ALUMNI ORGANIZATIONS
Over the past 20 years, Goodcity has helped to start over 100 organizations throughout Chicago. We are currently updating our alumni records and will post them when complete. In the meantime, please see the following:
Austin Childcare Providers Network (ACPN)
Alabaster Box
Beyond the Ball
Bright Determined Children
Elijah's House Youth Center
HHW School for the Performing Arts
Sonrise Christian Social Services
Sunlight of the Spirit
campusCATALYST
Opportunity Knocks
Food Desert Action
Austin Childcare Providers Network
Educates and trains over 100 childcare providers in underserved communities. (Austin)
Alabaster Box
Provides a safe home for women struggling with drug and alcohol addictions, helping them to regain a positive self-image, reconnect with children, and gain employment to rebuild their lives. (Austin)
Beyond the Ball
Seeks to mentor young men of Little Village and North and South Lawndale through basketball, community service programs, and experience trips that will develop their leadership skills, cultural sensitivity, and spiritual awareness. (Little Village/North and South Lawndale)
Bright Determined Children
Bright Determined Children serves the West Garfield community and instills at-risk youth with life skills and support through after-school sports. BDC addresses issues related to drug awareness and prevention, provides a computer learning center, outdoor camping and education trips, after-school tutoring, scholarship programs and job skills development.
We made it,” said a jubilant Coach Tim Hall after returning to Chicago. We got 96 kids on three buses and those boys did well.
In 2010, this organization vaulted into the limelight and was embraced by Chicagoans after the Chicago Tribune told the heart-felt story about the group’s Gators Football team and its quest to participate in a youth jamboree in Ohio. The challenge for the team, most of whom had never left the Chicago urban community in which they lived, was to raise $10,000 to cover their transportation to the event.
The team consists primarily of kids from low-income single-parent homes or families that have been torn apart by drug or alcohol abuse. For them, reaching a goal of $10,000 was an impossible dream. However, after their plight became known through media, the donations began to pour in. Support ranged from a $10 check from an individual touched by the team’s story to a $10,000 check from an area business and donated uniforms and other support from the Chicago Bears.
The group ultimately made their life-changing trip and acquitted themselves well on the field. More importantly, the donations enabled Bright Determined Children to expand their program and make it available to an even larger group of players. Director Tim Hall attributed much of the program’s success to the support provided by Goodcity, which provided fiscal agency services.
Elijah’s House Youth Center
Seeks to cultivate personal growth and intellectual development of at-risk inner city youth through hands-on skills training and job development. Urban Teen Magazine is one of their projects. (West Side of Chicago)
Mission Statement
Elijah's House mission is to provide education through job training and skills development for youth and young adults ages 13 through 24 years.
Objective
Elijah's House objective is to inspire and enable all young people, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
Purpose
Education, Enrichment, Job Training and Self Development
The purpose of Elijah’s House is to provide youth with the tools necessary for equipping them for real-life work experiences that move them towards becoming productive, healthy and prosperous in mind, body and soul.
Elijah’s House provides youth with opportunities that bridge the gap between education and workplace environment through the involvement of job training, hands-on activities and interactive programming that allows them to develop skills within a specific field, skill or trade.
Goals
The goal of Elijah's House is to promote higher education that encourages young people to stay in school and to proceed with confidence to college and perhaps graduate school.
Elijah's House programs are designed to expose youth to a professional discipline which focuses on critical workplace skills, such as leadership, teamwork and collaboration and brainstorming.
Elijah’s House Programming Initiative
Elijah's House programs are a means for youth to redirect their behavior, channel their creativity, develop a job skill and get paid. Our programs are designed with youth in mind and act as a deterrent to negative influences such as drug selling, drug usage, truancy, theft and gang involvement. Elijah's House believes teens need to believe they have a future, which is why it is important to open up doors of opportunity to provide youth with a wider scope of interests that enabled them to recognize their abilities and talents in ways that help them dream and achieve far more than what they think. All our programs have become a vehicle that aid youth in developing self confidence, values and morals, moving them towards positive self-expression, creativity, and entrepreneurship and leading positive lives. Our program design offers youth combined educational and workplace opportunities that encouraged low-income teens to hope for better a future.
Established
Elijah's House was established in October, 2003 and was an umbrella organization under The Amalgamated Developmental Center. Our commitment throughout the years has been devoted to building relationships within the community by providing life-enhancing programs and character building through youth development for at risk inner city youth.
Elijah's House is a faith-based organization supported under Goodcity, NFP an organization which acts as Fiscal Agent to Elijah's House and provides our organization with 501c3 status. Elijah's House is entering its 4th year of providing education through job training and youth development. Located on the Westside of Chicago, Elijah's House is faithful to its mission by providing life-enhancing programs and empowering youth to think beyond what they see.
HHW School for the Performing Arts
Offers youth the opportunity to develop life skills that will make them better citizens and more creative beings by participating in music, dance and theatre. (Citywide)
Sonrise Christian Social Services
Provides temporary housing and holistic services for disadvantaged persons as they take steps toward independent living. (Uptown)
Sunlight of the Spirit
Provides comprehensive health, education, and training services to individuals who may be homeless or unemployed due to substance abuse or criminal record. Program services include food pantry, GED preparation, tutoring, computer training, resume writing, interview preparation, job referrals and placement. The program integrates traditional, alternative health and healing services and job readiness that address the mind, body, and spirit of an individual and their family. (Citywide, especially Humboldt Park)
campusCATALYST
Seek to direct the innovation, ingenuity, and problem solving skills of America’s future leaders towards community development. To teach students about the non profit sector and non profit management for small community-based organizations.
Opportunity Knocks
To create a support system that will allow persons with developmental disabilities to reach maximum potential for independent living in a residential facility while developing relationships with peers, self-respect, self-determination, responsibility and community involvement.
Food Desert Action
Food Desert Action was founded in 2007 as a collective of concerned individuals working to restore community food access to Chicago neighborhoods. The organization has been a member of the Goodcity non-profit incubator since its founding.
Food Desert Action is preparing to launch the Fresh Moves Mobile Produce Market, a one-aisle produce market on wheels, built in a retrofitted CTA bus. Fresh Moves will provide healthy food to the Austin and North Lawndale Neighborhoods beginning in the summer of 2011. Fresh Moves’ accomplishments in the past year include the following:
Vehicle:
- Donation from Chicago Transit Authority: A retired transit bus was given for $1 to Food Desert Action to become the Fresh Moves Mobile Produce Market. Deconstruction has begun, and CTA continues to provide informal guidance to the project
- Architecture for Humanity: This group of pro-bono architects has provided over $50,000 worth of in-kind design services for the project.
- Additional in-kind support: W/M Display Group, a commercial shelving business with a social mission, has agreed to provide fixtures and design assistance for the vehicle. The Whitney Young biodiesel club will donate an initial supply of reclaimed biodiesel fuel, and may supply Fresh Moves on an ongoing basis.
Community and University Partnerships
- Austin Coming Together: Fresh Moves is working with this collaboration of community groups on the west side to build a common vision of health and prosperity for neighborhood residents. Goodcity and ACT are both advocates for Fresh Moves, and we expect this collaboration to be a primary sources for community contacts for the project.
- EPIC Partnership: Parallel to Architecture for Humanity, EPIC is a network of advertising professionals who do pro bono branding and graphic design work for community projects. An eight-week rally has produced a name, website, business cards, promotional materials, and brand story for the project
- UIC Partnership: Food Desert Action was part of UIC’s ChiWest ResourceNet capacity-building initiative, which sponsored the filing of our application for charitable non-profit status as well as a community mapping project in North Lawndale.
- Kendall College: The Mobile Market has been the subject of class projects in three separate classes and a full-time student internship over the past year. Kendall students have produced original market research for Fresh Moves, and will be assembling the Fresh Moves business plan.
Staffing
Food Desert Action is still primarily a volunteer-run operation, led by a three-person board of directors, supplemented with short-term paid contract workers and interns. The organization looks to have permanent, full-time staff later this year.
Funding
Committed funding to date totals $120,000 from the Chase Foundation, D&R Fund, Boeing Employee Fund, ChiWest Resource Net, Polk Bros. Foundation, and the Greenbuild Legacy Grant. An additional $160,000 has been given in pro bono goods and services.
None of this would have been possible without our partnership with Goodcity. The staff took a risk in supporting the project when it was just an idea. This is the essential role that Goodcity plays. No other organization in Chicago has brought as many ideas to fruition as Goodcity.
