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| Chicago Urban League | ||||||||||||||||
| The Chicago Urban League (CUL) was one of the first affiliates of the National Urban League (NUL) organized in this country to address the needs of African Americans migrating from the rural South to the northern cities in unprecedented numbers at the dawn of the 20th century. Established in 1916, the Chicago Urban League is a civil rights organization that empowers and inspires individuals to reach and exceed their economic potential. The League focuses on growing Chicago’s African American workforce and business community. The Chicago Urban League is pursuing three strategies that advance our mission: ensuring that African American children are well-educated and equipped for economic self-reliance in the 21st century; helping adults attain economic self-sufficiency through gainful employment, home ownership, entrepreneurship and wealth accumulation; and ensuring the civil rights of African Americans by eradicating barriers to equal participation in the economic and social mainstream of American life. Today the work of CUL focuses upon education, economic development and community empowerment for African Americans, other minorities and the poor. As one of the largest affiliates in the nation, the Chicago organization remains a leader in the Urban League movement. | ||||||||||||||||
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Category Archives: -_Chicago – Southeast
Chicago Urban League
We The People Media
We The People Media
We The People Media was formed as a not-for-profit organization in late 1999 by 10 prominent journalists, scholars, community and business leaders who wanted to ensure the survival of Residents’ Journal and the Urban Youth International Journalism Program.
In June 1999, shortly after the takeover of the CHA by city officials, the new administration terminated CHA’s prior agreement with Residents’ Journal and instructed the staff to either integrate the publication into the agency’s public relations strategy or expedite the transition to publication by an independent not-for-profit organization. The Residents’ Journal staff opted to separate from CHA.
After months of fundraising and other preparation, We The People Media assumed responsibility for Residents’ Journal and the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in August 2000.
We The People’s guidance has enabled the Urban Youth International Journalism Program to hire new staff and redesign its Journalism 101 curriculum to enhance training for young people throughout the city’s low-income communities.
We The People Media
4859 S. Wabash Ave.
Chicago, IL 60615
Phone: (312)745-2681
Fax (773)285-2853
Email: ethan@wethepeoplemedia.org
Website: http://www.wethepeoplemedia.org/
Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Media Advocacy
Campaign for Better Health Care
The Illinois Campaign for Better Health Care is a grassroots coalition of more than 300 local and statewide organizations representing consumers, health care workers and providers, community organizations, seniors, religious, labor, disability rights organizations and other citizens concerned about health care and wellness. These groups share the mission/vision described below: The Campaign for Better Health Care believes that a health care system that serves the people must come from the people. Therefore, the Campaign is committed to grassroots organizing efforts to insure public input in the creation and ongoing oversight of a system that responds to the health care needs of all people in our nation. The Campaign’s vision of health encompasses community health and wholeness and measures high quality health care by high quality of life. Our vision of health understands the social roots of ill health: poverty, unemployment, poor housing, inadequate education, environment degradation, racism, sexism and homophobia. Website: http://www.cbhconline.org Chicago Office1325 S. Wabash Avenue, Suite 305Chicago, IL 60605 Phone: (312) 913-9449 Fax: (312) 913-9559 Email Address: cbhc-chi@cbhconline.org
Human Resources Development Institute, Inc.
ABOUT HRDI
Human Resources Development Institute, Inc. (HRDI) is a community-based behavioral health and human services organization. HRDI is a non-profit agency which was founded in 1974 by a group of community health advocates on the South Side of Chicago concerned with mental health and substance abuse problems plaguing their communities. These advocates successfully structured culturally-specific programs to address those problems. Today, HRDI is a leading provider of behavioral and community healthcare services in Illinois, serving nearly 15,000 clients annually, and offering more than 40 programs at over 20 sites throughout the Chicagoland area Mississippi, Alabama, Nevada and Pennsylvania. HRDI provides services in mental health, alcohol and substance abuse, community health and comprehensive case management, prevention and education, criminal justice, educational,and children and family services.
- 222 South Jefferson Street
- Chicago, Illinois 60661
- ‘(312) 441-9009
- 7(312) 441-9019
- http://www.hrdi.org/ABOUT_HRDI.html
Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)
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| Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) | ||||||||||
| Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) exists to build support for and enhance the quality of public education in the city of Chicago by informing parents about educational issues, bringing the views of parents into the decision-making process, and acting as an advocate for parents in their relationships with the school administration. Each year, PURE provides direct assistance or referrals to hundreds of parents and local school council (LSC) members calling our hotline for help and information. PURE provides informative and empowering workshops for LSCs in all areas of their responsibility. PURE also offers a variety of parent workshops and develops new workshops to meet parents expressed needs. PURE publishes four newsletters to keep parents, LSC members, and other school leaders informed of current educational changes and issues. PURE works actively to focus attention on the parents’ perspective in any discussion of critical school problems through such means as press conferences, public testimony, and editorials. Some of PURE’s recent accomplishments and honors include: With a staff of four presenting 2,220 workshops with a total attendance of over 30,000 between 1996-2005. About half of those workshops were presented in Spanish. Last year alone we attended 370 meetings in 64 schools for individual advocacy, discipline and IEP hearings, and other issues. This work has helped dozens of students get back into school and improved services to special education students. Filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights which led to major improvements in the fairness and educational soundness of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) student promotion policy in 2000. For example, the policy’s segregated Academic Preparatory Centers for eighth graders unable to “pass” the Iowa test have been shut down and the programs moved into high schools. Recent reports show that the eighth grade graduation rate of the students in the programs has doubled and the one-year drop out rate has decreased from 21 percent to 16 percent. Creating a national model for successful public school parent advocacy work cited in the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s November 2003 Educational Leadership magazine, national parent involvement expert Anne Henderson’s book, The Case for Parent Leadership, and as a case study at the November 2004 national conference of the Applied Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley. Winning a 2003 Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World (LCW) award, one of 17 awardees selected from a pool of more than 1,300 nominations representing individuals and leadership teams that are tackling some of the nation’s most entrenched social problems. While there are other groups working to improve public schools, PURE has a special role in focusing on issues from the parents’ point of view. PURE’s Board of Directors, membership of nearly 800, staff, and constituency are multiracial, multi-cultural, and economically diverse. | ||||||||||
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Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Civic Engagement
Student Environmental Organizations
The Environmental Concerns Organization (ECO) is the main student environmental activist organization at the University. They organize informational events, protests, letter-writing campaigns, and other events throughout the year. They also are the lead organizers of the campus-wide Earth Week celebrations each year.
Website: www.envirocenter.uchicago.edu
Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Environment
Environmental Groups in the Calumet Region
The Calumet Environmental Resource Center (CERC) is a unique resource library, meeting place and referral network where local community residents, government officials, nonprofit environmental organizations, and others can learn about and respond to pressing environmental issues in the Calumet Region. CERC was established in 1991 through a joint effort of the Fredrick Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center at Chicago State University, the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the Chicago Legal Clinic and is operated by the Neighborhood Assistance
Center at CSU. CERC works with numerous community organizations, businesses, and residents seeking to enhance economic development, protect the area’s fragile environment, and monitor the health and safety of their communities. CERC’s extensive resource collection continues to grow daily and contains over 3,000 assorted reports, documents, maps, books, photographs and other resources that specifically focus on the Calumet region of southeastern Chicago, Cook County, and northwestern Indiana. As a comprehensive storehouse of government documents, industry profiles, and scientific research papers on past environmental pollution and current toxic hazards in the region, the center enables community groups and individuals to formulate effective strategies towards addressing local and regional environmental concerns.
Michael Siola is the research specialist in charge of the collection which is housed in the Paul & Emily Douglas Library housed at Chicago State University. The center is open Monday through Friday from 10:00AM until 5:00PM. An appointment is not necessary, but it is always best to call ahead so we may better coordinate your research activities.
Website: www.csu.edu/cerc/index
Adress: 9501 South King Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60628
Phone: | (773) 995-2000
Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Environment
Centers for New Horizons
Centers for New Horizons mission is to develop the capacities of families to become self-reliant, to improve the quality of their lives, and to participate in rebuilding their community.
Centers for New Horizons, affectionately referred to as “Centers” has played a vital role in the transformation of Bronzeville. For the past 35 years it has provided a holistic approach to community development centered on the strengthening of families. The results of Centers’ work has been a burgeoning of energy and momentum to ensure that this historic African American community, known for producing legendary cultural, academic, entrepreneurial and sports heroes, continues to nurture the brilliance that has been part of its legacy as it encounters new challenges and opportunities linked to its renewal.
Marking Our 35th Year of Working with the Community… Centers has:
- Educated over 20,000 young children
- Encouraged thousands of youth to stay in and achieve in school.
- Provided community leadership that generated over $500 MM in capital investment in Bronzeville
- Supported the employment of thousands of parents, directly employed hundreds of community residents either part of our staff or through job programs.
- Supported hundreds of fragile families and seniors
- Spun-off a dozen new nonprofits to expand opportunities for resident leadership and demonstrating the capacity of extremely low income people to organize for their own empowerment.
- Provided vision and support to citywide coalitions to improve our public schools, ameliorate poverty, increase the supply and the quality of early childhood education, and provide quality affordable housing for low income families.
Through the years, Centers for New Horizons has received some affirming accolades for its work. Centers is a past recipient of the Chicago Community Trust’s James Brown IV award and the SaraLee Foundation’s Spirit Award. In 1994, Dr. Karanja received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work in building Centers. In 2005, Centers received the Bank of America Foundation’s Neighborhood Builders Award. Today, Centers continues as a leader on the cutting edge of best practices in education and innovation in community building, focusing in the present and future, as it always has, on building ‘Kujitegumea” or Self-Reliance in the African American community.
Website: www.cnh.org
Contact:
4150 South King Drive
Chicago, IL 60653
Phone: 773-373-5700 Fax: 773-373-0063
People for Community Recovery
PCR’s mission is to enhance the quality of life for low-income residents living in communities affected by pollution. PCR educates , advocates policy and programs in an effort to coordinate local residents on issues of the environment, health, housing, neighborhood safety and economic equity.
PCR‘s founder and CEO, Hazel Johnson dedicated years learning about urban environmental issues and networking with other environmental groups. After conducting her research, she learned that many waste disposal companies surrounded Altgeld Gardens as well as manufacturing companies that produced and emitted thousands of pounds of pollutants into the air, water and land. PCR found that due to the heavy concentration of industry, low income residential communities on the Southeast side of Chicago were being exposed to substantial amounts of toxic chemicals that could be responsible for negative health impacts.
With these facts in mind, PCR along with other residents from Altgeld Gardens began to address the environmental problems within their community. For the past two decades, PCR has been applying pressure on “corporate polluters” and government officials to make them aware of their negligence. It is PCR‘s goal to make both corporations and the government accountable to the communities in which they operate.
Concurrently, PCR has continually been educating itself and the community about urban environmental issues and their relationship to industry. Through extensive research and partnerships, PCR has found a significant correlation among various industrial processes– the byproducts of which pollute the air, land and water–and the health status of urban minority communities. With perseverance, tenacity and dedication, continues to be a force not only within Altgeld Gardens, but within the Environmental Justice movement.
Website: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~wang/EJBaldwin/PCR/
Contact:
Cheryl Johnson
13116 Ellis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60827
Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Environment
Urban League
MISSION STATEMENT
Established in 1916, the Chicago Urban League is a civil rights organization that empowers and inspires individuals to reach and exceed their economic potential. The League focuses on growing Chicago’s African American workforce and business community.
OUR BACKGROUND
Founded in 1916 by an interracial group of community leaders to help rural African Americans migrating from the South adjust to northern urban living, the Chicago Urban League was incorporated in the state of Illinois on June 13, 1917. The Chicago Urban League is pursuing three strategies that advance our mission:
- ensuring that African American children are well-educated and equipped for economic self-reliance in the 21st century;
- helping adults attain economic self-sufficiency through gainful employment, home ownership, entrepreneurship and wealth accumulation;
- and ensuring the civil rights of African Americans by eradicating barriers to equal participation in the economic and social mainstream of American life.
http://www.thechicagourbanleague.org/index.php
The Chicago Urban League
4510 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago , IL 60653
(773) 285-5800 office
(773) 285-5772 fax
Posted in -_Chicago - Southeast, Human Rights
Catalog of Chicago Activism 