Jiu-Jitsu for the People - Coming home to Pilsen

Being exposed to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the martial arts from childhood helped changed me and my cousin Jerry's lives for the better. We were fortunate enough to have family like my father Roberto Cepeda to drive us to and pay for training because nothing of the sort was available in our Pilsen neighborhood. Most other children and young people in the blue-collar, immigrant neighborhood of Pilsen don't have those same opportunities.

To this day, there still isn't an academy in the place we grew up to learn and train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. We're going to change that. Starting in September of 2021, we're moving Foundation Chicago home to Pilsen and, specifically, to the home I grew up in - that my grandfather helped my parents purchase, that my parents painstakingly rehabbed over years, that my mother ran her early childhood daycare out of for decades, and where my cousin Jerry and I would roll around on the ground and practice our Jiu-Jitsu in between class sessions.



Now that we're black belts, it's time to share our Jiu-Jitsu with the rest of Pilsen, with kids who look like us, live where we live, and with families that remind us of ours. We're making the beautiful new academy by hand with the help of students and friends to save on costs and to make it feel like home. We need help fundraising to purchase the mats we're going to use and flyers we're going to print out to reach the community.

We're coming in hot with scholarships galore for the Pilsen to will make sure that tuition expenses will never be a barrier to any neighborhood children and families that want to train with us.

Join the team and help out if you can!

Thank you,
-Elias