LISC Chicago's neighborhood network
For the last 33 years, LISC has been Chicago's indispensible intermediary between funders seeking to improve the quality of life in the city's at-risk neighborhoods and the community-based organizations and developers that know how to get things done there. Now, as LISC broadens its effort beyond the initial New Communities neighborhoods, it's strengthening its platform and expanding that NCP network. Here's how. |
Rebuilding neighborhoods, one block at a time
Chicago's Micro-Market Recovery Program is focusing city resources on a handful of hard-hit blocks in a handful of hard-hit neighborhoods. These “micro markets” were carefully chosen so they include, or are near, existing public investments that can anchor a wider recovery. In the case of West Humboldt Park, one of MMRP’s initial nine target neighborhoods, a rectangular subset of 15 blocks was chosen. See what's going on there. |
New pillars support Woodlawn renewal
Woodlawn is rising again … though the challenges, like gravity, seem never to go away. Its comeback slowed by the Great Recession, its people saddened by the death of a beloved leader, the storied South Side neighborhood is rallying around an ambitious housing development and other locally driven plans for safer streets and better schools. Read all about it. |
SWOP receives MacArthur award
The Southwest Organizing Project, LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program lead agency in Chicago Lawn, has received a $750,000 award from the MacArthur Foundation in recognition of its efforts to help residents overcome foreclosures and violence. That’s big money for a scrappy outfit like SWOP, whose 15 employees work in a warren of rooms amid banged-up furniture on the second floor of a building at 2609 W. 63rd St. See why they got it and what they're going to do with it. |
A safe place to play
PlayStreets, a strategy begun last summer and spearheaded by Chicago’s Department of Public Health, periodically closed off city streets for three-hour intervals in designated neighborhoods so residents – kids and adults – could have safe places to play outside. LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program agencies and partners in those neighborhoods, such as Gads Hill Center in Pilsen, plus the Active Transportation Alliance and World Sport Chicago, developed the programming and helped turn out the crowds. Here's how it's played out. |
Donor spotlight
Much of the work discussed above would not have been possible without BMO Harris Bank, a longtime LISC funder. In addition to its financial support, the bank has helped in other ways, including BMO Harris Executive V.P. Michael Lewis' participation on LISC's board. Lewis, right, a board member since 2004, retired from the bank earlier this year, but will remain on LISC's advisory board through 2013. Read more about BMO Harris' work with LISC. |
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