We ask each Founder from the Chicago area WFC group to click on the "Add new comment" line below, following the questions, and describe briefly her nonprofit by posting answers to the following:
Your Name:
Organization:
Organization Web Site:
Address:
Phone Number (home and work):
In addition, please reply to the following questions using a total of no more than fifty words.
1 Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
2 What drew you to this work?
Thank you!
Sharon Silverman
Co-Founder Crossing the Border: Intercultural Initiatives for Learning and Peace
Civic Blueprint
Laura Kreeger Neil
Lindsay Maki
457 West Oakdale Avenue, #2
Chicago, IL 60657
773.281.4123
Co-Founders, Civic Blueprint
www.thecivicblueprint.org
DESCRIBE THE WORK OF YOUR NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
Civic Blueprint works to enhance collaborations between the design community and community groups and nonprofit organizations. Our goal is to create a method for design professionals to engage in pro bono or reduced cost work while enabling clients using these design services to fulfill their missions.
WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS WORK?
Laura Kreeger Neil: Many experiences brought me to Civic Blueprint. My background in education and social services has allowed me to work in many different environments. I learned early on how much of an impact the built environment can have on one's ability to succeed and attain their goals. When I was studying to get a master's degree in social work, I realized I wanted to focus my energy on improving the surroundings of those who are often not given the chance to benefit from good design. After doing some research, and meeting Lindsay Maki, my co-founder, I was pleasantly surprised at the incredible amount of dedication and desire from the architecture community in Chicago to give back. While I have little knowledge in but incredible respect for the architecture profession, I find my background in social work has been a perfect match for this work. I have found that there are many commonalities between the social work and design professions and what sets them apart from each other is what enhances the work we hope to accomplish.
Lindsay Maki: In my career, I have witnessed how important and powerful a thoughtful design solution can be to an individual or community. I also know that many people and groups either can not afford design services or do not know how to engage them. Years ago, when I was looking to donate some
professional time, I could not find an organization that could connect me to an agency or individual that could use my help. Following the 2004 tsunami, I thought one way I could help locally would be to find
groups of equal (if different) need in Chicago and locate the resources to help them. And truly, at its very core, I believe that is what Civic Blueprint is here to do.
Crossing The Border:Intercultural Initiatives
Sharon Silverman, Ed.D
1152 W. Farwell Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60626
silvermansharon@rcn.com
Marilyn Susman, Ph.D.
412 Greenwood
Evanston, Illinois 60201
marilynsus@aol.com
Co-Founders
Crossing the Border: Intercultural Initiatives for Learning and Peace
www.crosssingtheborder.org
DESCRIBE THE WORK OF YOUR NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
Crossing the Border is committed to developing intercultural alliances to build capacity in education and mental health and promote understanding and peace. The organization focuses on engaging professionals to collaborate for change by
• responding to identified problems with a solutions focused approach,
• promoting shared responsibility to achieve maximum potential for growth,
• developing programs that build confidence and competence and
• creating opportunities for discourse to overcome cultural barriers.
WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS WORK?
Marilyn and I were each Fulbright Senior Scholars. Marilyn was in Malaysia and Cyprus, and I was in South Africa. As a result of these experiences, we joined to form Crossing the Border to continue our work in learning and peace especially in communities involved in conflict. We have implemented programs in counseling supervision in Cyprus and in virtual learning in higher education in South Africa. Detailed information about our work is available at www.crossingtheborder.org.
Sallie E. Gratch
Organization: Women Founders Collective
847-710-4337
website: www.womenfounders.org
email: sallie@womenfounders.org
1134 Judson Avenue
Evanston, IL 60202
Skype ID: sallieegratch
cell:
1. Describe the focus of your nonprofit:
Women Founders Collective (WFC) exists as a global support network for women founders of nonprofits. Its focus is on the founder's journey (not on the nature of her nonprofit), usually a very solo experience. This journey begins with the struggles of birth, to growing the nonprofit and finally to letting go of it. Believing that the founder's journey can be greatly enhanced as well as the founder greatly empowered as women founders connect with one another, WFC encourages women founder connections, both through our website and through face-to-face Regional Meetings.
The direction WFC takes is the responsibility and rests with the creativity of each women founder (and women founder-to-be) who seeks us out. As a Collective, WFC works best when women founders introduce this nonprofit to their own communities and mold it to their own needs. As such, the face painted on WFC will vary from nation to nation, as has already been demonstrated during this, our first year of existence.
2. What drew you to this work?
My experience with my first nonprofit, Project Kesher (www.projectkesher.org), certainly gave me the push to create WFC. During my years of working with Project Kesher, I often thought of how much I might gain from having honest conversations with other women founders about their founder journeys. As I shared this idea with other women founders many years later and received their excitement with the concept, I realized the time had come to move forward with another nonprofit.
In addition, I have always wanted to be part of a global initiative for women, one that serves as a support infrastructure to women's work and inspires their eagerness to be part of the expanding leadership opportunities in their communities and their nations. I saw WFC as one such infrastructure, one that would assure women's continued leadership role and their on-going participation in being part of building a peaceful world. Thus WFC.
Ann Jennett - The Youth Job Center of Evanston
Ann Jennett
216 Lake St.
Evanston, IL
60201
phone: 847 902 2789 (cell)
The Youth Job Center of Evanston
- a youth pre-job training, job placement, and
job follow-up and support non- profit
1114 Church St.
Evanston, IL 602
847 864 5627
youthjobcenter.org
I started the Youth Job Center of Evanston, Inc. in 1983 for the purpose of helping Evanston young people, particularly those with various obstacles to employment, receive pre-job training, jobs, and job follow-up and support. Our age group targeted was 14 to 25. Although any Evanston youth (and now Chicago is included) is eligible for our services, 78% (on average) are from low-income families. 82% are minorities.
The Job Center, located now in a big, old house it owns at 1114 Church St. in downtown Evanston, has a current staff of 12, and provides services to over 1200 youth per year. It also has an outpost at Evanston Township High School which helps provide additional services and insures that most Evanston young people will know of the Job Center and how it can help them.
In addition to basic job help, the Center also runs classes that teach the general skills needed (application writing, grooming, interview techniques) for successful employment, and these classes include computer training as one of their components.
The Job Center has a budget of approximately $700,000 annually, drawn from both private and public funds, and it has a 25 member active board of directors. It's current executive director is Sacella Smith.
After seven years working at Evanston Township High School helping disadvantaged youth try to enter the workplace I started this community agency, The Youth Job Center of Evanston, to be able to provide more in depth services to what I perceived to be a very needy and deserving population. I garnered start-up funds from an Evanston Community Development Block Grant, and then reached out to a variety of sources for continued and expanding funding. I was its executive director for 20 years before retiring, and now serve on its board of directors.
Mary M. Robinson - Ribbons for Rwanda
Mary M. Robinson
Ribbons for Rwanda
www.ribbonsforrwanda.org
638 Burdick St.
Libertyville, IL 60048
(847) 362-1952
Describe your organization.
1. To raise money for WE-ACTx-Rwanda (Chicago group of doctors and psychologists who have set up HIV/AIDS clinics to treat women with HIV/AIDS and post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting from the genocide of 1994).
What drew you to this work?
2. I was drawn to this work by the tragic story related to my daughter, an international student advisor at DePaul University, by a Rwandan nun who had lost all but one member of her family during the genocide. (Please see my website www.ribbonsforrwanda.org "About Us" for more.
Tara Mallen - Rivendell Theatre Ensemble
Your Name: Tara Mallen
Organization: Rivendell Theatre Ensemble
Organization Web Site: www.rivendelltheatre.net
Address: 1711 West Belle Plaine #3B Chicago, IL 60613
Phone Number (home and work): 773-472-1169 (W) / 773-405-8512 (C) rivtheatre@aol.com
Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble is a professional Chicago based theatre company dedicated to cultivating the talents of women artists -- writers, actors, directors, and designers -- and to seeking out plays that explore the unique female experience in an intimate, salon environment.
What drew you to this work?
After moving here in 1990, I became aware of a huge need in the Chicago theatrical community for a company committed to producing artistically challenging and original plays that offered women theatre artists a "stage" for their talents, to enable them to practice and hone their professional craft. Hence I began Rivendell to serve this niche and provide myself and my peers artistic opportunities.
Joan Mazzonelli - Theatre Building Chicago
Your Name: Joan Mazzonelli
Organization: Theatre Building Chicago
Organization Web Site: www.theatrebuildingchicago.org
Address: 1225 West Belmont Avenue, Chicasgo, IL 60657
Phone Number (home and work): 773-929-7367 x 221
1. Describe the focus of your non-profit organization. Live theatre -- Theatre Building Chicago is an incubator for new musicals, for emerging theatre artists and groups. We develop new musical and writers of musical theatre annd we share our 3-theatre facility, equipment, services, and consulting with the greater Chicago theatre and lively arts community.
2. What drew you to this work?
A background in art history, choral performance and costume design as well as an 8-year career in banking(!), gave me the skills and interest in this work. I am not the actual founder but have been with the theatre for 22 years out of a 38 year history. I love the creative chaos and the accessible grassroots nature of intimate live performance.
Karen A. Egerer - Heartland International
Karen A. Egerer
Heartland International
www.heartlandinternational.org
226 South Wabash, Suite 500
Chicago, IL 60604
(773) 463-0002 (h); (312) 583-9430 (w)
kegerer@heartlandinternational.org
Karen Egerer founded Heartland International in 1989 as a women-managed nonprofit organization based in Chicago that designs, implements and manages political, economic and social development projects focusing on democracy and economic development. Since then, Heartland International has worked with NGO leaders, the business community, government officials, political party leaders, legislators and their staff, journalists, educators and other professionals from Africa, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Near East. Examples of Heartland International’s training programs include NGO Capacity Building projects in Belarus and Tunisia; sustainable economic development projects in Tanzania and East Timor; Advocacy Campaign strategy development in Morocco; Strengthening Secondary Education in Indonesia; Government Transparency and Accountability in Russia, to name a few. Karen is married to Richard Johnson, a political scientist, and has a son who is a student at Haverford College. Karen is also a photographer (black & white) and sails Rozinante with her husband on Lake Michigan.
Linda Sorkin Eisenberg - Center for Paper and Book Arts
Your Name: Linda Sorkin Eisenberg
Organization Paper Press (Now the Center for Paper and Book Arts) A Masters program at Columbia College:
Address: Wabash
Phone Number (home and work):
Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
The focus on my not for profit was to create a school and a Center for making Paper We were in existence from 1981 until around 1994.
We worked with other artist Nationally an Internationally known to create paper from the there ideas and knowledge. Claire Zeisler was a fiber artist and we taught her to make paper using her ideas and transposing her piece with paper.We worked with many well known artists. Paper is a wonderful way to create books and sculptures. Teaching paper to young students in schools and having groups come through our Paper gallery was very educational. We felt it was important for paper to continue to be an important medium in the art world.
It is very important to have a support group with other women who are going through the same things you went through or are dealing with them now. There are always other answers and solutions to situations and we all need support.
Indira Johnson - Shanti Foundation for Peace
Your Name: Indira Johnson
Organization: Shanti Foundation for Peace:
Address: 917 Fowler Ave, Evanston, IL 60202
Phone Number: 847 475 6192
Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
Shanti Foundation for Peace fosters the practice of non-violence in everyday life by engaging children and communities in innovative visual, literary and performing arts programs. Our primary goals are to help young people develop the imaginative and collaborative thinking needed to learn, succeed and contribute in a diverse society, and to assist communities with issues of diversity and inclusiveness.
What drew you to this work?
In 1993, the rise of ethnic violence compelled me to do something to counter this trend. I based the Shanti Foundation for Peace’s vision on my own artistic experience; that the skills necessary to and gained through art-making are inseparable from the skills needed for problem-solving and peace-making: the ability to see things differently, to envision new possibilities and probabilities, to imagine, to risk, to own, to take responsibility.
Bliss W Browne - Imagine Chicago
Your Name: Bliss W Browne
Organization: Imagine Chicago
Organization Web Site: www.imaginechicago.org
Address: 910 W Castlewood Terrace
Chicago, IL 60640
Phone Number (home and work): home 773-878-8834
work 773-275-2520
1. Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
Cultivating hope and civic commitment in intergenerational, intercultural partnerships
2. What drew you to this work?
A desire to create an economy in Chciago in which nothing and no one would be wasted.
I will be out of town again on April 18, alas. I travel overseas about 10 months a year...and work on six continents...
Bliss Browne
President, Imagine Chicago
Salome Chasnoff - Beyondmedia Education
Your Name: Salome Chasnoff
Organization: Beyondmedia Education
Organization Web Site: www.beyondmedia.org
Address: 7013 N. Glenwood Ave, Chicago IL 60626
Phone Number (home and work): (work) 773-973-2280; (home) 847-869-6888
Please reply with your answers to these questions with a total of no more than fifty words.
1. Describe the focus of your non-profit organization.
Beyondmedia Education's mission is to collaborate with underserved and underrepresented women, youth and communities to tell their stories, connect their stories to the world around us, and organize for social justice through the creation and distribution of media arts. Beyondmedia Education works with communities most in need of media access because of economic and/or social exclusion.
2. What drew you to this work?
I recognized that women and girls were being left out of the information revolution of the 90’s. To document and communicate their stories, connect with each other and their constituencies, influence public policy, and generate social transformation, women and girls needed access to media and technology.