Blog
The Metropolitan Peace Academy celebrates the graduation of its fourth cohort of street outreach workers
Together with our friends at NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston Cradle to Career, Family Focus, Evanston/Skokie School District 65, and Childcare Network of Evanston, Metropolitan Evanston/Skokie is pleased to welcome new babies to Evanston!
Rainbow PUSH Coalition honored Metropolitan Calumet Executive Director Audrena Spence with its PUSH Excel Visionary Service Award at the organization’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Breakfast.
Welcome to Good News! In this space we feature positive stories of community impact and development, relevant to the areas Metropolitan serves or the programs we offer.
The last Family Shelter Service of Metropolitan Family Services DuPage (FSS of MFSD) Family Night of the year featured a Whoville-themed Santa’s Workshop!
Thanks to donations and volunteers from MillerCoors, 800 of our families received a holiday meal!
Metropolitan DuPage’s senior program is working with our partners toward a “Dementia-Friendly Naperville” to spread awareness in our community.
At this year’s Holiday Shoppe, Family Shelter Service of Metropolitan Family Services DuPage fulfilled holiday gift wishes for 612 people – including 397 children, 30 young adults and 185 families!
Our Calumet Center’s staff, Community Board members, and the Roseland Community are feeling the holiday spirit! Metropolitan Calumet’s Community Holiday Event featured caroling and wreath-making, as all enjoyed a holiday meal together.
The Metropolitan Family Services DuPage League, a group of community leaders whose volunteer support of our DuPage Center spans decades, hosted its annual “Joy to the World” Holiday Dinner & Auction to benefit Metropolitan DuPage recently at the Le Jardin Room at Cantigny Park.
Metropolitan’s Midway Center Mpowered nearly 18,000 lives this year, but we did not do it alone. At its Annual Holiday Luncheon, Midway Center Executive Director Laurie Sedio and her staff celebrated the Community Board members, program initiatives, and partner organizations that support our communities.
Clients and staff came together to support each other in performing during Open Mic Nite, held at the Southeast Chicago Center.
Our Midway Children’s Center recently took 59 children on a unique field trip – to a neighborhood Shoe Carnival, where, thanks to AT&T, they spent the morning with a personal shopper and got to choose their own pair of shoes.
Community partners, from board members to program partners, empower Metropolitan Southeast Chicago to serve more than 5,000 clients each year. At its annual Holiday Luncheon, Community Board Chair Shirley Carter joined Metropolitan Southeast Chicago Executive Director Vanessa Schwartz to honor a few of the outstanding partners who make our programming possible.
Our Campaign Cabinet co-chairs – Martha Melman, Tony Hunter, Richard Price, and John MacCarthy – recently hosted a celebration of the Campaign to Mpower Families at RPM on the Water.
Metropolitan staff across the agency has been participating in “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) and Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) Communities Foundations of Care” trainings, provided by Howard Brown Health.
BMO Harris Bank shared the light with Metropolitan Family Services as part of its Magnificent Mile Lights Festival! By donating for every social media post with the event hashtag #BMOLightsFest, BMO contributed to Mpowering lives across the greater Chicagoland area.
Metropolitan is part of BMO’s Magnificent Mile Holiday Lights Festival! From now until November 23, BMO Harris Bank will donate $5 to Metropolitan for every post with the hashtag #BMOLightsFest, up to $10,000.
The Midway Learning & Wellness Center is a pilot organization for the “Anytime is 3Ts Time” program, a collaboration between PNC Bank’s “Grow Up Great” initiative and the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health.
Our North Children’s Center preschoolers learned about different types of hats by reading the story “Hats for Sale,” and celebrated the learning by making hats together!
Staff, guests, and clients walked into our Midway Center to an Mpowering display during the month of October!
To help our community discover ways to overcome together, the Domestic Violence Program at Metropolitan Calumet held a candle ceremony to offer education and awareness around Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The Legal Aid Society’s own Dana Harbaugh, Pro Bono Program Coordinator, joined a Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) panel on how post-graduates can strengthen their applications for public interest law organizations.
Metropolitan board members gathered at our Annual Meeting to hear from CEO Ric Estrada about our collective impact this year, see recent Board Chair Mike Vardas pass the gavel to incoming Board Chair Ashley Duchossois Joyce, and learn about the important work of our Altgeld Youth Leadership Program from Jylan, one of its participants.
Our Midway Center staff and area police officers learned about the intersectionality of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking, in an info session facilitated by Metropolitan’s own Micaela Garrido, Outreach Coordinator with the Legal Aid Society’s Human Trafficking Initiative.
Family Shelter Service of Metropolitan Family Services DuPage opened its doors for an Open House, sharing our work in supporting domestic violence survivors across DuPage with board members, supporters, and community members.
Metropolitan Calumet is looking refreshed and repainted, thanks to a group of volunteers!
A group of our Calumet Center’s Financial Opportunity Center participants are now in a much stronger position to find and secure employment, thanks to support they received in a personalized Personal Brand and Interviewing workshop run by Allstate volunteers.
Our Midway Center staff hosted a Pizza and Pop with a Cop event to promote domestic violence awareness.
Metropolitan Calumet, at its Annual Meeting, honored the staff, board members, and community partners whose support contributes to the Center’s reputation as the “Miracle on 103rd Street.”
Get Growing Foundation’s Plant Truck made a stop at Metropolitan Calumet to share plants and experience-based learning around horticulture with our community, thanks to Calumet Community Board Member LaToyia Huggins!
Our Midway Children’s Center had great participation in the Million Fathers March! Sixteen dads dropped their children off, and several stayed to read a story in their child’s classroom.
Welcome to Good News! In this space we feature positive stories of community impact and development, relevant to the areas Metropolitan serves or the programs we offer.
Staff from Metropolitan’s Behavioral Health programs attended National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)’s NAMIWalk Chicago 2019 in Jackson Park on Saturday, September 14th.
The Chicago Football Classic and College Fair is more than a game! Our Calumet Center hosted their college-bound youth to meet with more than 40 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at the 22nd annual event.
As part of the ReCAST Center for Learning & Resilience, the Metropolitan Peace Academy is offering city-wide trainings on aspects of nonviolence, trauma and adverse childhood experiences.
Clinical Program Supervisor Haley Hansen and Program Manager Jennifer Jenks visited 10 elementary schools in Evanston School District 65 to provide information about Family Support and Prevention, a free counseling and case management program for Evanston families.
Melissa Coleman, Crisis Worker in our Southwest Center’s Screening Assessment and Supportive Services (SASS) program, participated once again in the Chicago Police Department and NAMI’s Advanced Crisis Intervention Youth Workshop.
The Legal Aid Society’s Outreach Coordinator, Micaela Garrido, recently presented at the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force’s 2019 Conference.
On a recent site visit to our DuPage Center, Metropolitan and DuPage Community Board members learned more about Adoption Preservation, Early Childhood, and Domestic Violence services, regional Legal Aid Society programs in DuPage, and integration work with Family Shelter Service of Metropolitan Family Services DuPage.
The “Grow Where You’re Planted” program, or Garden Group, began four years ago at Metropolitan Southeast Chicago, and has been expanding as gardening and food growing for health and wellbeing gain in popularity.
Led by Office Assistant Joyce Quezada, our North Center and North Children’s Center staff wrote (and colored, and put stickers on) nearly 1,000 inspiring messages to put inside a recent donation of backpacks from Cradles 2 Crayons.
We’re excited to announce a partnership with Rosin Eyecare, one of the largest eye care providers in the Chicago area: between September 1 and October 19, a portion of the proceeds from your Rosin eye exam will benefit Metropolitan!
Thousands of children in our Calumet, Southeast Chicago, and North communities will go back to school with the supplies they need to prepare mentally, emotionally, and physically for another year of learning! At the Cradles 2 Crayons Backpack-A-Thon, our staff picked up a total of 4,500 backpacks we’ll distribute to our communities.
Our DuPage Center’s Intensive Placement Stabilization (IPS) and Adoption Support and Preservation (APS) programs held their first Family Fun Day for foster and adoptive families!
Giving back – and inspiring her workforce to do the same – helps guide Christy Harris in her role as VP of Talent Acquisition and Inclusive Diversity for Allstate.
Our Community Schools program brought together Resource Coordinators from across the agency for a four-day Resource Coordinator Summer Boot Camp professional development series at our Midway Center.
Welcome to Good News! In this space we feature positive stories of community impact and development, relevant to the areas Metropolitan serves or the programs we offer.
Asserting Achievement, Literacy & Resiliency (AALR) hosted its second annual College Preparedness and Readiness Trunk Party for our Calumet Center’s Upward Bound program.
Katharine and Parenting Fundamentals Educator (and parent alum of the program) Robert Augustin, alongside their Parenting Fundamentals team in San Juan, spent four days training 13 staff from Instituto Tercera Mision Universidad Carlos Albizu.