includes reimagining the definition of “laborer” through a lens that considers both the history of exclusion of Black workers and the depth of creativity required to thrive within an alternative labor system in a capitalist country. They also work to build bridges between the informal and formal economy for constituents seeking formal employment.
Escaping The Odds
Escaping The Odds Media empowers the formerly incarcerated & disadvantaged to switch hustles through entrepreneurship. We tell the stories to change the narrative & inspire urban American.
Eye Love You
Eye Love You is a community-based nonprofit with a mission to empower, develop and provide resources to youth on the South and West Sides of Chicago. They offer a free summer camp that features arts, sports programming, and a dynamic learning environment for youth ages 4-13.
EYE AUM MOOR LLC
EYE AUM MOOR LLC develops non-clinical social and educational strategies that allows students and community members to navigate through life's obstacles with a dedicated support network.
Edifye
Edifye connects athletes to grassroots causes they intrinsically care about in the cities they represent.
Farm, Food, Familias
Farm, Food, Familias supports community members and essential workers by preparing and delivering meals and groceries to families in Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago
Fathers, Families and Healthy Communities
We are dedicated to creating a world where young, African American fathers are valued as assets to their children, families, and communities. Through various means, FFHC creates opportunities for young, African American fathers to support their children’s positive growth, development, and well-being.
Firehouse Community Arts Center
We interrupt the cycle of violence in the lives of youth and young adults in North Lawndale through the power of arts and faith.
Fres Oquendo Boxing Academy FOBA FOUNDATION INC
Building Champions inside and outside of the ring through boxing & fitness, health & wellness, and social and emotional awareness.
Forty Acres Fresh Market
Forty Acres Fresh Market is a Black woman-owned social impact grocer that increases fresh food access, nutrition education, and quality jobs in underserved Chicago neighborhoods. We currently operate as a mobile produce vendor operating popup markets, produce stands, and daily delivery service.
Front Porch Arts Center
Front Porch Arts Center was created to add to the artistic landscape of the Westside of Chicago while celebrating and documenting community, art and cultural history through arts and cultural programming, such as workshops, classes, performances, exhibitions, and residencies.
FRIEDA'S PLACE
FRIEDA'S PLACE supports anyone from any community, with hot meals, clothing, hot showers, and groceries. No ticket, no number, no ID needed. Just come, all are welcome.
F.O.C.U.O.S
Our vision is to create a safe and nurturing environment for our community. Our goal is to educate and expose those in need to social, emotional, and financial support.
Future Ties, NFP
Future Ties builds the capacity of youth and families by providing safe spaces, employment opportunity and resource referrals through community outreach and violence prevention strategies.
Focus Fairies Mentoring
Focus Fairies Mentoring provides a mentoring experience that serves as a safe space to help increase the mentee’s levels of self-confidence, spirituality, emotional health, and personal development. We serve preteen girls, adolescents, and young adult women on Chicago's west and southside who reside in underrepresented communities in need of one-on-one mentoring and group activities to help build or rebuild their self-confidence and leadership skills.
Gage Park LatinX
GPLXC is a grassroots queer, DACA led community cultural center run by long time Latinx residents of the Southwest side of Chicago rooted in abolition and mutual aid.
Girls Like Me Project
Girls Like Me Project helps Black girls reconnect the power of their voice through storytelling. Their free programming uses a 3E approach of “Exposure, Examination, and Engagement” to create opportunities for social emotional wellness, mother-daughter bonding, cultural excursions, advocacy, career exploration and paid opportunities.
Giving Others Dreams (GOD)
Providing a supportive safe space that promotes healing and empowerment of women and families. Giving Others Dreams provides immediate relief with "WE Win" welcome home basic need emergency care packages.
Global Girls
Global Girls is a youth engagement and performing arts organization empowering African American girls and women primarily on Chicago’s South Side. The organization facilitates school-based and after school programs, works with youth in partnership with other organizations, conducts parent and professional development workshops and presents participant-driven theatre. Seasoned participants travel internationally (India, Ghana, Kenya, Granada) and teach other girls to tell their stories on stage.
Good Vibes Only
Good Vibes Only provides back-to-school supplies & SAT prep, as well as meals for families and essentials for parents, youth and community. What started as an idea to provide sacked lunches for children has now evolved into an impactful organization for the community.
GODDESS Mentoring
GODDESS (Goal Oriented, Determined Divas who Envision Superior Success), is a mentoring organization whose sole purpose is to empower young women by supporting them in becoming the best version of themselves. To do so, we focus on 4 core values: Self-Confidence/Esteem, Community Service, Financial Literacy, and Health & Wellness. Students master these core values by participating in weekly sessions, monthly community service projects, enrichment opportunities, and need-based tutoring cycles.
Good Kids Mad City
Good Kids Mad City is a youth-led organization formed to allow Chicago’s youth to address violence they face in their communities and create healing spaces for young people affected by trauma.
Girls Like Me Project
The Girls Like Me Project supports young Black girls by critically examining social, cultural, and political ideologies in media to overcome stigma and negative stereotypes and helps young black girls become independent digital storytellers and change agents.
Gyrls In The H.O.O.D Foundation
Gyrls In The H.O.O.D Foundation provides adolescent gyrls with a safe non-judgmental space to receive sexual health education, basic necessities, and shelter.
Grocery Run Club
Grocery Run Club is a community driven initiative that partners with organizations to supply fresh produce and everyday necessities to underserved neighborhoods in Chicago.
Grace Housing Complex
Grace Housing Complex is an economic and community development organization focused on providing low-income families with supportive services, personal development opportunities, and affordable housing access within the greater Chicago-land area.Through implementation of our programs we aim to create: stable, safe, and healthy communities.
Hands Around the Hundreds
Hands Around the Hundreds seeks to mitigate and reduce violence through sports and comprehensive mentoring.
Healthy Place
Healthy Place is a nonprofit organization focused on youth development through agriculture, community service, culinary arts, gardening, and fishing programs. They provide youth with education and training for living a healthy lifestyle while earning a living by way of agriculture.
Healing Hurt People - Chicago
Through assessment, psycho-education, intensive case management, group therapy and mentoring, Healing Hurt People-Chicago helps youth who’ve been violently injured, so they can heal both physically and emotionally.
Homie's Helping Humanity
Homies Helping Humanity (H3) is organized by a group of friends with the common goal of helping people. They produce kits with warm wear, first aid kits and sanitary products to hit the streets with, providing reusable bags with over a dozen items to those experiencing homelessness on the south and west sides of Chicago. H3 has grown as an organization, now doing monthly fresh food and produce drop offs in the Roseland community and other neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago, already giving away over a ton of produce and hundreds of hot meals.
The Happiness Club
The Happiness Club provides a free performing arts education program for Chicago kids. Offering a safe space to develop artistic and communication skills fosters a sense of belonging to an artistic community.
Imagine Englewood If
Imagine Englewood if (IEi) is a youth development nonprofit with a mission is to strengthen and empower the Greater Englewood community through teaching local youth ( ages 6-18) and their families healthy living, environmental awareness, and positive communication skills.
Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative
The Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative is a statewide Black-centered organization dedicated to building power through organizing and systems change to secure equity and justice for Black Illinoisans.
I Dream Chicago
I Dream Chicago seeks to help the youth of Chicago materialize their dreams through photography and videography/filmmaking. Over the last three years with very limited resources I've worked with top content creators and musicians in Chicago in order to create films and other forms of content that inspire and inform our youth as well as fed, mentored, taught photography/videography basics to, and brought our youth together in the process.
In Diamond's Hands
In Diamond's Hands was founded by Englewood resident, Diamond Coleman, to provide high-quality 1:1 tutoring to under-resourced students who face many systemic barriers to achieving educational success. The program has started in one public school and was able to produce significant academic growth for participants. Individualized tutoring provided by the program has been essential because of the learning loss that COVID and remote learning have generated.
I Am Chi Foundation
I Am Chi seeks to service Chicago's youth through tutoring, mentoring, counseling and job training opportunities that will put them on a path to success.
The Iconic House of Ebony
The House of Ebony is an Iconic Ballroom house with 15 chapters nationwide with its roots deeply entrenched in the community. The house of Ebony builds strong leaders to successfully thrive in and out of the Ballroom while helping to launch Ballroom-specific agencies that focus on improving the quality of life for members of Ballroom with a specific focus on issues faced by Transgender men and women who are seeking support.
The Jehovah Jireh #1 Outreach Ministry
The Jehovah Jireh #1 Outreach Ministry is a church beyond walls that provides outreach, meditation, general community support, and hyperlocal violence interruption efforts in the Austin community. They led the #1STV (#1 Stop the Violence) Campaign to end violence in Westside neighborhoods.
John Pendleton Planks & Pistils
Planks and Pistils as a flower arranging enterprise in pursuit of a vision of Black Freedom. John Pendleton hires young, Black, male interns for Planks and Pistils to enable them to explore emotions through floral arrangements as creative therapy.
Justus Junkie
Justus Junkie Inc. teaches youth how to stay safe if stopped by police and how to stay out of jail. Participants learn life skills through workshops, videos and the revolutionary board game, Trials & Triumph.
KY Production
KY Production is a content creator and Co-Host of the FutureTies YouTube channel. They interview small organizations to help get the organization's platform out in the world.
Ladies of Virtue
Ladies of Virtue empowers girls to become confident and purpose-driven leaders through character development, career readiness and civic engagement.
Lead with Love
Lead with Love seeks to actively address social injustices prevalent within disinvested communities on the Southside of Chicago by providing resources and programming that focus on physical health, mental health, education, and exposure/employment opportunities for youth.
Legacy Disciple: Brotherhood Mentoring
Brotherhood Mentoring is an intensive mentorship program focused on two goals: 1. Reaching young men in Chicago and supporting their character development 2. Helping youth leaders in our partnering churches become better mentors
Legacy Disciple: Hood Heroes
Hood Heroes is a program of Legacy Disciple. We exist to employ, equip, and empower youth to do great work where they live.
LetUsBreathe Collective
The #LetUsBreathe Collective is an alliance of artists and activists organizing through a creative lens to imagine a world without prisons and police. The Collective operates the Breathing Room space, a Black-led liberation headquarters for arts, organizing, and healing on Chicago's South Side.
Light Up Lawndale
Light Up Lawndale is a community based organization focused on building communities with people power.
Life After Justice
Life After Justice focuses on non-DNA evidence cases of wrongly convicted individuals to create new laws or set new precedents to help undo unjust laws and the ill-conceived legislation that created them.
LIVE FREE Chicago
Live Free Chicago is a grassroots organization, comprised of black churches, striving for economic and political liberation for black people. The primary focus is on eradicating the root causes of violence in black communities on the South and West sides and mobilizing voters to combat institutional and systemic racism. They also invest in programs and initiatives that build better access to jobs, entrepreneurship, and the alleviation of poverty and discrimination.
Little Village Community Council
The Little Village Community Council was founded in 1967. The mission of the council has always been to serve the community. There are many resources that our community lacks and through the hard work of our Board of Directors and volunteers, we aim to bring resources to the community that will help residents of Little Village lead a better life.
Living the Dream Youth Development
Living The Dream Youth Development is an after-school/summer program that provides youth grades 6th-12th, in under-resourced neighborhoods of Chicago with athletic mentoring, athletic training, sports tournaments and tutoring. These programs are provided to youth athletes at no cost in an effort to provide youth with a safe space to learn about sports and to excel in their chosen athletics, academics and life!
Lost Boyz Inc.
Lost Boyz Inc. is engaged in violence prevention through positive youth development, derived through organized baseball within Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Lost Boyz services youth ages 4 to 21 through a model based on the Positive Youth Development Theory and Developmental Systems Theory, with an emphasis on sports inclusion.
Love Unity & Values (LUV) Institute
The Love, Unity & Values (LUV) Institute seeks to prevent youth poverty by providing a social-emotional learning approach to college and career readiness.
Make Momma Proud
The mission at Make Momma Proud is to inspire, support and encourage youth coping with the loss of a parent to achieve their life goals. By providing mentoring and grief counseling support, we hope to help achieve the goals and aspirations of our youth affected by this tragedy.
Market Box
Market Box is a mutual aid project that sources food from small farms and distributes it for free across the South Side of Chicago. Their network is a place to generate community power, take care of one another, and exchange critical information as neighbors.
Men Making a Difference
Men Making a Difference is a block-by-block grassroots organization run by dedicated community members, Charlie Wilson and Robert "Rock" Calhoun. The group’s mission is to combat violence and to build programs to ‘restore’ people to the community, based off the principles of restorative justice.
Mr. Nelson Movers
The Nelson Movers Family is dedicated to giving back to our community and providing resources needed to help us live in a better place.
Mobilize Creative Connection
The Mobilize Creative Collaborative is a group of four artists who utilize mobile makerspaces to provide free arts workshops for youth and adults in public places. Individually, collectively, and working with a rich network of fellow artists, organizers, and neighbors, the MCC acts as an intergenerational platform for popular education, communal creation, and arts-based organizing within and across communities in which we live, work, and create on Chicago’s South and Southwest sides.
Mother Love Youth Connection
Mother Love Youth Connection is a business to help youth parents find job, housing, & childcare. We pride ourselves on giving help to those in need.
Noble Steps Chi
Noble Steps Chi supports disenfranchised communities by way of food security, community development, social engagement, trauma relief and educational support. Their culturally responsive community efforts focus on middle school-aged (10-16 year old) children, and Noble Steps has created safe spaces for youth to learn how to communicate effectively in the context of violence in the community.
Not Me We
A grassroots community organization focused on building community power through tenant, education and mutual aid organizing. Focusing on South Shore and the surrounding communities.
Nita’s Love Train
Nita’s Love Train provides Chicago families with immediate necessities and baby essentials directly and through community pop ups.
Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards
Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards is a grass roots youth education program on the South Side of Chicago that engages youth through skateboarding, biking and art-making. We offer free skate lessons and community events, and redistribute skateboarding and bicycle equipment.
Outreach International
"For when you saw me hungry, you fed me. When you found me thirsty, you gave me drink..." Outreach International Inc. works for the benefit of the community by feeding and aiding the less fortunate. Despite any weather conditions, we aim to maintain our consistency and fulfill any obligations that come upon us.
Organic Oneness
Organic Oneness is a grassroots social justice organization that co-creates with communities to mobilize systemic change, healing and wellness, foregrounding Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Through programs and events, Organic Oneness co-creates spaces for families, teachers, community members, health practitioners, environmentalists, people who work in the criminal justice system, elected officials and other sectors to have conversations, grow together, heal and center themselves, attain racial understanding and understanding of our interconnectedness with each other and the earth.
Parents Overcoming Welfare-System Regulations (P.O.W.R)
Parents Overcoming Welfare-System Regulations (P.O.W.R) Is a parent-led advocacy organization that transforms impacted parents involved in the child welfare system into impactful parents focused on improving the system. The mission and purpose of the organization are to build an advocacy space created by and for parents to fight the foster system’s surveillance, separation, and marginalization of families, particularly Black families and Indigenous families experiencing poverty.
Pastor Wayne Fricks / Men of War Ministries
Men of War Ministries provides holistic services to people leaving jail and prison. They provide clothing, food, and assistance to secure jobs for individuals who have been released from IDOC. They also provide daily mentorship to help individuals nurture the life skills they did not have the opportunity to hone while incarcerated.
People for Community Recovery
People for Community Recovery's mission is to enhance the quality of life of residents living in communities affected by environmental pollution. They address environmental and climate justice, safe and affordable housing, economic equity and community health.
Perfect Vision Empowered
Perfect Vision Empowered (PVE) works to build relationships to provide services to individuals most impacted by gun violence either by active engagement or victimization. PVE uses innovative avenues for outreach that motivate such individuals through the success of others like themselves to take advantage of opportunities for positive self-elevation.
Pull Up The City/BLK Rising
Pull Up The City normalizes nature for Black and Brown young people as a form of liberation, holistic healing, and violence prevention. We transform vacant lots to community wellness sanctuaries that provide access to healthy food, wellness courses & workshops, revolutionary art, and radical vibes.
The Pilsen Neighbors Community Council
The Pilsen Neighbors Community Council organizes, engages and activates people and resources to positively address community issues facing Pilsen- most notably in the areas of education, housing, healthcare, social justice and immigration reform.
Project LOVE Chicago
Project LOVE Chicago strives to break the cycle of poverty, decrease violent crimes, and increase youth academic outcomes. We do this by providing academic, athletic, and professional resources to vulnerable black populations throughout the Chicago area.
Praize Productions, Inc.
Praize Productions is focused on arts enrichment infused with education and social programming for youth on the South Side of Chicago. Students receive rigorous artistic training at affordable rates, are aligned with influential mentors, and obtain professional performance opportunities throughout the arts community.
Rebel Bells
The Rebel Bells Collective creates a place for young girls of color from the Calumet Region where they can heal from living in a culture of patriarchy and gain the knowledge necessary to break free from the limitations often associated with identifying as female.
Roseland Community "Good News" Day Care
Roseland Community "Good News" Day Care provides child-care for high school, college and low-income working moms in a safe, nurturing Christ-centered environment, allowing young mothers to go to school, work full-time essential jobs, and provide for their children.
The Restorative Project
The Restorative Project has a mission to create safer neighborhoods in the inner-city by changing the way young people deal with violence. The vision of The Restorative Project is to transform youth in marginalized communities from critically high-risk, to ”Highly Successful.”
Root2fruit Youth Foundation
Root2fruit Youth Foundation is a village building initiative that includes, engages and empowers youth. Our youth are prepared to be advocates of change and innovation within their community.
Safe & Sound
Safe & Sound is an arts-centered, youth-driven, Community Benefits Organization that emphasizes youth leadership and youth voice as a means of responding to some of society's most difficult challenges. We utilize a trauma informed approach to addressing topics such as education, community and domestic violence, sexual assault, homelessness and more.
Southeast Youth Alliance
The Southeast Youth Alliance's mission is “to amplify opportunities for local youth on Chicago’s Southeast Side and develop the next generation of community leaders." They host events and are committed to establishing an inclusive environment for youth to come together and expand perspectives in the community.
Seeds of Roseland
The Seeds of Roseland looks to reduce violence by creating peace zones and safe spaces for our youth throughout the city. Our mission is to bridge the gap of neighborhood genocide through activities that bring youth together with a buy in of peace from the community. We also have a Whistles for Awareness (WAR) initiative to reduce the trafficking of women and other types of violence.
Sista Afya Community Care
Sista Afya Community Care builds sustainable mental wellness communities through providing affordable and culturally-centered community mental wellness care and education. Sista Afya Community Care provides free individual therapy, community workshops, wellness classes, and professional development to women of color in the Chicagoland area.
S.L.A.Y.
S.L.A.Y seeks to provide resources for women, teens, and young girls to thrive in everyday life through comprehensive affirmation, empowerment, and psycho-education on mental health.
Storycatchers Theatre
Storycatchers works with youth in the juvenile justice system. We help them tell their stories through musical theatre. By moving beyond their histories, they transform their own lives, communities, and people like you who are ready to listen.
Space Share Lab
The Space Share Lab seeks to provide no-to-low cost space where community practitioners can provide restorative healing education and practice for community members in service to collective health, wellness and fortitude.
Swish Queer Basketball Club
Swish is Chicago's first BIPOC-centered queer woman/trans/enby basketball meet-up for the casual player. We seek to cultivate a space of joy and community.
Telpochcalli Community Education Project
The Telpochcalli Community Education Project mobilizes youth and adults for social justice work by building individual capacity, collective power, and mutual responsibility through culturally relevant and community-directed education, leadership development, and organizing.
Think Outside Da Block
Think Outside Da Block rallies the community together to enhance our youths’ interests, skills, and abilities through positive youth development strategies.
TGi Movement
TGi's mission is To curate and cultivate Oasis-es throughout Chicago to unite youth across neighborhood boundaries dismantling Dream Deserts. At TGi we are deeply rooted in community and strongly passionate about shifting the narrative and culture along 63rd street and surrounding communities through intentional youth development, community development, and arts & culture work.
TOTALLY POSITIVE PRODUCTIONS
Our MISSION is to produce Positive Rap, Singing, Dance, Theater and Spoken Word Talent Competitions as well as produce positive "Off the Street" activities for youth ages seven and up and adults as a deterrent to gang and drug involvement.
True Star Media & Foundation
True Star Media empowers underserved youth to forge their own paths by providing jobs and training that teaches them to create, develop and market digital content on platforms that celebrate their identity and perspectives.
Unity Park
Unity Park brings a peaceful atmosphere and space in North Lawndale to bring unity in the community through events, activities, and providing a safe space for our youth, young adults, and community to enjoy.
Unique Sweets Inc. NFP
Unique Sweets provides opportunities for individuals living with Autism and other abilities to develop job skills, socialize and expand their skills across family, community, and professional worlds.
Teamwork Englewood
Teamwork Englewood is dedicated to improving the quality of life of the residents and stakeholders of Englewood with economic, educational, and social opportunities.
The TRiiBE
The TRiiBE is a digital media platform showcasing innovative content to reshape the narrative of Black Chicago. As an independent, alternative news source, The TRiiBE hopes to unify Black Chicago in the common purpose to create a safer, more vibrant Chicago.
Únete La Villita
Únete uses grassroots organizing, community engagement, political education, and policy advocacy to promote community-driven development in Little Village.
Urban Growers Collective
The Urban Growers Collective’s goal is to bring the benefits of healthy, locally grown produce and other nutritious foods to Chicago’s communities while supporting the growth of Chicago’s urban farmers. Their Fresh Moves Mobile Market brings produce to schools, community centers, churches, and health clinics to make good food accessible in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Watch Guard
Watch Guard is a Neighborhood Watch Program that focuses on assisting in the efforts to increase peace in statistically violent areas.
We Sow We Grow
The We Sow We Grow Project is dedicated to the furtherance of gardening and farming in West Pullman through education and service. Food is possible to grow for all and we seek to remove the fear and reservations of growing your own food through community-powered assistance in an urban ag safe space. We seek to connect growers from all over on any and every level starting with our youngest community members.
Woke Chicago
WOKE Chicago creates access to trauma-informed mindfulness programs within under-resourced communities & schools.
Work Foundation
The Work Foundation provides youth with alternatives to violence by engaging them in social-emotional activities, sports, and academic supports.
YAP
YAP is a high-impact social justice nonprofit that provides community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, congregate placements and neighborhood violence.
Young, Black and Lit
YBL provides free children's books featuring Black characters to families, schools organizations serving youth.
Youth Empowerment Performance Project (YEPP)
YEPP strives to create a brave environment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) youth experiencing homelessness to explore their history, investigate new ways to address their struggles and to celebrate their strengths through personal, leadership and community development programming that incorporate different art-expression forms.
Yameen’s Dream
Yameen’s Dream NFP is designed to provide for, support, encourage, protect and educate Chicago youth who are often overlooked. They aim to drastically decrease the drop-out rate in our schools, exponentially increase academic excellence, limit gang activity, provide grief counseling, therapy for multiple traumas, mental and emotional support, real-life role models, and expose youth to the city and world beyond their daily environments. By focusing on the youth population, Yameen’s Dream is hopeful to inspire and essentially save families, neighborhoods and communities.
Youth Peace Center of Roseland
Youth Peace Center of Roseland offers youth related workshops that mentor and teach teens the skills necessary to avoid conflict and violence. The Youth Peace Center works with the highest risk individuals and provides outreach and wraparound services for men and their families when they are most vulnerable and most likely to shoot or to be shot.
A New Day Mental Wellness Center
Mental health and social justice-focused private practice counseling group, established for the purpose of offering individuals, couples, family, and other group therapy to teens and adults.
1863FWD
Helping people exact their free will and determination by centering their strengths to overcome adversity and create wellness in all aspects of their lives for the whole person and the systems in which they engage.
360 Nation
Emphasizes relationship building, gifts, and talents to promote self-determination in the Black community. 360 Nation’s philosophy calls for returning back to the essence of the human experience, but through a critical lens.
ACCESS FREEDOM
Access Freedom's vision is to empower, equip, and encourage the youth to unlock the greatness that has been placed on the inside of them and mobilize them from a place of poverty to an oasis of prosperity in every facet of the word.
Acting OutSide
Working to heal communities and selves through performance art grounded in liberatory theory and practices. Members are scholars & artists, builders & philosophers, poets & people of the theater, activists & organizers, students & teachers, healers, survivors & shapers whose existences have been criminalized, bodies caged.
Affinity Community Services
Affinity Community Services promotes the wellness of the Black LGBTQ community through advocacy, education, and health services.
AirGo
AirGo is a weekly podcast and movement media hub in Chicago that reshapes the culture of the city and beyond for the more liberatory and creative.
Allen Metropolitan CME Church
Allen Metropolitan CME Church seeks to improve the quality of life of families and the community. The Church under the leadership of the pastor, responds creatively to the needs of the community offering innovative, wholistic social ministries that address injustices, relieve suffering and brings healing to the masses.
Amor Al Arte
Amor Al Arte builds community by providing art activities to the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
The Answer Inc.
The Answer Inc. is dedicated to providing support, resources, education, recreation, advocacy & workforce development for families living with autism/developmental & intellectual disabilities.
Ayodele Drum and Dance
Ayodele Drum & Dance exists to foster community from a feminine perspective through the study and performance of diasporic African drum and dance.
Black Brown + Breathing
Black Brown + Breathing hosts healing-centered activations at sites of resistance, protest, and collective trauma throughout Chicago. BBB holds space for people in the city to gather, breathe, create, and celebrate in community. Through these activations, we come together to reclaim these spaces as our own, to share in one another’s healing, and to spread awareness of ongoing injustices.
Black Roots Alliance
Blackroots Alliance is an organization committed to the safety and liberation of all Black people, promoting Black leadership and Black-centered community transformation. They are a capacity-building network that supports institutions that share their vision for Black liberation and they work to dig deep into the pressing issues facing communities while building power to heal and shift society towards greater expressions of Black liberation.
Blck Ink
Working to give students the tools for writing stories and ideas they want to share. Blck Ink believes that one day the South Side of Chicago will be known for producing Black writers.
Blocks Together
Blocks Together was started by a group of residents in the West Humboldt Park community working to address crime and safety issues. The group responds to the needs of the West Humboldt Park and Garfield Park communities by focusing on Community Health, Prevention, Protection, and Planning/Organizing for the long-term.
Blue Freedom Project
The Blue Freedom Project works to prevent human trafficking by bringing awareness to the issue through creative events. The Blue Freedom Project Career Development Program assists survivors of human trafficking in finding their passions and creating a career around it.
Boxing Out Negativity
Boxing Out Negativity empowers at-risk youth to realize the best within themselves in a safe and supportive environment. The group connects young people to summer sports, activities and programs with local organizations and the Park District.
Brown Books & Paintbrushes
At Brown Books & Paintbrushes we educate young children and families about Black culture through high quality literacy, art and cultural programming.
Bronzeville-Kenwood Mutual Aid
Bronzeville-Kenwood Mutual Aid (BKMA) is a grassroots group of neighbors, friends, and families who use mutual aid and exchange principles to address, heal and acknowledge community strengths, gifts, and needs. BKMA is based in the Bronzeville and Kenwood neighborhoods of Chicago.
Brave Space Alliance
Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ center dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us-by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ individuals on the South and West sides of the city.
Burst Into Books
Burst Into Books envisions a world transformed by cultural literacy through education. They are committed to helping the youth deepen their love of reading by integrating the arts, providing opportunities for them to engage with those connected to the literacy field, and creating a space for them to express themselves.
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos: United Workers Center builds power among low-wage and immigrant workers and advances systemic change to stabilize low-income immigrant communities and communities of color. We strive to build a powerful, member-led organization on the southeast side of Chicago that educates workers on their rights, develops leadership within the immigrant community, supports and organizes all workers as they fight for their rights in the workplace, and advocates for policies that improve security and standards for all workers.
Celestial Ministries Association/School of Fine Arts
Celestial Ministries offers a progressive art education and resource center where youth develop the social skills needed to become productive citizens and leaders in their community. This is being achieved through hands-on music and art instruction, dance, mentoring, tutoring, leadership training, and referrals to supportive services.
Chicago Adventure Therapy
Chicago Adventure Therapy (CAT) provides access to adventure sports and outdoor resources for children, youth, young adults, and families from under-resourced and marginalized communities in Chicago. CAT uses these programs as a medium and catalyst for increased physical and mental health, personal growth and healing, helping participants reach their full potential.
ChiFresh Kitchen & Urban Growers Collective
A collaboration of urban farms, food operators, worker centers, policy advocates, and other community organizations led by people of color on the South and West Sides of Chicago, who come together to promote food sovereignty, racial justice, and equitable food access in the City.
Chicago Black Doula Alliance
The Chicago Black Doula Alliance is a community of Black doulas who celebrate and support each other and discuss various ways of how to help families reclaim their power and indigenous practices by providing them with the resources to make informed decisions.
Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition
The Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition (Chicagoland DPOCC) is a group founded by, centered around, and run by disabled, Deaf, autistic, and neurodivergent people of color in the Chicagoland area. We are an organization that promote disability community advocacy, pride, inclusion, and acceptance in communities of color throughout the Chicagoland area.
Chicago Peace Initiative
Chicago Peace Initiative seeks to bring peace throughout our disinvested communities by providing gainful employment to the very ones perpetrating the crimes.
Chi City Foods
Chi City Foods is a farm and eco-campus located on the Far South Eastside of Chicago.
Chi-Nations Youth Council
Chi-Nations Youth Council creates safe spaces for Native youth, through arts, activism, and education. We built the The First Nations Garden to provide a healing space for Chicago’s First Nations Communities and promote public knowledge and appreciation of Chicago’s Indigenous landscape and ecosystem.
Circles & Ciphers
Circles & Ciphers is a hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by and for young people impacted by violence. Through art-based peace circles, education, and direct action, they collectively heal and work to bring about the abolition of the prison-industrial complex.
Coalition on Urban Girls
The Coalition on Urban Girls is an alliance of individuals, agencies and organizations with the mission to advocate for gender equity and improve the health, safety and wellness of all girls who reside in Chicago. The organization employs a 24-hour care line for girls ages 11-24, who are in immediate danger, in need of gender-responsive services, or trauma care.
Concrete Rose Chicago
Concrete Rose Chicago uses art, education, mentorship, and volunteering to combat inequity in the Chicagoland area. Concrete Rose Chicago has coordinated and held multiple events to shine a light on young and multi-talented leaders from the inner city of Chicago.
Community Healing Mercado
Community Healing Mercado creates an intimate experience with healing, wellness, culture and community. Community healing mercado is all about collaboration and community building. We want to create and offer accessible healing and wellness for those in need. Our motto is "Accessible healing for all."
Communities In Schools
Communities In Schools (CIS) of Chicago collaborates with a vast network of community partners to address the priorities of students and families at 175 public schools across Chicago. These community partners offer a range of no-cost programs in areas like academic support, arts and culture, college/career readiness, counseling and supportive guidance, health and wellness, and parent and family engagement.
The Cost Of Dignity
The Cost of Dignity is committed to supporting Black women who are justice impacted in their leadership development.
Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices
The Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices seeks to transmute the effects of violent crime and mass incarceration, on communities of color by providing trauma-informed therapeutic support to those who have been directly impacted.
Dion's Chicago Dream
Dion’s Chicago Dream creates food security for Chicagoland residents by stabilizing community access to free-of-cost fresh produce.
Dream Hustle Code
Dream Hustle Code aims to inspire Black and Brown youth’s confidence and interest in CS and Computer Coding Education and show them that creating and shaping technology is possible for them. They believe that all kids should have access and opportunity to Computer Science & Coding Education and ultimately to the Economy.
DEMOISELLE 2 FEMME, NFP
Demoiselle 2 Femme, NFP (D2F) supports the transition of girls to successful women by providing holistic youth development programming, college access services, and service-learning. Since 1994, D2F has helped over 1,000 girls become first-generation college graduates and awarded nearly $65,000 in academic scholarships to teen girls in the Chicagoland area.
The Dreamcatcher Foundation
The Dreamcatcher Foundation seeks to end human trafficking in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Our nonprofit organization works to prevent the sexual exploitation of at-risk youth and helps them find confidence and stability through education and advocacy. We offer individualized care by partnering each participant with existing survivors that will assist them in their journey with care and compassion.
El Paseo Community Garden
El Paseo Community Garden empowers through nature by fostering community and stewardship.
Earth's Remedies
Earth's Remedies (E.R.) develops resource hubs by connecting disenfranchised families to free financial literacy, health & wellness, business development, and conflict de-escalation resources. Serving as a community resource hub, allows E.R. to combat the lack of resources on the Westside of Chicago, which is the driving force behind our youth’s gravitation toward crime, as a means of financial stability.
EXxperts
EXxperts is dedicated to changing narratives by connecting professionals, returning citizens, and the at-risk population to decrease violence and empower community.
En Las Tablas Performing Arts, NFP
En Las Tablas aims to provide an open, safe, healthy and affirming space to explore artistic expression through community connection.
Education Justice Project
The Education Justice Project supports the development of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated leaders through providing higher education in prison. EJP also produces reentry guides and other resources for individuals and families facing release.
Elevate
Elevate designs and implements programs to ensure that everyone has clean and affordable heat, power, and water in their homes and communities — no matter who they are or where they live. Through our Water Reconnection Program, Elevate helps residents with plumbing repair and restoration of water services as part of our vision to ensure access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water.
Englewood First Responders
Englewood first Responders believes in encouraging youth to be a better individuals than they were yesterday. Our motto is “We can’t be what we can’t see.”
Equity and Transformation
Equity and Transformation (EAT) strives to uplift the faces, voices, and power of individuals that operate within the informal economy. Part of their strategy includes reimagining the definition of “laborer” through a lens that considers both the history of exclusion of Black workers and the depth of creativity required to thrive within an alternative labor system in a capitalist country. They also work to build bridges between the informal and formal economy for constituents seeking formal employment.
Eye Love You
Eye Love You is a community-based nonprofit with a mission to empower, develop and provide resources to youth on the South and West Sides of Chicago. They offer a free summer camp that features arts, sports programming, and a dynamic learning environment for youth ages 4-13.
Farm, Food, Familias
Farm, Food, Familias supports community members and essential workers by preparing and delivering meals and groceries to families in Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago
Firehouse Community Arts Center
We interrupt the cycle of violence in the lives of youth and young adults in North Lawndale through the power of arts and faith.
Fres Oquendo Boxing Academy FOBA FOUNDATION INC
Building Champions inside and outside of the ring through boxing & fitness, health & wellness, and social and emotional awareness.
Forty Acres Fresh Market
Forty Acres Fresh Market is a Black woman-owned social impact grocer that increases fresh food access, nutrition education, and quality jobs in underserved Chicago neighborhoods. We currently operate as a mobile produce vendor operating popup markets, produce stands, and daily delivery service.
FRIEDA'S PLACE
FRIEDA'S PLACE supports anyone from any community, with hot meals, clothing, hot showers, and groceries. No ticket, no number, no ID needed. Just come, all are welcome.
Future Ties, NFP
Future Ties builds the capacity of youth and families by providing safe spaces, employment opportunity and resource referrals through community outreach and violence prevention strategies.
Farm, Food, Familias
Farm. Food. Familias Mutual-Aid Meals(FFF) is a project co-led by Getting Grown Collective, and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Urban Pilon, Fresher Together, Amor y Sofrito and Let Us Breathe Collective to prepare and deliver 350 meals & groceries to families in Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago.
Focus Fairies Mentoring
Focus Fairies Mentoring provides a mentoring experience that serves as a safe space to help increase the mentee’s levels of self-confidence, spirituality, emotional health, and personal development. We serve preteen girls, adolescents, and young adult women on Chicago's west and southside who reside in underrepresented communities in need of one-on-one mentoring and group activities to help build or rebuild their self-confidence and leadership skills.
Gage Park LatinX
GPLXC is a grassroots queer, DACA led community cultural center run by long time Latinx residents of the Southwest side of Chicago rooted in abolition and mutual aid.
Girls Like Me Project
Girls Like Me Project helps Black girls reconnect the power of their voice through storytelling. Their free programming uses a 3E approach of “Exposure, Examination, and Engagement” to create opportunities for social emotional wellness, mother-daughter bonding, cultural excursions, advocacy, career exploration and paid opportunities.
Giving Others Dreams (GOD)
Providing a supportive safe space that promotes healing and empowerment of women and families. Giving Others Dreams provides immediate relief with "WE Win" welcome home basic need emergency care packages.
Global Girls
Global Girls is a youth engagement and performing arts organization empowering African American girls and women primarily on Chicago’s South Side. The organization facilitates school-based and after school programs, works with youth in partnership with other organizations, conducts parent and professional development workshops and presents participant-driven theatre. Seasoned participants travel internationally (India, Ghana, Kenya, Granada) and teach other girls to tell their stories on stage.
Good Vibes Only
Good Vibes Only provides back-to-school supplies & SAT prep, as well as meals for families and essentials for parents, youth and community. What started as an idea to provide sacked lunches for children has now evolved into an impactful organization for the community.
GODDESS Mentoring
GODDESS (Goal Oriented, Determined Divas who Envision Superior Success), is a mentoring organization whose sole purpose is to empower young women by supporting them in becoming the best version of themselves. To do so, we focus on 4 core values: Self-Confidence/Esteem, Community Service, Financial Literacy, and Health & Wellness. Students master these core values by participating in weekly sessions, monthly community service projects, enrichment opportunities, and need-based tutoring cycles.
Good Kids Mad City
Good Kids Mad City is a youth-led organization formed to allow Chicago’s youth to address violence they face in their communities and create healing spaces for young people affected by trauma.
Girls Like Me Project
The Girls Like Me Project supports young Black girls by critically examining social, cultural, and political ideologies in media to overcome stigma and negative stereotypes and helps young black girls become independent digital storytellers and change agents.
Gyrls In The H.O.O.D Foundation
Gyrls In The H.O.O.D Foundation provides adolescent gyrls with a safe non-judgmental space to receive sexual health education, basic necessities, and shelter.
Grocery Run Club
Grocery Run Club is a community driven initiative that partners with organizations to supply fresh produce and everyday necessities to underserved neighborhoods in Chicago.
Grace Housing Complex
Grace Housing Complex is an economic and community development organization focused on providing low-income families with supportive services, personal development opportunities, and affordable housing access within the greater Chicago-land area.Through implementation of our programs we aim to create: stable, safe, and healthy communities.
Healthy Place
Healthy Place is a nonprofit organization focused on youth development through agriculture, community service, culinary arts, gardening, and fishing programs. They provide youth with education and training for living a healthy lifestyle while earning a living by way of agriculture.
Healing Hurt People - Chicago
Through assessment, psycho-education, intensive case management, group therapy and mentoring, Healing Hurt People-Chicago helps youth who’ve been violently injured, so they can heal both physically and emotionally.
Homie's Helping Humantiy
Homies Helping Humanity (H3) is organized by a group of friends with the common goal of helping people. They produce kits with warm wear, first aid kits and sanitary products to hit the streets with, providing reusable bags with over a dozen items to those experiencing homelessness on the south and west sides of Chicago. H3 has grown as an organization, now doing monthly fresh food and produce drop offs in the Roseland community and other neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago, already giving away over a ton of produce and hundreds of hot meals.
The Happiness Club
The Happiness Club provides a free performing arts education program for Chicago kids. Offering a safe space to develop artistic and communication skills fosters a sense of belonging to an artistic community.
Imagine Englewood If
Imagine Englewood if (IEi) is a youth development nonprofit with a mission is to strengthen and empower the Greater Englewood community through teaching local youth ( ages 6-18) and their families healthy living, environmental awareness, and positive communication skills.
Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative
The Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative is a statewide Black-centered organization dedicated to building power through organizing and systems change to secure equity and justice for Black Illinoisans.
In Diamond's Hands
In Diamond's Hands was founded by Englewood resident, Diamond Coleman, to provide high-quality 1:1 tutoring to under-resourced students who face many systemic barriers to achieving educational success. The program has started in one public school and was able to produce significant academic growth for participants. Individualized tutoring provided by the program has been essential because of the learning loss that COVID and remote learning have generated.
I Am Chi Foundation
I Am Chi seeks to service Chicago's youth through tutoring, mentoring, counseling and job training opportunities that will put them on a path to success.
John Pendleton Planks & Pistils
Planks and Pistils as a flower arranging enterprise in pursuit of a vision of Black Freedom. John Pendleton hires young, Black, male interns for Planks and Pistils to enable them to explore emotions through floral arrangements as creative therapy.
The Jehovah Jireh #1 Outreach Ministry
The Jehovah Jireh #1 Outreach Ministry is a church beyond walls that provides outreach, meditation, general community support, and hyperlocal violence interruption efforts in the Austin community. They led the #1STV (#1 Stop the Violence) Campaign to end violence in Westside neighborhoods.
Ladies of Virtue
Ladies of Virtue empowers girls to become confident and purpose-driven leaders through character development, career readiness and civic engagement.
Lead with Love
Lead with Love seeks to actively address social injustices prevalent within disinvested communities on the Southside of Chicago by providing resources and programming that focus on physical health, mental health, education, and exposure/employment opportunities for youth.
Legacy Disciple: Brotherhood Mentoring
Brotherhood Mentoring is an intensive mentorship program focused on two goals: 1. Reaching young men in Chicago and supporting their character development 2. Helping youth leaders in our partnering churches become better mentors
Legacy Disciple: Hood Heroes
Hood Heroes is a program of Legacy Disciple. We exist to employ, equip, and empower youth to do great work where they live.
LetUsBreathe Collective
The #LetUsBreathe Collective is an alliance of artists and activists organizing through a creative lens to imagine a world without prisons and police. The Collective operates the Breathing Room space, a Black-led liberation headquarters for arts, organizing, and healing on Chicago's South Side.
Life After Justice
Life After Justice focuses on non-DNA evidence cases of wrongly convicted individuals to create new laws or set new precedents to help undo unjust laws and the ill-conceived legislation that created them.
LIVE FREE Chicago
Live Free Chicago is a grassroots organization, comprised of black churches, striving for economic and political liberation for black people. The primary focus is on eradicating the root causes of violence in black communities on the South and West sides and mobilizing voters to combat institutional and systemic racism. They also invest in programs and initiatives that build better access to jobs, entrepreneurship, and the alleviation of poverty and discrimination.
Little Village Community Council
The Little Village Community Council was founded in 1967. The mission of the council has always been to serve the community. There are many resources that our community lacks and through the hard work of our Board of Directors and volunteers, we aim to bring resources to the community that will help residents of Little Village lead a better life.
Living the Dream Youth Development
Living The Dream Youth Development is an after-school/summer program that provides youth grades 6th-12th, in under-resourced neighborhoods of Chicago with athletic mentoring, athletic training, sports tournaments and tutoring. These programs are provided to youth athletes at no cost in an effort to provide youth with a safe space to learn about sports and to excel in their chosen athletics, academics and life!
Lost Boyz Inc.
Lost Boyz Inc. is engaged in violence prevention through positive youth development, derived through organized baseball within Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Lost Boyz services youth ages 4 to 21 through a model based on the Positive Youth Development Theory and Developmental Systems Theory, with an emphasis on sports inclusion.
Love Unity & Values (LUV) Institute
The Love, Unity & Values (LUV) Institute seeks to prevent youth poverty by providing a social-emotional learning approach to college and career readiness.
Make Momma Proud
The mission at Make Momma Proud is to inspire, support and encourage youth coping with the loss of a parent to achieve their life goals. By providing mentoring and grief counseling support, we hope to help achieve the goals and aspirations of our youth affected by this tragedy.
Market Box
Market Box is a mutual aid project that sources food from small farms and distributes it for free across the South Side of Chicago. Their network is a place to generate community power, take care of one another, and exchange critical information as neighbors.
Men Making a Difference
Men Making a Difference is a block-by-block grassroots organization run by dedicated community members, Charlie Wilson and Robert "Rock" Calhoun. The group’s mission is to combat violence and to build programs to ‘restore’ people to the community, based off the principles of restorative justice.
Mr. Nelson Movers
The Nelson Movers Family is dedicated to giving back to our community and providing resources needed to help us live in a better place.
Noble Steps Chi
Noble Steps Chi supports disenfranchised communities by way of food security, community development, social engagement, trauma relief and educational support. Their culturally responsive community efforts focus on middle school-aged (10-16 year old) children, and Noble Steps has created safe spaces for youth to learn how to communicate effectively in the context of violence in the community.
Not Me We
A grassroots community organization focused on building community power through tenant, education and mutual aid organizing. Focusing on South Shore and the surrounding communities.
Nita’s Love Train
Nita’s Love Train provides Chicago families with immediate necessities and baby essentials directly and through community pop ups.
Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards
Natty Bwoy Bikes & Boards is a grass roots youth education program on the South Side of Chicago that engages youth through skateboarding, biking and art-making. We offer free skate lessons and community events, and redistribute skateboarding and bicycle equipment.
Parents Overcoming Welfare-System Regulations (P.O.W.R)
Parents Overcoming Welfare-System Regulations (P.O.W.R) Is a parent-led advocacy organization that transforms impacted parents involved in the child welfare system into impactful parents focused on improving the system. The mission and purpose of the organization are to build an advocacy space created by and for parents to fight the foster system’s surveillance, separation, and marginalization of families, particularly Black families and Indigenous families experiencing poverty.
Pastor Wayne Fricks / Men of War Ministries
Men of War Ministries provides holistic services to people leaving jail and prison. They provide clothing, food, and assistance to secure jobs for individuals who have been released from IDOC. They also provide daily mentorship to help individuals nurture the life skills they did not have the opportunity to hone while incarcerated.
People for Community Recovery
People for Community Recovery's mission is to enhance the quality of life of residents living in communities affected by environmental pollution. They address environmental and climate justice, safe and affordable housing, economic equity and community health.
Perfect Vision Empowered
Perfect Vision Empowered (PVE) works to build relationships to provide services to individuals most impacted by gun violence either by active engagement or victimization. PVE uses innovative avenues for outreach that motivate such individuals through the success of others like themselves to take advantage of opportunities for positive self-elevation.
Pull Up The City/BLK Rising
Pull Up The City normalizes nature for Black and Brown young people as a form of liberation, holistic healing, and violence prevention. We transform vacant lots to community wellness sanctuaries that provide access to healthy food, wellness courses & workshops, revolutionary art, and radical vibes.
The Pilsen Neighbors Community Council
The Pilsen Neighbors Community Council organizes, engages and activates people and resources to positively address community issues facing Pilsen- most notably in the areas of education, housing, healthcare, social justice and immigration reform.
Project LOVE Chicago
Project LOVE Chicago strives to break the cycle of poverty, decrease violent crimes, and increase youth academic outcomes. We do this by providing academic, athletic, and professional resources to vulnerable black populations throughout the Chicago area.
Praize Productions, Inc.
Praize Productions is focused on arts enrichment infused with education and social programming for youth on the South Side of Chicago. Students receive rigorous artistic training at affordable rates, are aligned with influential mentors, and obtain professional performance opportunities throughout the arts community.
Rebel Bells
The Rebel Bells Collective creates a place for young girls of color from the Calumet Region where they can heal from living in a culture of patriarchy and gain the knowledge necessary to break free from the limitations often associated with identifying as female.
Roseland Community "Good News" Day Care
Roseland Community "Good News" Day Care provides child-care for high school, college and low-income working moms in a safe, nurturing Christ-centered environment, allowing young mothers to go to school, work full-time essential jobs, and provide for their children.
The Restorative Project
The Restorative Project has a mission to create safer neighborhoods in the inner-city by changing the way young people deal with violence. The vision of The Restorative Project is to transform youth in marginalized communities from critically high-risk, to ”Highly Successful.”
Root2fruit Youth Foundation
Root2fruit Youth Foundation is a village building initiative that includes, engages and empowers youth. Our youth are prepared to be advocates of change and innovation within their community.
Safe & Sound
Safe & Sound is an arts-centered, youth-driven, Community Benefits Organization that emphasizes youth leadership and youth voice as a means of responding to some of society's most difficult challenges. We utilize a trauma informed approach to addressing topics such as education, community and domestic violence, sexual assault, homelessness and more.
Southeast Youth Alliance
The Southeast Youth Alliance's mission is “to amplify opportunities for local youth on Chicago’s Southeast Side and develop the next generation of community leaders." They host events and are committed to establishing an inclusive environment for youth to come together and expand perspectives in the community.
Seeds of Roseland
The Seeds of Roseland looks to reduce violence by creating peace zones and safe spaces for our youth throughout the city. Our mission is to bridge the gap of neighborhood genocide through activities that bring youth together with a buy in of peace from the community. We also have a Whistles for Awareness (WAR) initiative to reduce the trafficking of women and other types of violence.
Sista Afya Community Care
Sista Afya Community Care builds sustainable mental wellness communities through providing affordable and culturally-centered community mental wellness care and education. Sista Afya Community Care provides free individual therapy, community workshops, wellness classes, and professional development to women of color in the Chicagoland area.
S.L.A.Y.
S.L.A.Y seeks to provide resources for women, teens, and young girls to thrive in everyday life through comprehensive affirmation, empowerment, and psycho-education on mental health.
Storycatchers Theatre
Storycatchers works with youth in the juvenile justice system. We help them tell their stories through musical theatre. By moving beyond their histories, they transform their own lives, communities, and people like you who are ready to listen.
Space Share Lab
The Space Share Lab seeks to provide no-to-low cost space where community practitioners can provide restorative healing education and practice for community members in service to collective health, wellness and fortitude.
Swish Queer Basketball Club
Swish is Chicago's first BIPOC-centered queer woman/trans/enby basketball meet-up for the casual player. We seek to cultivate a space of joy and community.
Telpochcalli Community Education Project
The Telpochcalli Community Education Project mobilizes youth and adults for social justice work by building individual capacity, collective power, and mutual responsibility through culturally relevant and community-directed education, leadership development, and organizing.
Think Outside Da Block
Think Outside Da Block rallies the community together to enhance our youths’ interests, skills, and abilities through positive youth development strategies.
TGi Movement
TGi's mission is To curate and cultivate Oasis-es throughout Chicago to unite youth across neighborhood boundaries dismantling Dream Deserts. At TGi we are deeply rooted in community and strongly passionate about shifting the narrative and culture along 63rd street and surrounding communities through intentional youth development, community development, and arts & culture work.
TOTALLY POSITIVE PRODUCTIONS
Our MISSION is to produce Positive Rap, Singing, Dance, Theater and Spoken Word Talent Competitions as well as produce positive "Off the Street" activities for youth ages seven and up and adults as a deterrent to gang and drug involvement.
True Star Media & Foundation
True Star Media empowers underserved youth to forge their own paths by providing jobs and training that teaches them to create, develop and market digital content on platforms that celebrate their identity and perspectives.
Unique Sweets Inc. NFP
Unique Sweets provides opportunities for individuals living with Autism and other abilities to develop job skills, socialize and expand their skills across family, community, and professional worlds.
Teamwork Englewood
Teamwork Englewood is dedicated to improving the quality of life of the residents and stakeholders of Englewood with economic, educational, and social opportunities.
The TRiiBE
The TRiiBE is a digital media platform showcasing innovative content to reshape the narrative of Black Chicago. As an independent, alternative news source, The TRiiBE hopes to unify Black Chicago in the common purpose to create a safer, more vibrant Chicago.
Únete La Villita
Únete uses grassroots organizing, community engagement, political education, and policy advocacy to promote community-driven development in Little Village.
Urban Growers Collective
The Urban Growers Collective’s goal is to bring the benefits of healthy, locally grown produce and other nutritious foods to Chicago’s communities while supporting the growth of Chicago’s urban farmers. Their Fresh Moves Mobile Market brings produce to schools, community centers, churches, and health clinics to make good food accessible in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Watch Guard
Watch Guard is a Neighborhood Watch Program that focuses on assisting in the efforts to increase peace in statistically violent areas.
We Sow We Grow
The We Sow We Grow Project is dedicated to the furtherance of gardening and farming in West Pullman through education and service. Food is possible to grow for all and we seek to remove the fear and reservations of growing your own food through community-powered assistance in an urban ag safe space. We seek to connect growers from all over on any and every level starting with our youngest community members.
Woke Chicago
WOKE Chicago creates access to trauma-informed mindfulness programs within under-resourced communities & schools.
YAP
YAP is a high-impact social justice nonprofit that provides community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, congregate placements and neighborhood violence.
Young, Black and Lit
YBL provides free children's books featuring Black characters to families, schools organizations serving youth.
Youth Empowerment Performance Project (YEPP)
YEPP strives to create a brave environment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) youth experiencing homelessness to explore their history, investigate new ways to address their struggles and to celebrate their strengths through personal, leadership and community development programming that incorporate different art-expression forms.
Yameen’s Dream
Yameen’s Dream NFP is designed to provide for, support, encourage, protect and educate Chicago youth who are often overlooked. They aim to drastically decrease the drop-out rate in our schools, exponentially increase academic excellence, limit gang activity, provide grief counseling, therapy for multiple traumas, mental and emotional support, real-life role models, and expose youth to the city and world beyond their daily environments. By focusing on the youth population, Yameen’s Dream is hopeful to inspire and essentially save families, neighborhoods and communities.
Youth Peace Center of Roseland
Youth Peace Center of Roseland offers youth related workshops that mentor and teach teens the skills necessary to avoid conflict and violence. The Youth Peace Center works with the highest risk individuals and provides outreach and wraparound services for men and their families when they are most vulnerable and most likely to shoot or to be shot.
