Crossroads Fund is excited to announce that we awarded $81,000 in grants to twenty-three organizations through our Youth Fund for Social Change (Youth Fund) in 2020. These impactful youth-led movements are fearlessly challenging Chicago’s unjust systems by imagining bold solutions to build community and heal in a time of uncertainty.
In 2008, Crossroads Fund launched the Youth Fund to confirm our commitment to supporting the vision and voices of our city’s young people. Since then, we have granted over $500,000 to more than 100 organizations whose innovative activism and resistance has left an indelible mark on Chicago. Some of these movements include the 2010 launch of the Immigrant Youth Justice League’s “Coming Out of the Shadows” as undocumented and unafraid campaign, We Charge Genocide’s visit to the United Nations to present a report on the brutality of the Chicago Police Department in 2014, Fearless Leading by the Youth’s (FLY) organizing victory to open a trauma center on Chicago’s Southside in 2015, and the recent #NoCopAcademy campaign challenging the construction of a new police academy and galvanizing the city in a call for schools for kids, not for cops.
This year’s awardees are carrying this legacy forward in building cross-connected movements for racial, social, and economic justice in the face of climate change’s looming existential threat. In spite of this, young people are cultivating new ways of healing through art, developing creative new ways to protest and resist the prevailing power structures, and doing all of this with an irresistible sense of hope. Join us in celebrating and supporting the work of these inspiring groups:
A Long Walk Home
About Face Theatre
Alliance of the SouthEast (ASE)
Arab American Action Network (AAAN)
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago
Chicago Desi Youth Rising
Chicago Freedom School
Cicero Independiente
Circles & Ciphers
Club Taji Ciudad Hidalgo
Free Street Theater
Free Write Arts & Literacy
Hana Center
ONE Northside
she crew
Solidarity Studios
Southside Together Organizing for Power
Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL)
Student Coalition for Reproductive Justice
Territory NFP
The Warehouse Project & Gallery
Youth Empowerment Performance Project (YEPP)
Youth Outlook
