Deadline: 10-Oct-23
Crossroads Fund is inviting applications to support youth activists who want to change and challenge existing policies and/or organized structures that prevent their communities from achieving equality.
The Youth Fund for Social Change enables them to have a targeted role in supporting youth organizations in the Chicago area. The Youth Fund (YF) provides resources to youth working on social justice issues in their communities.
Focus Areas
- Projects may cover many areas ranging from community, education and schools, health, environment, incarceration, media, racism, discrimination, voting, etc.
Funding Information
- Grant amounts are between $3,000 to $15,000 depending on the size of the project and what it will cover.
Eligible Projects
- Community: youth working to find solutions to overall issues of equality like access to education, healthcare, jobs and political power: working on alternatives to detention and incarceration.
- Education and schools: youth organizing for: restorative justice programs in schools; representation on school boards; alternatives to military recruitment on campus; or programs that address sexual harassment, homophobia, gender, or ability stereotypes/oppression.
- Health: youth organizing to expand reproductive health and comprehensive sex education.
- Environment: youth organizing around: lead clean up in their community; environmental pollution; or access to cleaner and better transit.
- Violence: youth working on: alternatives to the criminal justice system; peer to peer intervention; pursuit of strategies to reduce police harassment of youth; strategies to improve public safety in your neighborhood.
- Media: youth holding corporate media accountable by demanding that the public airwaves promote justice and peace rather than hate, violence and war.
What are they looking for?
- Youth projects to be in the Chicago metropolitan area (City of Chicago and Suburbs) and Northwestern Indiana, which they define as the area between the state border and Gary, IN.
- The projects to be connected to a nonprofit organization with a 501(c)(3) status, fiscal sponsor or have an organizational bank account. They cannot fund individuals.
- The project to be campaigns, ongoing or just getting started, with the hope that it will continue.
Eligibility Criteria
- Open to organizations, groups, and coalitions.
- Organizations with budgets less than $1,000,000.
- Youth (age limit is up to 26 years old) with an existing project or a concrete new idea on achieving social change.
- Youth Organizations that have youth-lead projects that focus on social change issues. Youth must serve as decision-makers in creating and carrying out the project.
- Special Funding is reserved for youth working together across neighborhoods, race, class, education, ability, sexual orientation, gender, etc. This could take the form of working together on a project or having joint workshops, trainings etc.
For more information, visit Crossroads Fund.