Our History

Over the Past 15 years we've created real opportunities for young people to develop and grow by...

Implementing the Project YES Educational and College Preparation Program to provide services in and out of schools to motivate, prepare, and assist students in finishing high school and entering college.

Creating the Greater Lawn Community Youth Network After School and Summer Camp programs, which provide homework assistance, cultural awareness activities, life skills workshops, and family and community building.

Establishing the Urban Options Workforce Development Program to develop job skills for youth and entrepreneurial businesses through field trips, trainings, mentorship, and business planning.

Providing summer employment for hundreds of youth and placing hundreds of others in outside job and internship positions.

Establishing the University of Hip Hop to teach youth history, philosophy, and methods of various art forms of creative expression.

Founding the International Youth Leadership Institute, through which we have sent and hosted delegations of youth and community leaders to and from Cape Town, South Africa; Brussels, Belgium; Mexico City, Mexico; Guatemala; and Caracas, Venezuela.

Developing the Technology Undivided Program and 5 Community Technology Center Labs, which provide youth technology programming, computer access, and media resources to bridge the "digital divide" between technological haves and have-nots.

Creating the Southwest Athletic Club Sports Leadership Program, involving sports and health programs in which volunteers are involved in helping children to make responsible decisions both on and off the playing field as well as training youth to become future coaches and mentors.

Establishing the first Youth Soccer League in Marquette Park with over 500 Latino, Arab, White and African-American youth participating.

Over the past 15 years we have organized for power through building relationships of mutual respect among people of different races, ethnicities, faiths, genders and ages by...

Establishing Generation Y, a youth activist organization led by dedicated young people who are trained in community organizing and who are carry out campaigns to effect change around social and public policies impacting youth and families in the areas of education, employment, and welfare.

Creating Sisters Organized for United Leadership (SOUL), a project where young women come together as mothers, daughters, aunts, friends, and sisters to celebrate life and organize for equality and justice through the arts, technology, and action.

Establishing Families Organizing for Real Change and Empowerment (FORCE), a grass-roots, multi-racial and multi-ethnic organization working on the southwest side to unite a thousand families to create positive change and improve the community in which we live.

Running the Summer Youth Liberation Institute, based on the Mississippi Freedom School, as an intensive 7-week training/internship focused on developing intergenerational, multi-racial, and gender balanced youth leadership for social justice and institutional change around issues affecting youth and families.

Over the past 15 years we have worked to build a diverse source of funding that creates greater self-sustainability by...

Establishing the Southwest Youth Collaborative Endowment Fund to support general operations and development of the organization.

Conducting on-going grass-roots fundraising and training staff, youth, and board members in developing such campaigns.

Researching and exploring social entrepreneurship as a long term method for developing sustainability.

Developing a long-term strategic development and marketing plan, which includes a comprehensive database, expanding our individual donor base and our corporate sponors.

Stepping to the forefront of non-profit technology by transfering nearly all of our IT systems to Open Source and Free Software technologies.

Over the past 15 years we have developed a long-term vision for social change by...

Strengthening the capacities of those directly affected by policies that systematically marginalize and dominate communities of color in order to be part of a local, regional, and national movement for racial, economic, and gender equity justice.

Developing a new five-year strategic plan, which will address areas of organizational, community, and resource development.

On-going professional development of new leaders and organizers who play major roles in our development and vision and go on to do the same for various other organizations in Chicago and beyond.

Over the past 15 years we have striven to build long-lasting alliances which benefit the communities and people that we work with and which promote our mission and vision by...

Co-founding the Council of Southwest Organizations for Youth, made up of more than thirty community organizations, social service agencies, and public institutions.

Co-founding the Community Justice Initiative, an alliance of policy organizations, universities, and community-based youth organizations developing a city-wide progressive youth movement.

Developing working relationships with universities, including Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, Depaul University, Northern Illinois University, Williams College, Northeastern Illinois University, and the City Colleges of Chicago.

Building working relationships with the following public schools: Harper, Curie, Bogan, Kelly, Gage Park, Hubbard, and Kennedy; also with Marquette, Eberhart, and Henderson Elementary Schools.

Strengthening relationships with officials from city departments, including the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development, Department of Human Services, Department of Public Health, After School Matters, and Chicago Park District.

Organizing and supporting regional and national coalitions around issues of criminal and juvenile justice, welfare, youth development and organizing with the Center for Third World Organizing, Community Justice Network for Youth, GrassRoots Organizing for Welfare Leadership, YouthAction, and the Applied Research Center, among others.

Chronological History

1992

• Southwest Youth Collaborative founded in Chicago Lawn, West Englewood, West Lawn, Gage Park, and West Elsdon.
• Community-based Board of Directors is elected to represent different community areas and ethnic groups. It is also decided that half of the board will be under the age of 18.

1994

• Youth board members of SWYC form the Youth Empowerment Network to help foster youth leadership and activism.

1995

• Youth Empowerment Network begins working with the Children & Family Justice Center at NU Law School to offer street law classes to youth after police brutalizes a youth member.

1996

• Generation Y is founded as a youth activist organization by members of the SWYC board, youth leaders of various programs, and young adult staff. Generation Y members join Kids Not Criminals, a citywide alliance opposed to the criminalization of youth.

1997

• Community Justice Initiative formed as a citywide coalition of youth and policy organizations around the criminalization of youth.
• Hubbard high school students and Generation Y members start the University of Hip Hop.

1999

• Generation Y launches its first successful local youth organizing campaign around summer jobs cuts.
• The Jobs for Youth Campaign helps prevent the City of Chicago from eliminating nearly 15,000 summer jobs and brings more job opportunities to southwest side youth.
• Youth organizers from the Community Justice Initiative organize a Youth Summit on the 100th anniversary of the juvenile court. The Youth Summit, attended by more than 700 youth and adult allies, helps to launch the Youth First campaign in 2000.
• Teenage women and female staff of the SWYC create SOUL (Sisters Organized for United Leadership), a young women's empowerment program.

2000

• The citywide Youth First Campaign is launched, focusing on ending the criminalization of youth and increasing the amount of money in the City of Chicago budget allocated for positive youth programs.
• Generation Y launches the Right to Learn Campaign, which exposes the racially-biased use of suspensions and expulsions in the Chicago Public School system.

2001

• The Youth First Campaign helps to increase the City of Chicago's budget for youth by $2.5 million.
• The Right to Learn Campaign helps to put pressure on CPS to increase the number of peer juries to 25 high schools.

2002

• Generation Y launches the Higher Learning Campaign, which seeks to increase college preparation and higher education opportunities for low-income students of color.
• The Youth First Campaign shifts to focus on citywide education issues and education funding reform.

2003

• The Higher Learning Campaign convinces the Board of Education to launch the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) Program in eight high schools, to help students in the academic middle to take academically rigorous courses and attend four-year colleges and universities.

2004

• Generation Y launches the Still We Rise Campaign focused on racial profiling, police brutality, and undocumented immigrant rights. The campaign builds alliances with the Justice Coalition of Greater Chicago, around police accountability, and with the United Food and Commercial Workers, around undocumented immigrant and workers' rights.