April
2010
PBF
Housing Award Presented to Mercy Housing Lakefront
Members
of Chicago's community development world gathered on
the evening of February 9, 2010, for the
16th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards
(CNDA). Established by the Local Initiatives Support
Corporation/Chicago (LISC),
the CNDA recognizes outstanding achievement in
neighborhood real estate development and community
building. This year, ten honorees were celebrated in
a ceremony attended by Mayor Richard M. Daley. The
CNDA is the largest awards program of its kind in
the country.
Mercy Housing Lakefront was chosen as the
recipient of the Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable
Rental Housing Preservation Award for its Malden
Arms Apartments project in Uptown. The annual award
of $15,000 recognizes a real estate project that
preserves affordable rental housing at risk due to
expiring subsidy contracts or physical
deterioration.
Mercy Housing Lakefront brought together residents,
community members, and layers of private and public
financing to both preserve and improve the Malden
Arms.
January
2010
PBF
Program Officer Honored by UC
Polk Bros.
Foundation's Evette Cardona accepts the
Diversity
Leadership
Alumni Award with Robert Zimmer, UC
President, center,
and
Duel Richardson, right, winner of the
Leadership Staff Award.
"Selfless" and "tireless" were the key words
used to describe the winners of the 2010
University of Chicago Diversity Leadership
Awards presented at the President's MLK
reception Thursday, January 14. The
reception was part of the University's
celebration of the life and legacy of Dr.
Martin Luther King.
"I have
the honor of recognizing two individuals whose work
has embodied Dr. King's values," said President
Robert Zimmer. "It gives me great pleasure to be
recognizing two people who have made strong
contributions to the diversity of the University."
Duel
Richardson (AB '67), Director of Neighborhood
Relations/Education in the Office of Civic
Engagement, received the 2010 Diversity Leadership
Staff Award. Evette Cardona (AM '98), a graduate of
the School of Social Service Administration,
received the 2010 Diversity Leadership Alumni Award.
This is
the second year the Diversity Leadership Council —
appointed in 2007 by Zimmer to support diversity on
campus, in relationships in the surrounding
neighborhoods and with the University's business
partners — has given the Diversity Leadership
Awards. Julie Peterson, Vice President of
Communications, and Ken Warren, Deputy Provost for
Research and Minority Issues, oversee the work of
the council as its co-chairs, and they introduced
the two diversity leaders at the reception.
"The
diversity leadership awards are on some level about
selflessness, about seeking to provide others with
opportunities and promise and hope," said Peterson,
who introduced Cardona. "There are few who embody
this spirit of openness and selflessness more than
Evette Cardona."
Cardona, a senior program officer for the Polk Bros.
Foundation, and founder of
Amigas
Latinas, serves on advisory boards of the
Donors Forum
of Illinois, Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy,
Center on
Halsted,
Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women &
Gender in the Arts & Media and the
Lesbian Leadership Council of the Chicago Foundation
for Women.
When
Cardona founded Amigas Latinas 15 years ago, few
such programs existed for women, much less Latina
women, Peterson said. "Today this program has grown
to a large and respectable organization that is
making a real difference in people's lives," she
said.
"Those
who have met Evette have experienced her
selflessness first hand, this feeling that all are
welcome and at home, and that each of us can be
comfortable and free in our own life. Amigas Latinas
is aptly named; when you are with the organization,
or with Evette, you are with friends."
Cardona
said the work itself is inspiring. "It's always an
honor and quite humbling to be recognized for one's
work, even though it is not necessary, since the
work is reward in itself. It is work that is good
for the soul, I believe. Yet it is truly an honor to
be chosen for an a. ward conferred by this
prestigious university, where I came to hone my
skills and vision as a social worker and an
activist," Cardona said.
From Evette
Cardona's remarks at the 2010 UC Leadership
Diversity Awards:
"With all the things happening in the world
today, and there are so many — from the
unbelievable disaster in Haiti, to the
continuous loss of life in a war from which
we can't seem to tear ourselves away, to the
violence against women in the Congo and
around the world — to our own back yard
issues — the health care and foreclosure
crises, youth violence, education reform,
the recession — all these things make doing
diversity work seem like a distraction at
best. And yet it is exactly that kind of
work — diversity, inclusion,
multi-culturalism, whatever word you choose
— the endless, often thankless struggle for
social justice, and social change, with
intention, with passion and never with
apology, that has and always will be the
necessary ingredient, the fundamental glue
needed to dismantle inequity and create and
become the change in our world we want to
see."
Adapted from an article by Phil Rockrohr for the
University of
Chicago.
December 2009
ACLU Honors PBF Executive Director
-
PBF
staff and friends from left: Carrie
Spitler, Rob Hunt, Frank Baiocchi, Nikki Will
Stein,
-
Debbie
Reznick, Mona Noriega, Evette Cardona, Rachel
Hart Klayman, Ben Klayman.
On October 24, the
American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois presented
the Foundation's own Nikki Will Stein with the Roger
Baldwin Lifetime Achievement Award. The award
recognizes Nikki's lifelong commitment to supporting
the civil rights and civil liberties of Chicago's
most vulnerable residents.
Since 1991, under Nikki's leadership, the Foundation
has supported the ACLU's
Children's Initiative,
which protects and advocates for children in the
foster care system and those in custody at the Cook
County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC).
The ACLU's steadfast work on behalf of these
children has decreased the number of children
neglected in the foster care system and led a
federal court to put an independent administrator in
place to reform the JTDC. The ACLU also acknowledged
Nikki's leadership in engaging other philanthropic
organizations in Chicago to support legal services
as a way of achieving their broader missions. The
"Bill of Rights Celebration" gala raised close to
$500,000 through donations and auction.
Polk
Bros. Foundation in the News
PBF is one of several funders of a new anti-violence
initiative for Chicago youth that was recently
featured in the following Chicago Tribune
article.
CHICAGO (November 18, 2009)—The University of
Chicago has partnered with two community groups to
launch a $1 million youth anti-violence program that
will include a rare component: a rigorous,
scientific evaluation to determine whether it's
cost-effective.
The program, called Becoming a Man-Sports Edition,
aims to help adolescent boys in Chicago public
schools curb their impulse to use fists and guns to
settle disagreements. It addresses the problem on
two fronts, by using character education and
counseling as well as training in Olympic sports,
such as archery and fencing.
During the 27-week initiative, which begins
Wednesday, university evaluators will use a research
model akin to clinical trials in medicine to
determine whether the program is reducing violent
behavior and helping boys stay in school.
Public officials continue to grasp for solutions to
youth violence in Chicago. They've launched programs
in schools, boosted police patrols and thrown public
and private money at the problem. Earlier this year,
Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman launched a $30
million violence prevention effort that targets the
most at-risk students and the most troubled schools.
Still, little is known about which programs are
effective and worth the expense.
"Unfortunately, the anti-violence field is littered
with programs that are not grounded in solid
research so we have no idea if they are really
working," said Jens Ludwig, a professor at the
University of Chicago and the director of the
University of
Chicago Crime Lab.
"This program will allow us to generate
scientifically credible evidence about a program and
show whether it works, and why."
The lab was created in 2008 in partnership with the
city of Chicago to gather crime data and research
and identify solutions. It garnered $1 million in
grant money and then selected B.A.M.-Sports Edition
from among 30 anti-violence programs that applied.
The program is a joint venture between
Youth
Guidance, a private group that has provided
counseling to troubled teens for decades, and
World
Sports Chicago, a legacy of Chicago 2016 that
brings Olympic sports to Chicago's youth.
The program will operate in 15 Chicago elementary
and high schools. It will be offered to an estimated
550 boys at risk of dropping out or landing in the
criminal justice system. These are not the most
at-risk students, but rather the ones just beginning
to get into trouble.
The lab will analyze the students' academic
achievement, attendance, school discipline and
juvenile court records during the 27 weeks and
compare the information with data from a control
group of 550 similar students who did not
participate. They hope to determine which parts of
the programs worked, for which students.
Scott Myers, executive director of World Sports
Chicago, sits on the Youth Guidance board of
directors and helped marry the two programs. He said
after-school sports help students develop
self-discipline, respect for authority and
responsibility.
"There's a lot of anecdotal evidence about sports
being a social development tool, but we realize
there is not a lot of real empirical research to
prove it," Myers said. "We are hoping this study
will help define a model that can become a 'best
practice' so other cities who want to use sports as
a tool to help kids can understand the maximum
benefit."
During school, the selected students will work with
counselors in the Youth Guidance program.
Tony Di Vittorio, the Youth Guidance counselor who
developed B.A.M. a decade ago, said the program
provides one-on-one counseling and behavior
strategies for boys in junior high and high school.
It's not an anti-violence program, per se, he said,
but rather a character education course.
Learning to control impulses, channel anger and
develop coping skills are all part of the package,
he said.
"I started challenging these young men and forcing
them to think about their lack of responsibility and
their own integrity," he said. "I challenged their
tendency to project the blame outward, instead of
looking inward. We talk about ways of expressing
anger and leaving a situation with your self
dignity."
Bruce Moore, a senior at Clemente High School in
Chicago, spent three years in the B.A.M. program. He
credits it with helping to improve his grades and
keep him out of trouble.
"I was bad and couldn't get along," he said. "But
Tony taught me integrity and how to keep my word and
act like a man. I used to blame my teachers for my
bad grades. Now I know I have to put effort into it
and it's up to me to earn the good grade."
November 2009
IFF Expands
Services to PBF Grantees
Earlier this year, the Polk
Bros. Foundation made a grant to
IFF, a full
scale real estate operation that assists nonprofits
through every stage of a real estate project—from
analyzing and planning space, to managing
construction projects. This grant subsidizes the
cost of real estate consulting services for
Foundation grantees who are planning for new space.
Recently, the decision was made to expand the
services covered by the grant to include Project
Management/Owner's Representative services.
Subsidized services for Polk Bros. Foundation
grantees now include:
Feasibility study:
To help an organization determine whether a real
estate development project is financially and
operationally feasible.
Site
search, evaluation and due diligence services:
To ensure an organization ultimately secures the
right facility at the right price under the best
possible terms.
Project management/owner's representative services:
To help an organization with the construction of a
real estate development project.
For additional information, please visit
www.iff.org/polk
or contact Robin Toewe at IFF at (866) 629-0060.
2010 Census
Collaborative
"Count Me In" is a multi-funder initiative
supporting a coordinated, statewide campaign to
increase participation in the 2010 census in 37
targeted communities in Chicago and throughout
Illinois. Launched in January of this year, the $1.2
million fund supports 60 nonprofit organizations
that will conduct public education and new media
campaigns, community outreach, trainings, and other
grassroots activities designed to increase mail back
rates of census questionnaires by at least 4 to 5
percentage points above the 2000 census.
A list of grantees selected
through an RFP process and a map of Chicago's
hard-to-count communities with 2000 census response
rates, can be found
here.
The funding collaborative includes The Boeing
Company, The Chicago Bar Foundation, The Chicago
Community Trust, the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Grand
Victoria Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Polk Bros.
Foundation, Steans Family Foundation, and Woods Fund
of Chicago. A $50,000 grant from the Polk Bros.
Foundation supports the work of the Center for
Economic Progress and Latinos Progresando in
Chicago.
I Have A Dream
Class Reunion
In
1989, Polk Bros. Foundation made the decision to
adopt an "I Have a Dream" sixth-grade classroom at
the Jonathan Burr Elementary School on Chicago's
near northwest side. Former board member, the
late Roberta Bachmann Lewis, her husband Irv, and
PBF Board member Bruce Bachmann and his wife Ann,
were the lead contacts and mentors to the children
in the class. Over the years, Polk Bros. Foundation
contributed more than $750,000 in support of the
students' education and personal success and
Roberta, Irv, Bruce and Ann invested thousands of
hours to help and challenge our "dreamers."
Recently, Irv Lewis attended a reunion of the
dreamers and sent us the following note:
On
August 29, I attended the 20 year reunion of the I
Have A Dream children. It was a magnificent
confirmation of the "good" created by the
Foundation's contribution. Teachers, systems
analysts, social workers, pharmacists, etc.! They
are now living a life of quality they hadn't dreamed
of. Two flew in from Orlando, one from Austin,
Texas—it was an emotional gathering.
Wanted
you to know of the Foundation's success. Thanks for
allowing me to feel such "nachas."
-Irv
July 2009
Pride
Celebration at the White House
Senior Program Officer Evette
Cardona was honored with an
invitation to the White House on
June 29, 2009, to attend the
first Pride reception hosted by
President and Mrs. Obama. The
reception was timed to
commemorate the 40th Anniversary
of the Stonewall riots in New
York that signaled the start of
the gay rights movement in the
United States. Evette, her
partner Mona Noriega, and about
200 representatives of the
national LGBT community gathered
in the East Room to hear the
President speak about his
administration's efforts to
improve the lives of LGBT
persons and their families.
Desiree Rogers, former PBF board
member and new White House
social secretary, arranged for
the historic gathering,
continuing the Obama
administration's commitment to
making the White House welcoming
and open to a cross section of
the American people.
Desiree was on hand to welcome
guests and ensure the afternoon
reception and presentation were
a success.
June 2009
CARPLS
Legal Aid was created 15 years ago with a vision of
helping the thousands of low-income
Cook
County residents in need
of legal services. Since their inception, they have
assisted over 350,000 clients and this year CARPLS
will provide nearly 50,000 client services.
To commemorate the occasion they have produced a
video which tells the story of CARPLS from its
beginning to where they are today. You can find the
video at
www.carpls.org/about.
May 2009
Meet Duane
Ehresman
Winner of the Polk Bros. Foundation
Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Award
Ehresman Management was chosen as the first
recipient of the Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable Rental
Housing Preservation Award. The annual award of $15,000,
which recognizes a real estate project that preserves
affordable rental housing at risk due to expiring
subsidy contracts or physical deterioration, was given
at the
LISC Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards
ceremony in February. Non-profit and for-profit
developers are eligible to apply. Criteria include: 1)
impact on community; 2) creativity in design and
finance; and 3) extent to which neighborhood residents
are involved in the planning process.
WBEZ Names South Side
Bureau
The
awning is up at
WBEZ's Polk Bros. Foundation South Side Bureau
in Chicago's Englewood community! WBEZ named the
bureau for the Foundation in recognition of our
support of the Campaign for a Sound Future. The Polk
Bros. Foundation South Side Bureau is a
demonstration of WBEZ's and the Foundation's
commitment to bringing the voices and stories of the
community to the rest of the city.
