At Adelante Center, our mission is to create wealth in distressed communities through entrepreneurship, living-wage job creation, and community development. We focus exclusively on developing programs and projects that benefit Lake County and the surrounding areas.
This week, we had the opportunity to connect with North Chicago Think Tank. This incredible, nonprofit organization focuses on equality and creating solutions for local socio-political issues. They're able to do so by collaborating with like-minded organizations and individuals to improve overall effectiveness of their programming.
Continue reading our community spotlight series for more insight!
This is an interview with William Coleman (aka Billy), Executive Director.
Q: What kind of organizations or people are you looking to work with?
So there are so many opportunities for collaboration. If you're doing anything with food, physical or mental health, we'd love to work together, but I think there's always an opportunity to see where different programs intersect with other programs.
So, for example, we are not a justice-based organization, but we do know that injustice can have a role in poor mental health, or even poor physical health for people who are facing injustice. So we work alongside, and we're collaborating with the Juvenile Justice Department of Illinois State Attorney's Office to talk about what that looks like. How do we help? And I think there's always an opportunity to be at an intersection that benefits the community without changing your lane or going into a space that's not actually your space. We can learn how to exist in that intersection and collaborate to build solutions that are multifaceted.
Q: Any other thoughts or insights on this topic?
I'm just going to say, the more we work together, the more we work together, the more likely the solutions will work for more of the community. And that's really what we want. There are solutions that are being created, but we want to make sure that they actually work for more people in the community. We know it's really tough to reach everyone, but we want to keep trying to make it reach more and more people each time.
The Adelante Center Resources:
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North Chicago Think Tank Resources:
"We are nonprofit, anti-racist, equity focused organization that empowers & centers the voices of community members while building bridges to "seats at the table" where decisions are made. We collaborate with strategic planners, program developers, state & federal grant owners, government agencies, community-based organizations, program administrators and boots on the ground outreach teams to improve the effectiveness of programming aimed at improving the quality of life for the community of North Chicago, Illinois." Learn More>>
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