COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION IN BRONZEVILLE TO USE GRANT TO HELP RESTART ECONOMY

Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago partnered with Mars Wrigley Foundation to award community organizations with placemaking grants to enhance neighborhoods and to support community connections. Photo courtesy of LISC Chicago
Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago partnered with Mars Wrigley Foundation to award community organizations with placemaking grants to enhance neighborhoods and to support community connections. Photo courtesy of LISC Chicago

Community organization in Bronzeville to use grant to help restart economy

BY TIA CAROL JONES

Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago partnered with Mars Wrigley Foundation to award community organizations with placemaking grants. Quad Communities Development Corporation in Bronzeville was one of the recipients of the $25,000 grant, which they will use to help restart the neighborhood’s local economy.

Lauren Lewis is the Assistant Program Officer of the Neighborhood Network for LISC Chicago. Lewis said Mars Wrigley Foundation and Anne Vela-Wagner reached out to LISC Chicago in 2019 because the philanthropic arm wanted to release funding. “These placemaking opportunities were things that were for the community and in some type of capacity, led by the community, and to continue positive activities within the area,” said Lewis.

Grant recipients for 2019 included Austin Coming Together, as well as Garfield Park Community Council and Accion Chicago.

“Community connectivity is more important than ever, but looks different due to social distancing guidelines,” Meghan Harte, LISC Chicago executive director, said in a release. “We are committed to helping develop physical and social assets to strengthen Chicago neighborhoods and support the impactful work that community-led organizations are doing on a daily basis, and we’re thrilled to partner with Mars Wrigley on this important work.”

Lewis said because of COVID-19, LISC Chicago was considering not doing a placemaking grant for 2020. However, the team heard from the communities LISC partners with regularly and they said those resources were necessary for these community organizations to continue their work, especially with the civil unrest, looting and rioting.

Lewis said Quad Communities Development Corporation was chosen to continue to highlight, uplift and support the local economy with its project, Bronzeville Resilience. She said the community was affected by the looting in June. “The whole strip of 47th was really damaged and a lot of those businesses are Black-owned and their project Bronzeville Resilience highlights that. We felt that in an effort to keep Bronzeville and its Blackness from the Great Migration, it was important to support things that support Black economics,” she said.

Yvette Warren is a community engagement strategist with Quad Communities Development Corporation. “Since mid-March, our focus has been in supporting our businesses through this trilogy of pandemics of COVID-19, civil unrest and economic disparity and the affects of that,” she said.

Warren said the Bronzeville Resilience project was born out of an idea that she and Quad Communities Development Corporation Executive Director Rhonda Mc Farland had to give support, energy and hope to the community as the businesses were set to open after months of being closed due to COVID-19. “We had this plan we had been discussing and we were immediately focused on launching it, to help our community and our businesses understand that we are resilient, and our community has a legacy of being resilient, that we would get through what we were going through and come out even better and stronger,” she said. “Bronzeville Resilience has become our overarching theme for the remainder of 2020.”

Warren added with the grant, Quad Communities Development Corporation, will continue to do Bronzeville Summer Nights in a more creative way. It has an ambassador engine, a fire truck, with a 12- foot television monitor that plays the live stream as it drives through the community.

“The beauty of this campaign is that the businesses and community have embraced it. They are feeling the energy that we wanted. The business community [is] working together as a collective to proclaim that we are here to stay and that we will be better and stronger. And, with that, the residents are really embracing the messaging as well and supporting our local businesses,” she said.

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