Local groups benefit from CCHD grants

Each year, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development awards grants to projects and organizations aimed at changing the structures that perpetuate poverty in our society. Some grants are awarded locally and are paid for with money collected in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Others are awarded by the national CCHD office. Grants usually can be given to the same project for three years in a row.

This year’s CCHD collection will take place in parishes Nov. 21-22.

The following projects received grants this year:

The Alliance of the Southeast is a multicultural, interfaith alliance consisting of churches, schools, businesses and community organizations that uses grassroots participation to address the challenges facing the neighborhoods of Southeast Chicago.

Loom, a social enterprise of the Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program empowers refugee women with the opportunity to develop and utilize skills, create and express themselves, and support themselves economically by producing handmade items.

The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign is a locally-based human rights organization whose mission is to enforce housing as a fundamental right. By rehabbing vacant properties, the campaign’s Ladders of Opportunity project seeks to create a pool of low-income housing, while also training underemployed youth in the rehab process.

Chicago Housing Initiative’s CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) Reform and Accountability Project brings public housing and leaders who are experiencing homelessness together in an organizing campaign to address CHA’s pronounced failure to use available housing resources to help low-income households access stable affordable housing.

Enlace Chicago is dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of the residents of the Little Village Community by fostering a physically safe and healthy environment in which to live and by championing opportunities for educational advancement and economic development.

Members of the Chicago Coalition of Household Workers of Latino Union are challenging the root causes of poverty among domestic workers by advocating for a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. The proposed law, which just passed the Illinois House, would give domestic workers a minimum wage, one day of rest per week, and protection from sexual harassment.

In Waukegan’s Latino community Most Blessed Trinity parish is working collaboratively with eight other agencies to develop a local initiative called Immigration Integration Network (I.I.N.), which brings together various organizations to assist the 39,000 undocumented immigrants in Lake County.

The Office for Immigration Affairs and Immigration Education engages the Catholic community to build communion between immigrants and non-immigrants, and to welcome and promote immigrants in the formation and integration as full members of society and as people of faith in the one family of God.

PCIL is run by and for people with disabilities to provide services to help members and others to live independently. PCIL works to change public policy and decision- making in favor of accessible housing.

The Respect Life Office’s Gospel of Life Leadership Training program empowers low-income youth to understand and address the root causes of moral, spiritual and economic poverty through chastity education.

STOP’s Mental Health Movement Program, led by mental health service consumers, supports leadership development and organizing to preserve and expand public mental health services, erase the stigma of mental illness, and build the movement for the human right to health care.

St. Eulalia and its project, Mujeres Unidas, (Women United) has been able to advance its main goal of empowering low-income women through participatory learning and leadership development to help them create economic opportunities by creating self-sufficient, women-owned co-operatives in the food service industry.

TCEP’s worker cooperative project aims to tackle local economic and gender-based disparities by spurring alternative job creation and empowering women in Little Village.

United Power is a Cook County-wide, broad-based citizens’ organization that builds power through relationships across race, class, religion, political affiliation and geography to take action on justice issues for the common good.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos is an immigrantrun organization in the Southeast Side of Chicago that educates workers on their rights, invests in leadership development, and supports and organizes all workers to fight for their rights and change policy that increases standards for immigrant workers. They are starting a worker cooperative in the southeast side of Chicago that focuses on shared economic development within the immigrant community while providing them with living wage jobs.

IIRON is an organization of congregations, student groups, neighborhood organizations, and concerned individuals across the Chicago area that work together to ensure that low-income communities have power in the decisions affecting them.

Jane Addams Senior Caucus is a multiracial, grassroots organization led by concerned seniors in the Chicago metropolitan area invested in leadership development, organizing and popular education, to use their collective voice to work for economic, social and racial justice for all seniors and communities.

Lake County Center for Independent Living works to advance civil rights for people with disabilities. LCCIL trains leaders who have worked for the expansion of the Dial-A-Ride transit service so that people with disabilities, seniors and those living in poverty can access community services, employment, health care and more.

The Metropolitan Tenants Organization educates, organizes and empowers tenants to have a voice in the decisions that affect the affordability and availability of safe, decent and accessible housing.

Organizing Neighborhoods for Equality: Northside (ONE Northside) is a mixed-income, multi-ethnic, intergenerational organization that unites many diverse communities to build collective power to eliminate injustice through bold and innovative community organizing. ONE Northside is committed to creating racial, social and economic justice in communities where everyone has the chance to thrive.

The Parish Peace Project is a nationally unique organizational model which combines ministry, community organizing and restorative justice as alternatives to violence for youth and young adults in Chicago.

Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation (PBMR) works toward creating Community Restorative Justice Hubs focused on healing those impacted by conflict, division and violence. PBMR is dedicated to ending the incarceration of our youth and eliminating youth in the adult court and accompanies youth and families who have been impacted by violence.