Advocacy
NLEN has a 25-year history of supporting our North Lawndale community through job training and placement programs, accessibility to financial literacy, and so much more. You can help us succeed.
WORKING TOWARD CHANGE
Let’s end poverty, mass incarceration, and inequality together.
We believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to work. More importantly, we also believe that our community flourishes when good jobs give residents both paychecks and self-worth. Our graduates are motivated, trained, equipped, and ready to work — qualities that employers value. We should know: we often hire our program graduates.
We offer donors the chance to invest in an organization with a stellar track record of changing individual lives and improving the community’s quality of life, one person at a time, one job at a time.
NLEN is committed to:
- Assisting those with barriers to employment, especially returning citizens, in securing jobs with family-supporting wages
- Partnering with employers in recruiting and retaining workers
- Advocating on behalf of job seekers who are income constrained
- Empowering job seekers with access to financial tools and literacy
- Creating a thriving and sustainable community
Read our latest Impact Report
Community challenges — and potential
The North Lawndale community is rich in history and was once a major industrial corridor that was home to Sears, Roebuck, and Co.’s world headquarters. Due to the recession, North Lawndale’s unemployment rate rose from an estimated 26 percent in 2000 to approximately 40 percent in 2012.
45%
North Lawndale households living below the Federal Poverty Level
3x higher
North Lawndale’s unemployment rate vs. the City of Chicago
57%
North Lawndale adults with a history in the criminal justice system
We must address the racial wealth gap and social inequality.
The United States’ history of racially charged public policy has created the modern racial wealth divide not just through the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but through the more recent race-based discrimination in hiring, housing subsidies, tax subsidies, and veteran benefits as well as other implicitly and explicitly racist public policies.
Ready to make a difference?
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