Leveraging Partnerships in West Chicago
West Chicago Elementary School District #33
West Chicago, Illinois
SS/HS Grantee

SS/HS initiatives are funded to help establish a comprehensive system of services for youth and their families. Yet it is not possible for an initiative to provide funding to all the local agencies and organizations whose participation is necessary to create such a system. In these excerpts from a longer conversation, Marjory Lewe-Brady, Project Director for WeGo Together for Kids, an SS/HS initiative in West Chicago, Illinois, speaks to the challenge of creating a partnership that includes organizations that receive funding from the grant as well as others that do not. She also describes how several WeGo Together partners established collaborations above and beyond those proposed in their grant application.

Can partners who do not receive any funding from the grant benefit from an SS/HS initiative?

It’s important that the partners who are not funded understand the purpose of the initiative and how it can provide unfunded partners with benefits. The initiative might alleviate a clogged service channel. For example, WeGo Together funds the College of DuPage to run Spanish literacy and adult basic education programs for the parents of children in the early childhood program. These are primarily low-income Hispanic families. One of our unfunded partners, the West Chicago Public Library, is part of a countywide literacy initiative. I’m sure they would have loved to have some of the grant money for literacy programs, but that was not the way the grant was written. So the library is going to use the College of DuPage adult education classes as an outreach mechanism by encouraging the parents in these classes to bring their children to the library’s literacy program. This supports the library's mission to bring more people into the library.

Participation in WeGo Together can also enable unfunded partners to free up dollars by helping them to do something more effectively. For example, Benedictine University [a funded partner] is responsible for our nutritional component. Benedictine is looking at ways to influence food choices at lunchtime. They’re creating newsletters for teachers on how to incorporate nutrition education into classes, as well as nutrition newsletters for parents. We are going to share these resources with St. Mary’s—a local Catholic school and an unfunded partner.

Did the initiative result in any unanticipated collaborations?

There were a lot of service agencies working in West Chicago before we got this grant. Many of these agencies knew about each other but really didn’t know each other. WeGo Together provided a way to bring these agencies together. This has resulted in relationships that work toward our goal of creating a comprehensive coordinated system of services. Four of our partners are meeting regularly to explore how they might appropriately refer clients to one another and to make sure they are providing the community with consistent messages and sharing areas of expertise to improve quality of services. These agencies include

• Breaking Free, a local not-for-profit prevention agency that provides WeGo Together’s after school program;
• Metropolitan Family Services and the DuPage County Health Departments, both of which provide mental health services to WeGo Together;
• The West Chicago Police Department Social Service Unit. This unit does a lot of prevention work. They provide parent education in Spanish about various topics including gang awareness and substance abuse prevention. They hire high school students to be Neighborhood Resource Center peer mentors for the younger kids, sponsor an open gym at middle school, and teach the JustChill anger management program; and
• The DuPage County Probation, Juvenile Division, a non-funded partner that offers early intervention, prevention, and diversion programs.

All this work is above and beyond what was described in our initial grant application.

WeGo Together for Kids exemplifies the way in which an SS/HS Initiative can expand its work and influence beyond its funding boundaries. This is important, both because it contributes to the creation of a comprehensive system of services for youth and their families, and because it helps the initiative prepare for the day when the Federal grant ends and their work must be sustained through other mechanisms and strategies.

For more information about the WeGo Together for Kids, contact Marjory Lewe-Brady at (630) 293-6000 x225 or lewe-bradym@wegoed33.k12.il.us