Gads Hill Center's Junior Building Leaders
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Hello all, my name is David Barboza and I am the Youth Programs Manager at Gads Hill Center. I currently oversee three different sites across the city of Chicago in the North Lawndale, Brighton Park and Pilsen neighborhoods that service children ages 5 – 18. In total, my programs service over 200 families.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, our families were truly hit hard and over 80% lost their jobs at some point in time. Our organization made tremendous efforts to engage with our families remotely and provide financial relief from March 2020 – June 2020.
When the CDC and Chicago allowed for in person services to resume in July 2020, our families were able to return to our facilities but came back with tremendous baggage. Our mission has and always will be to provide trauma informed, civic engagement, social emotional, and academic services for all of our families.
We have currently been operating full day hours 7:00 am – 6:00 pm since July. In a non-pandemic world, our children would return to their schools for the school year and would participate in our after-school enrichment program. However, with the announcement of schools remaining remote, our families once again were going to be left without childcare. We made the decision as an organization to remain open full day hours so our families could continue to work.
Since the start of the school year, myself and my staff have worked countless hours to ensure our children find success during E-Learning. We have upgraded our Wi-Fi to ensure our children have no connectivity issues, we have received copious amounts of donations of school supplies / PPE / essential household items and we have partnered with different organizations to donate 120 meals weekly to our families.
During this holiday season I want to do something special for all of my families. Although we are partially funded through the state, 99% of my families have been struggling to make their co-payments on time and have fallen behind multiple months. I would never remove a child from my programs simply because they cannot afford it. The pandemic has put my families in a financial hole that is unimaginable, and I want to start a scholarship fund to assist those families in need.
In past years, we have had corporate partners and generous individuals either make donations or sponsor families to pay their monthly co-payment. If you yourself or your organization would like to assist in any sort of way, please feel free to reach out to me personally at [email redacted].
Any and all donations are greatly appreciated for the purposes of this GoFundMe. I hope we can reach our goal to continue to support my families during this pandemic. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart and I hope everyone has a Happy Holidays.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, our families were truly hit hard and over 80% lost their jobs at some point in time. Our organization made tremendous efforts to engage with our families remotely and provide financial relief from March 2020 – June 2020.
When the CDC and Chicago allowed for in person services to resume in July 2020, our families were able to return to our facilities but came back with tremendous baggage. Our mission has and always will be to provide trauma informed, civic engagement, social emotional, and academic services for all of our families.
We have currently been operating full day hours 7:00 am – 6:00 pm since July. In a non-pandemic world, our children would return to their schools for the school year and would participate in our after-school enrichment program. However, with the announcement of schools remaining remote, our families once again were going to be left without childcare. We made the decision as an organization to remain open full day hours so our families could continue to work.
Since the start of the school year, myself and my staff have worked countless hours to ensure our children find success during E-Learning. We have upgraded our Wi-Fi to ensure our children have no connectivity issues, we have received copious amounts of donations of school supplies / PPE / essential household items and we have partnered with different organizations to donate 120 meals weekly to our families.
During this holiday season I want to do something special for all of my families. Although we are partially funded through the state, 99% of my families have been struggling to make their co-payments on time and have fallen behind multiple months. I would never remove a child from my programs simply because they cannot afford it. The pandemic has put my families in a financial hole that is unimaginable, and I want to start a scholarship fund to assist those families in need.
In past years, we have had corporate partners and generous individuals either make donations or sponsor families to pay their monthly co-payment. If you yourself or your organization would like to assist in any sort of way, please feel free to reach out to me personally at [email redacted].
Any and all donations are greatly appreciated for the purposes of this GoFundMe. I hope we can reach our goal to continue to support my families during this pandemic. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart and I hope everyone has a Happy Holidays.
Organizer
David Barboza
Organizer
Chicago, IL