The 2022/2023 year was big for United Way of Metro Chicago – and for our region:
– Launched 211 Metro Chicago
– Expanded our Neighborhood Networks in the suburbs
– Saw the impact of catalytic investments in our communities
None of this would’ve been possible without our partners – without you. Thank you for being part of this journey. We’re excited to share what we accomplished together in our 2022/2023 Impact Report.
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The unionized construction trades offer Chicagoans a proven pathway to economic security, providing
workers with marketable skills, competitive wages, and full benefits. However, there are systemic
barriers that have historically excluded women and people of color – particularly Black individuals – from
this workforce. The result: in Cook County less than 5% of apprentices are women, and only 6% of
Chicago construction workers are African Americans. Data also shows that 2⁄3 of minority and women
apprentices drop out of union apprentice programs prior to completion.
And our communities are hurting, in part, because of these exclusionary practices. Women and people
of color, under-represented in the construction trades, are overrepresented among the ranks of the
city’s poor. The poverty rate for Black women in Chicago is nearly three times that of white men, and
more than 40% of Chicago’s young Black men are out of school and unemployed. Unionized construction
has the potential to contribute a significant number of good paying, high-quality jobs for these
marginalized groups.
The city, state, and federal governments are committing billions to investing in our infrastructure,
creating thousands of jobs. At the same time, the City is green-lighting large projects that will continue
to enhance well-resourced communities. The question is whether these public and private dollars will be
leveraged to create actual economic opportunities and family-sustaining careers for the communities
most in need.
Now is the time for the City Council to act and implement policies that provide solutions to racial and
gender inequities in the construction trades. To be effective, these solutions must include:
Implementing explicit hiring goals for women, people of color, and women of color, in addition to any
geographic hiring goals.
• The City must conduct a workforce disparity study and utilize the findings to set explicit goals
around total hours worked by race, ethnicity and gender for underrepresented groups on
covered projects.
• Goals should be updated regularly to respond to an expansion in the pipeline of
underrepresented workers.
Access to jobs for new workers through apprenticeship hiring goals.
• Apprenticeships are the entry point for diverse communities into the construction trades,
offering a learn-as-you-earn model that doesn’t rely on student loans. There should be a
minimum number of 20% of work hours performed by apprentices on City-funded projects.
• The City must publicize projections of needed workforce for projects as well as anticipated
apprenticeship openings, and advertise all job openings online.
Robust enforcement by the City.
• The City must create an Office or Division of Construction Workforce Equity to provide oversight
of contractor efforts for equitable hiring and enforcement of equity requirements.
• City staff must Review EEO plans submitted by contractors, analyze weekly payroll reports to
monitor progress and hours worked, and provide on-site monitoring of workforce training
opportunities, work assignments, distribution of available overtime, and access to properly fitted
PPE and sanitary facilities, and provide an opportunity for workers to complete a survey about
their experiences.
• Establish penalties for non-compliance including liquidated damages and enforcing remediation
plans.
Real community oversight through an advisory board.
• The City must establish an advisory board made up of key stakeholders including City
Departments, labor unions, contractors, and community-based organizations to review detailed
workforce data on active projects to evaluate compliance in hiring and retention from
underrepresented groups.
• The advisory board will advise on benchmarks, corrective action and penalties that drive towards
workforce equity.
Safe and respectful worksites that do not tolerate harassment.
• The City must require that all projects provide an industry-specific and culturally relevant
harassment-prevention and respectful worksite program to all workers.
• The City must require contractors to create and enforce strong policies that include harassment
prevention, confidentiality, and anti-retaliation.
Funding for support services to eliminate barriers to employment.
• The City must provide funding for barrier removal for new workers and pre-apprenticeship
training targeted at women and people of color to prepare them to enter the industry.
Data transparency and accountability from contractors and the City.
• The City must create a public website where performance on equity goals by project and
contractor will be shared.
• This data shall be timely provided and include work hours by race and ethnicity, gender, and
trade.
The Chicago Construction Workforce Equity Coalition, led by Chicago Women in Trades, Revolution
Workshop, the Chicago Jobs Council, the Shriver Center on Poverty Law and Women Employed, has
drafted comprehensive ordinance language in collaboration with tradeswomen of color, minority
contractor organizations, and other industry stakeholders.
The Chicago Construction Workforce Equity Ordinance takes concrete action to improve access to and
retention in these careers for underrepresented groups, requires the City to provide the staffing and
resources to implement and enforce new requirements, brings all industry stakeholders together to
assist with oversight, and requires public reporting of data to provide accountability on performance.
Please contact Beth Berendsen at bberendsen@cwit.org or (312) 259-4459 to sign-on as a sponsor of
this ordinance.
Event Overview: Are you ready for a thrilling and action-packed football experience like no other? Look no further than the Chicago Football Classic! This highly anticipated annual event showcases some of the best college football talent in the nation, bringing together passionate fans from all walks of life to witness gridiron greatness at its finest. The event takes place at the iconic Soldier Field, one of Chicago’s most renowned stadiums, offering an unforgettable setting for a day of football festivities.
About the Chicago Football Classic: The Chicago Football Classic has become a beloved tradition, attracting fans from far and wide to indulge in the excitement and camaraderie that only football can provide. This event features two prominent Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) facing off on the field, making it a celebration of culture, heritage, and sportsmanship.
Aside from the thrilling football action, the Classic also offers a vibrant atmosphere filled with tailgating, music, food, and entertainment. Whether you’re a die-hard football enthusiast or simply looking to experience the spirit of the game, the Chicago Football Classic promises an unforgettable day for all attendees.
Event Highlights:
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Mark your calendars, invite your friends and family, and let’s come together to celebrate the spirit of football and the vibrant HBCU culture. We can’t wait to see you at Soldier Field for an action-packed day of football festivities and fun!
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program fails to help the vast majority of families in need. It is shameful, but it results from policies my colleagues demanded.
Republicans insisted on making it so hard for states to help poor families who need cash assistance, education, training, and childcare to escape poverty that states started diverting funds to other uses, called “non-assistance” spending. In 2020, states spent only about 20 percent of their federal and state TANF funds on cash assistance and only about 10 percent on work, education, and training. Some states, like Mississippi and Tennessee, choose to stash tens of millions of dollars in a bank account rather than help poor families.
Republicans insisted on imposing crushing administrative burdens designed to kick families off direct cash assistance under the guise of accountability. Even though Republican witnesses recommended lessening work requirements and restrictions on education and training, the GOP debt limit provisions doubled-down on harsh work requirements. These Republican-driven policies trap families in poverty by rejecting them altogether, pushing them into meager child-only TANF, or forcing them into poverty-level jobs rather than building economic security.
Republicans insisted on TANF being a block grant that gave states wide latitude to fund activities that do not help poor parents. Incredibly, unlike any other law, Republicans insisted on a statutory prohibition on federal oversight that limits transparency, fraud detection, and enforcement. When Mississippi advocates asked this Subcommittee for help years ago to get the Trump Administration to examine how the state was using TANF, we had to direct them to state officials to investigate this issue due to this prohibition on enforcement. Unfortunately, even after the fraud revelation, advocates STILL cannot get answers about how TANF is used locally. I hope our witness, State Auditor White, will help remedy that lack of transparency.
It is also deeply troubling that – less than 24 hours after the TANF fraud was announced –Mississippi lawmakers at the urging of State Auditor White – advanced a bill to allow him to review the tax returns of TANF cash recipients, a requirement that was not imposed to my knowledge on the many TANF subcontractors and businesses.
So let us be clear – TANF is working exactly as the Republican TANF system was designed.
Democrats absolutely think TANF needs a fundamental overhaul, but any reform should start with improving family stability by reducing burdensome requirements and providing sufficient access to financial support, childcare, education, and career pathways to help families thrive. Families need stability before parents can be reliable workers, and reliable workers need quality jobs to escape poverty.
Predictable financial assistance is central to stability for parents to hold self-sustaining jobs. We saw during the pandemic that reliable financial assistance via the Child Tax Credit helped cut child poverty by 40 percent.
Further, a recent report by Chapin Hall details how state policies that increase access to TANF and cash assistance are associated with decreased child maltreatment. For example, a $100 increase in TANF cash benefits is associated with reduction in maternal self-reported physical child maltreatment. In contrast, for families receiving TANF who experience material hardship—such as difficulty meeting basic needs—they are three times more likely to experience a neglect investigation and four times more likely to experience a physical abuse investigation.
TANF benefits in most states remain at their lowest value since the program started in 1996. Yet research shows that, for families with children under the age of 5, receiving an extra $3,000 per year boosts children’s adult earnings by 17%. So, investing in cash assistance now would help lift children out of poverty both NOW and in the FUTURE.
The failure of TANF falls disproportionately on children of color whose families experience greater barriers to economic stability. Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Latino children experience higher poverty rates than white children. Yet 48 percent of Black children live in states with benefit amounts below 20 percent of the federal poverty level compared to only 35 percent of white children.
I served on this Committee back when there was a good-faith, bipartisan effort to reform TANF. Now, those efforts have been repeatedly torpedoed by extremists demanding harsh work requirements. Limiting states from using non-assistance dollars will do nothing to lift Americans out of poverty if we do nothing to help states serve low-income families by providing cash assistance and work supports while also removing the ineffective work requirements.
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Ms. Tumia (Tee-om-ma) Romero
MAOM, PH.D. Candidate in Public Policy
Chief of Staff/Chief Communications Officer
Office of U. S. Representative Danny K. Davis
Ways and Means Committee
Ranking Member, Committee on Worker and Family Support and
Member, Subcommittee on Health
773-533-7520 or 202-225-5006
Hosted by Illinois Office of Broadband | University of Illinois System | University of Illinois Extension | Benton Institute for Broadband & Society | Illinois Broadband Lab
Over the last several years, Chicago Jobs Council’s (CJC’s) focus on eliminating barriers to employment has revealed that driver’s license suspensions lead to job loss and missed economic opportunities. In Illinois, a CJC survey found that 52% of respondents who had their driver’s licenses suspended for non-driving violations lost or missed out on a job opportunity because they didn’t have a license.
Through the License to Work and SAFE-T Acts, we have successfully eliminated driver’s license suspension for fines and fees in Illinois. We are building on these successes by working to end debt-driven suspensions for failure to appear.
According to data received from the Secretary of State’s office, there are more than 100,000 people with driver’s license suspensions in Illinois for “failure to appear” in traffic court. These suspensions are often just an extension of the debt collection process for traffic tickets, and there are numerous reasons to eliminate the practice, including:
CJC’s bill—HB277—is currently in the Illinois Senate and if passed, will ensure that people who receive minor traffic tickets such as speeding or not stopping at a stop sign, do not have their driver’s license suspended for failing to appear in traffic court.
To ensure maximum financial opportunity and safe transportation for our constituents and all of Illinois, we urge that the Illinois General Assembly pass legislation to end the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for failure to appear in court.
The School Community Network (SCN) provides resources such as these spotlights, trainings, and tools to build strong school communities focused on student learning. SCN is sponsored by the Academic Development Institute (ADI), a nonprofit organization in Lincoln, Illinois. SCN’s work draws from ADI’s nearly 40 years of experience and extensive research in family and community engagement.
lan ahead to support family engagement in summer learning by visiting our spotlights page for links to the resources below (and find even more in our searchable databases), or plan your summer reading with the help of recent book reviews from the School Community Journal.
Summer Stride
Learning Heroes
This website can help parents and families: “Before school lets out, ask the teacher where your child is doing well, where more support may be needed, and what you can do over the summer to set them up for success in the next grade.” It provides tools, tips, and resources to do just that, and it is also available in Spanish:
Avance en el Verano (Summer Stride)
Antes de que terminen las clases, pregúntale al maestro en qué área le va bien a tu hijo, donde necesita más apoyo y qué puedes hacer en el hogar para prepararlo para el siguiente grado. Obtén el Chequeo Académico una nueva herramienta de aprendizaje (gratuita) para el verano.
Discover Summer (website)
National Summer Learning Association & InPlay
“With our new summer search feature, your family can discover summer programs, both in-person and virtual, right in your community. You also have easy access to resources from leading youth organizations to keep the learning going. When we nurture and cultivate a young person’s natural brilliance and curiosity, there are positive ripple effects that last a lifetime.” Infographics and many other resources are linked.
Summer Learning Toolkit
Wallace Foundation
“With more than 50 evidence-based tools and resources—drawn from the work of five urban school districts and their partners, and aligned with research from RAND—the Summer Learning Toolkit helps educators deliver programs that make a real difference.” Tools include videos, tip sheets, samples, and guidance; the Summer Planning Calendar and Sustainability Tools also include detailed companion and facilitation guides.
Smarter Summers. Brighter Futures. A Summer Playbook for PTA and School Leaders
National Summer Learning Association
With this Playbook, PTAs, along with teachers and principals, will have a robust and research-based toolkit to keep youth safe, healthy, and engaged in learning during the critical summer months through a schoolwide commitment to summer fun and learning, collaboration around access to resources, and connections with families to celebrate summer learning fun.
Collaborative Bridges is a partnership of historic West Side Chicago safety net hospitals and community mental health agencies designed to ensure that the care needs of people experiencing mental health and substance abuse are supported in their community, especially after a hospital admission. We are here to improve the health equity of West Side communities. To do this, we are creating a continuity of care between hospitals and communities to put resources closer to those who need it, when they need it.
This quarterly newsletter is being sent to you because you were identified as a friend and associate of Collaborative Bridges and/or one of its many collaborating partners on the West Side of Chicago.
We hope you will stay subscribed to this quarterly publication, but please know that you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email at any time.
Collaborative Bridges is a partnership of historic West Side Chicago safety net hospitals and community mental health agencies designed to ensure that the care needs of people experiencing mental health and substance abuse are supported in their community, especially after hospital admission. We are here to improve the health equity of West Side communities. To do this, we are creating a continuity of care between hospitals and communities to put resources closer to those who need it, when they need it.
This quarterly newsletter is being sent to you because you were identified as a friend and associate of Collaborative Bridges and/or one of its many collaborating partners on the West Side of Chicago.
We hope you will stay subscribed to this quarterly publication, but please know that you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email at any time.
Bobby E. Wright, CBHC
Community Counseling Centers of Chicago
Habilitative Systems, Inc.
Hartgrove Behavioral Health Systems
Humboldt Park Health
The Loretto Hospital
Collaborative Bridges recognizes that the current healthcare delivery system is failing the city’s most vulnerable residents. What we aim to do is address some of the structural deficiencies in the healthcare system that have led to worse health outcomes for residents of the West Side of Chicago. These include:
Lack of access to care
Lack of stability in the healthcare delivery system
Lack of coordinated, cross-agency focus on the social determinants of health
The transition from acute mental health inpatient to community care is one of the most critical periods for addressing patients’ care needs.
Patients discharged from psychiatric hospital-based care often find this period to be chaotic, stressful and emotionally charged.
Our model embeds mental healthcare professionals with a variety of credentials in the community.
The suicide rate for the first week after discharge is 300 times higher than the general population’s and is most significant in the first few days after discharge.
These innovative care teams incorporate both master-level therapists and community-based care coordinators and are integrated with the hospital and other critical access points.
Collaborative Bridges meets people in their communities and connects them to care needs that improve their well-being to ensure successful stabilization of substance abuse and mental health treatment needs.
The Second Chance Public Health and Safety Act is the centerpiece of the Second Chance State Initiative. It creates the Department of Returning Residents Affairs to
provide a program of holistic, individualized reentry services to justice-involved individuals. The goal of the department will be to have a holistic, person-centered,
comprehensive public health approach to public safety, restore community cohesion and create stable and healthy communities.
The new department will develop and administer the Second Chance State Program to coordinate government and not-for-profit services with justice-involved residents of the State of Illinois, utilizing a network of community-based service providers operating
in 13 hub sites across the State. It will do this by reimagining Illinois’ response to justice-involved residents by starting the provision of services upon their first interaction with the justice system, which is more impactful than upon their release from incarceration. The Program also provides services during residents’ later interactions with courts, detention centers, and prisons, and after release.
The elements of the program provided by community-led organizations will be facilitated by “navigators” who will help justice-involved residents effectively access
and utilize the available services and providers. The navigator’s role is to create a comprehensive, holistic services plan for those residents to reduce the probability of
recidivism by the resident and help them achieve a higher possibility of a successful return to their community.
The Act also creates the Returning Residents Interagency Council to identify the manner in which State officials and agencies can allocate the use of their resources to best support the needs of returning residents.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Mark McCombs
Public Policy Analyst, Safer Foundation
email: mark.mccombs@saferfoundation.org
phone: 708.321.0024
There will be hearings on the bills listed in the subject line this week. The information regarding this is in within the information listed below. There is other important information listed in the text below that will be of interest to you as well.
I hope this email finds you well! Thank you for joining Friday.
1) We invite your organization to sign on to support the 2023 Illinois Skills for Good Jobs Agenda by March 17th. This state legislative policy agenda aims to tell Illinois legislators: Illinois must increase its investment in education and skills training to remain competitive and increase economic equity! Illinois must act swiftly to invest in good jobs, our workforce, skills training, and small business development to increase equitable access to opportunity. Without intentional, equity-focused investments, we will see women, younger, and BIPOC workers held back generations, businesses will struggle to fill open positions, and talented Illinoisans will continue to struggle to pay their bills. Please reach out to annika@cjc.net with any questions.
2) Submit a slip in support of HB 3400
Chicago Women in Trade’s bill HB 3400, which enhances data transparency in the Illinois Works program to address workforce gender and racial equity, as well as implementing community monitoring on projects under Illinois Works (state funded infrastructure projects), will be in committee this week. I am attaching the fact sheet here – please reach out to Beth Berendsen (BBerendsen@cwit.org) if you have questions.
We are looking for folks to submit a witness slip in advance of our hearing Wednesday:
In Section I, please include your name, address, email address, phone, and organization or agency you work for and your title (if you are only able to support as an individual, you can write “self” in these fields).
In Section II, please include the name of the organization you are filing on behalf of or “self” if you are filing as an individual.
In Section III, please select Proponent.
In Section IV, please select Record of Appearance Only.
Agree to the terms and create the slip.
3) Submit a slip in support of HB1245, the Second Chance Public Health and Safety Act
Support Second Chance State Public Health & Safety Act, which creates the Department of Returning Residents Affairs to provide a program of holistic, individualized reentry services to justice-involved individuals. The goal of the department will be to have a holistic, person-centered, comprehensive public health approach to public safety, restore community cohesion and create stable and healthy communities. Fact sheet attached. Please reach out to Mark McCombs (mark.mccombs@saferfoundation.
We are looking for folks to submit a witness slip in advance of our hearing Thursday: https://my.ilga.gov/
In Section I, please include your name, address, email address, phone, and organization or agency you work for and your title (if you are only able to support as an individual, you can write “self” in these fields).
In Section II, please include the name of the organization you are filing on behalf of or “self” if you are filing as an individual.
In Section III, please select Proponent.
In Section IV, please select Record of Appearance Only.
Agree to the terms and create the slip.
4) If you have connections with business owners who are in support of Clean Slate legislation, please connect with Tasha Brown tbrown@
If you have any comments, questions or topics you’d like for us to discuss at a future meeting please feel free to reach out.
Annika Cole
ADVOCACY MANAGER
29 E. Madison St., Suite 1700-C, Chicago, IL 60602-4415
