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CEO Maricela Garcia receives the Sor Juana De la Cruz Women of Achievement Award

6/20/2022

On June 15th, 2022, The National Museum of Mexican Art proudly presented Gads Hill Center CEO, Maricela Garcia, with the Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz Women of Achievement Award. This year, six distinguished women of extraordinary artistic and/or social working backgrounds were selected for this prestigious recognition. This award is a testimony of Maricela’s outstanding contributions to our communities, the City of Chicago, and to the enduring spirit of women worldwide.

The special luncheon featured plenty of celebration, and an inspiring heartfelt speech by Maricela.

CEO Maricela Garcia meets with the U.S. Secretary of Education

11/4/2021

Gads Hill Center Chief Executive Officer Maricela Garcia met with United States Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona during a recent visit to Washington, D.C.. Ms. Garcia and Secretary Cardona discussed the academic regression of students a full grade point during the pandemic and the need for additional support for black and brown students. They also discussed the need for strong mental health services for children experiencing stress and loss during the pandemic.

Garcia reported the rates of childhood mental health concerns have been exacerbated by the twin pandemics of coronavirus and racial inequity. Gads Hill Center has led the pandemic response for children and families on Chicago’s south and west sides. Gads Hill Center augmented and expanded direct mental health services to address the rise in anxiety, depression, and substance abuse as well as the critical need for crisis support surrounding racial injustice, violence, grief, and loss. In fact, 93% of youth served to Gads Hill Center experienced an increase in the severity of their symptoms.

Over the last twenty months, the Gads Hill Center mental health team increased its service delivery to support 30 clients a day and averaged over 60 hours a week to provide individual counseling and crisis support to families. Additionally, Gads Hill Center developed a curriculum and purchased broadband equipment to close the digital divide and ensure our families were equipped with the tools and skills to support their children’s remote learning environment, stay current with CDC guidance, and use the internet and its many resources for personal and professional advancement.

The shift in needs from “barely surviving” before the pandemic to “crisis mode” necessitated a whole-agency approach to mental health first aid. Agency-wide professional development opportunities have increased staff abilities to function as community navigators, including specialized resources for mixed status families and a curriculum to build Latino and African American parent leadership skills to engage with the school system. In addition, Gads Hill Center developed a curriculum to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism and intergenerational trauma and expanded weekly workshops to provide a weekly forum for parents and community leaders.

Garcia has long been an advocate for children and families. She has served on various boards and councils including the National Immigration Forum, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Northwestern University Human Rights Center, the Chicago Community Renewal Society, Illinois Partners for Human Services, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Latino Policy Forum, and UnidosUS, the largest national Latino civil rights organization. In 2021, Recently, Ms. Garcia co-authored two articles: Gads Hill Center: revisiting the function and cause of social settlements in a time of COVID and Essential, Disposable, and Excluded: The Experience of Latino Immigrant Workers in the US During COVID-19. The articles highlighted the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the populations Gads Hill Center serves. They were published in the Greenwich Social Work Review and Journal of Poverty respectively.

2020 MEDAL OF HONOR

4/27/2021

On April 20th, 2021, Gads Hill Center was presented with the city’s first Mayor’s Medal of Honor Award to recognize our work and contributions to our communities throughout 2020, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our Chief Operating Officer, Rosa Julia Garcia Rivera, was present at the live ceremony to accept this award on behalf of our organization. This recognition was also shared with the other outstanding individuals and organizations from around the city, who have continued to demonstrate passion and make a long-lasting impact in the communities that we serve!

Watch the full ceremony here
See more photos of the ceremony here

Census Spotlight

4/27/2020

On March 10, a parade of dozens of young people marched down Ogden Avenue in Douglas Park on the city’s Southwest Side. Decked out in bright yellow t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Count Me—Inclúyeme,” the grade-school children, led by after-school educators from the nonprofit family resource organization Gads Hill Center, carried brightly colored crepe-paper pom-poms and handmade signs that read “Census 2020: Children Count.” The vibrant parade would be the last census outreach event Gads Hill was able to hold in person. The following week, an order by Governor J.B. Pritzker closed schools across the state in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, Gads Hill has transitioned to doing census outreach primarily online.

To read the article, Click Here!

Adrift in the coronavirus pandemic: Families with children under age 5

4/27/2020

Patricia Guzman sounds tired. She’s juggling a 2-month-old infant and a rambunctious 4-year-old who doesn’t understand why he’s been stuck inside so long.

The panic buying in Chicago began in mid-March around the time that Guzman’s husband was sent home on mandatory leave from his job as a forklift operator. Worried about money, the couple quickly discovered nearby stores were sold out of baby formula. Guzman recalls sending her husband out to buy distilled water to mix what she had, and him coming up short.

"Everybody was buying everything," she said, "My husband had to go to five different stores to get me two gallons (of distilled water), you can't just use tap water in baby formula.

To read the article, Click H ere!

COO Rosa Julia Garcia Rivera Quoted in UnidosUS Article

2/12/2020

Read COO Rosa Julia Garcia Rivera's quote as part of a UnidosUS article on Latino employment and the gig economy!

CEO Maricela Garcia Discusses Pilsen Gentrification with Chicago Talks

1/16/2020

As the CEO of Gads Hill Center, which provides educational and professional resources for communities, Garcia said she is aware of how gentrification continues to drive people out of their homes.
“It’s at the cost of families having to leave, because they cannot pay the rent, [and] taxes have become so high that they cannot afford them,” Garcia said.
In Pilsen, the effective tax rate is 1.31%, which is slightly higher than the national average, and the median household income is $37,000 per year, according to the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
During 2018, the city of Chicago proposed several initiatives to ease the rapid cycle of gentrification in Pilsen and preserve its cultural character.
One such initiative, the Pilsen and Little Village Preservation Strategy, went into effect last year.
A pilot version of the Affordable Requirements Ordinance, the strategy mandates that all developers building 10 or more new units for rent must designate at least 20% of them as affordable housing or face a fine.
However, many in Pilsen, including Moises Moreno, co-director of the Pilsen Alliance, believe this plan is too “watered down” and allows developers to buy their way out of providing affordable housing through the Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund.
“The big developers put money into that pot, and the little developers take that money,” Moreno said. “And they’re not building anything family-size, they’re building more studios.”
To fight for more comprehensive legislation, the Chicago Housing Initiative, along with Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th Ward, and 17 other aldermen, introduced the Development for All Ordinance.
The ordinance, which still needs two more votes to be passed through city council, would call for lower income requirements and a new mandate of 30% of units to be affordable, with 60% of affordable housing designated as family units on site.
Through simplified explanations of the ARO, community meetings and pressuring smaller developers to do the right thing with the funds they receive, Moreno said the Pilsen Alliance is rallying residents to take part in efforts to stop gentrification in the neighborhood.
“We’re trying to fight the false narrative that ARO is really what’s going to help,” Moreno said. “It goes back to funding housing programs [and] low income trust funds. There are other options on the table that we’re looking at.”
As part of the Gads Hill Center’s community outreach, Garcia said they form alliances with other organizations and encourage families to contact their elected officials to oppose negative changes in the city.
The center, a 121-year-old pillar of Pilsen’s community, also hosts annual voter registration drives and sponsors political candidate forums.
”Our niche is education,” Garcia said. “ We have a very strong civic engagement component in our programs because we believe that our programs would be [un]sustainable if we don’t build the leadership and the confidence of the families to advocate for themselves.”
Alex Esparza, executive director of the Economic Strategies Development Corporation, said they provide small business owners in Pilsen with access to financing programs, training, permit applications, marketing plans and other resources to assist with local industrial retention.
“It’s our job to have strong businesses, give people a peace of mind, create that sustainable community and be able to have a workforce that is strong,” Esparza said.

Miriam Zuk, co-founder of the research center Urban Displacement Project, said a couple ways to prevent gentrification are preserving affordability, community organizing and producing more subsidized units within the neighborhood.
Ultimately, while people in Pilsen aren’t completely against the city’s ideas to lower displacement rates, they are unsure of how these initiatives will work to improve their futures, Garcia said.
“I think what [residents] need are concrete proposals from the city. The character of the buildings should not be maintained without the people.”Pilsen residents unsure if city ordinances will stop gentrificationBY MARI DEVEREAUX ON DECEMBER 1, 2019On her way home from work, Maricela Garcia passes vibrant, historical murals, lively food trucks blasting boléro music and bars with authentic Mexican cuisine along Pilsen’s 18th Street.
However, further down the same road, Garcia notices how quickly the block changes.
For-sale signs litter the fronts of dejected buildings and abandoned businesses. One by one, homeowners in the Chicago neighborhood seem to disappear.
Garcia, who lives in Edgewater, said the neighborhood has become increasingly empty in the eight years since she began working in Pilsen.
“You don’t see the residents because a lot of the workers don’t live here,” Garcia said. “They are not the ones eating at the restaurants or patrons at the bars— and they used to. It was their community, it was their neighborhood. People came to have dinner with their families.”
Almost 16,000 of those employed in the neighborhood live outside of Pilsen, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau‘s 2014 Origin-Destination Employment Statistics.

Via: http://www.chicagotalks.org/?p=63994

HBO's "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver features Gads Hill Center

11/21/2019

Gads Hill Center CEO was featured in John Oliver's Last Week Tonight in a segment about the issues affecting immigrant participation in the Census. Gads Hill Center’s Count Us In Census project mobilizes hard-to-reach communities in Chicago’s south and west sides to ensure a fair Census count. This project will significantly improve the response rate of the communities we serve by integrating a multi-tiered approach to Census education and outreach through agency-wide efforts.

To view the clip, click here.

Block Club Chicago Features Brighton Park Early Learning Center

11/7/2019

"Access to quality education can transform families in a single generation." -CEO Maricela Garcia

Read the full article in Block Club Chicago and learn how the Gads Hill Center Brighton Park Early Learning Center is fulfilling our mission to transform lives through education!

To access the article, click here.

Gads Hill Center Featured in Chicago Sun-Times

11/4/2019

Sun Times reporter Manny Ramos visited Gads Hill Center Brighton Park Early Learning Center last week to talk with CEO Maricela Garcia about gentrification, displacement, and shifting the focus of our work to Brighton Park.

To read the article, click here!

Photo by Manny Ramos