There is an American male identity crisis and Jennifer Siebel Newsom is way ahead of the curve in trying to help—as usual. Her documentary film on the subject, “The Mask You Live In,” premiered to rave reviews at Sundance in January and in the Midwest a few days later through the Family Action Network (FAN). […]
Joy Tristano jokes that her 8-year-old son, Matt, was a $3 million baby. But it’s true. Matt was born three months prematurely, weighing 1 pound 11 ounces. Sadly, he contracted several infections, including spinal meningitis, which caused hydrocephalus, a condition marked by high levels of cerebral spinal fluid on the brain. “We were told he’d be […]
The Better Makers section of our print magazine features photos of guests and honorees from some of the top fundraisers across Chicagoland. We highlight these events in order to shed light on all of the hard work the people of Chicago and the North Shore are doing to raise awareness around important causes and make […]
Sunday, March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD). It’s a day to inspire women and celebrate their achievements. This day has been observed since 1910, when a woman named Clara Zetkin proposed the idea at the Second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. She thought there should be a day when women in every […]
A $90,000 Community Development Block Grant from Cook County will allow Turning Point’s Behavioral Health Care Center to begin developing an innovative drop-in program for the homeless. Next comes the exciting work of identifying the full range of social services to be offered. The grant money will be used to rehabilitate a 3,500-square-foot space in Turning […]
We founded Make It Better to connect and help our audience amplify their philanthropic efforts. We found this leads to more connections and ideas, a heightened feeling of community, more money raised by good people, and better business for everyone. It’s a virtuous circle. To amplify this feeling of good will, we established our annual Philanthropy […]
Almost everyone likes dogs—the cuddling, the love. SitStayRead, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the love of learning and improving literacy proficiency for at-risk kids, capitalizes on that idea. Dogs allow SitStayRead (SSR) to tackle the sobering issue of childhood literacy with a positive spin: they address reading fluency in a fun way by incorporating reading […]
Most recently updated: December 2020 Imagine fleeing your home because of war, terror or persecution, only to find yourself in a foreign land with few resources. For the many refugees who come to the Chicago area each year, RefugeeOne provides crucial assistance during that difficult transition. The Chicago-based resettlement organization helps refugees find housing, acclimate […]
Crushers Club is a most improbable and quite remarkable story. Mother of three Sally Hazelgrove moves her family to Englewood—one of the most challenging neighborhoods in the country—because she feels called to help. Gang banging and shootings abound there; opportunities to escape that life do not. Hazelgrove asks young males loitering on street corners what […]
Horizons for Youth is an organization that believes that every child, no matter his or her academic ability or socioeconomic background, can graduate from college and successfully pursue a career. They believe the key is the right personalized support. “People come to our program with a wide variety of academic abilities and personal experiences,” says […]
