Fight Homelessness with Food & Art

Help two organizations with different ways of addressing poverty find common ground to combat homelessness for a group of resilient and engaged Chicagoans.

We believe that while sustenance for the body is vital, a full life requires nourishment for the mind, heart, and soul as well. We know that basic services are essential for people looking to secure housing, but an equally important factor in that process is the kind of self-reflection and desire for transformation that only art can yield. This coming fall, we’ll launch a new program that combines these two elements, offering regular meals and support services – coupled with field trips to the city’s top cultural venues – to members of Chicago’s homeless community.

The Chicago Help Initiative (CHI) has been providing weekly meals to Chicagoans experiencing homelessness for over a decade. Aware that food alone is not enough for people seeking housing, CHI also provides caseworkers, nurse practitioners, and access to agencies that provide job training, mental health, and addiction services. Additionally, CHI actively cultivates the creation of “peer groups” through various kinds of programming, such as Adult Literacy, Bike Repair and Storytelling.

Red Line Service, an artist collaborative, has been providing cultural programming to Chicagoans experiencing homelessness for two years. Music performances; lectures by artists, professors and public intellectuals; and a film series have all been offered on the belief that artistic and intellectual enrichment can awaken imaginative possibilities in people, encouraging them to envision, aspire to, and build alternative realities.

Now, we are teaming up to provide our first cohort of Chicagoans experiencing homelessness with the combined resources of both organizations. Through this partnership we will build a powerful alternative model for addressing poverty. We intend to show that sustained access to meals, caseworkers, and basic social service support together with access to Chicago’s cultural treasures through field trips to the opera, symphony, museums, theater, cultural festivals, and lectures by professors in Chicago’s renowned universities, can forge bonds across class lines, spark a passion for life-long learning, and help people project a future for themselves, intensifying the desire for secure housing and inspiring the belief that it is possible.

Please join us in making this project a reality!