Gads Hill Center is thrilled to celebrate it’s 7th annual gala, Bridging the Gap to Achievement, on May 10, 2012.

Doors will open to a cocktail hour at 5.30pm at the beautiful Galleria Marchetti, located at 825 W. Erie Street.

Dinner will be served at 7pm.  Tickets may be purchased online by following this link.

Since 1898, Gads Hill has offered a place where families can be safe and unified, children can grow healthy and strong, and parents can build for the future.  Soon after opening its doors, Gads Hill offered kindergarten, singing groups, cooking classes, a savings bank with 350 depositors, sewing clubs, and activities for school-age boys and girls.

Today, Gads Hill is a family resource center with the mission of partnering with the community to develop the assets of children, youth, adults and families.  Serving Chicago’s primarily low income neighborhoods in the southwest side of Chicago, including Pilsen, Little Village, McKinley Park, Brighton Park and North Lawndale, and others, Gads Hill continues to help families create a better life for their children.

Gads Hill provides high quality early childhood education to up to 400 children, from infancy through five year olds with a variety of center and home-based programs that prepare children to enter kindergarten ready to read and learn.

Our after-school services provide safe care for more than 250 students, including homework help, creativity and play for elementary school students, positive role models to middle school students, mentoring and advocacy for at-risk high school students along with college preparation and support. We assist families in identifying resources in the communities we serve. And finally, Gads Hill is open to the community for aerobics, basketball, General Mill’s healthy cooking classes, university courses, neighborhood meetings and events.

Comcast employees, their families and friends, and other local volunteers will spend a day making a difference by completing projects at Gads Hill Center’s 114 year old settlement house on Chicago’s Lower West Side.  Service activities will include gardening, landscaping, painting, block beautification, and staining the outdoor classrooms and picnic tables.  Other community organizations participating include Starbucks, NBC, and Telemundo.

Volunteers are encouraged to participate in the day of service.  To find out how to participate, please contact Gads Hill Center’s Director of Community Services, Barbara De La Casa at 312.226.0963 ext 296 or call Maria Castro at Comcast at 708.237.3268.

Ms. García has extensive experience in nonprofit management. She held the position of Executive Director at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and of the Latino Policy Forum.  These organizations became strong and influential institutions under Ms. García’s leadership.  Most recently, she held the position of Director of Capacity Building and Juvenile Justice Policy at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.  Ms. García has a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a policy fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Leadership Program.

“The Board of Directors is very excited about bringing Maricela García to lead Gads Hill Center into the future,” stated Jorge Cazares, Board President.  He added, “After an extensive national search, we are pleased that we selected a Chicago resident who knows the City and especially the communities we service.  Maricela has demonstrated experience leading and building organizations with vision and integrity.”

Gads Hill Center was founded in 1898 as part of the Settlement House Movement in Chicago. Maricela García is the sixth Chief Executive Officer in the 114 years that the organization has served Chicago families in the Lower West Side. “I am excited to join an organization that for more than a century has helped families make a better life. I pledge to work hard to accomplish the mission of Gads Hill so that our children and youth have the opportunity to achieve their full potential,” stated Ms. García.

Gads Hill Center is a family resource center that serves economically disadvantaged families to make a better life for their children with programming that provides learning support and educational enrichment, early childhood development, and out-of-school care and support for children and youth. Every year, the Center provides services to over 2,500 children, youth, and adults from the Pilsen, Little Village, Brighton Park, and North Lawndale communities. Gads Hill Center has been a constant in Pilsen throughout its history. The Chicago community of Pilsen has an ethnically rich and diverse history. The Irish and Germans were the first to occupy the neighborhood, arriving after the Chicago fire of 1871. Czechs, Bohemians, Lithuanians, Poles and Italians settled in the neighborhood at the turn of the 20th Century. Since World War II, Pilsen has welcomed Latino immigrants, mainly of Mexican origin.

Check out Xavier on WCIU, The U! (He makes his appearance around minute 15).

On May 10, 2012, Gads Hill Center will host its 7^th annual fundraising gala at the beautiful Galleria Marchetti, on the near north side.  We hope you will join us as we celebrate another year of accomplishments for one of the oldest and most well-respected non-profits in the Chicagoland area.

This year, we will bestow our Corporate Partner Award on Baker & McKenzie Global Services.  Our Community Partner Award will go to 25^th Ward Alderman Danny Solis and his Office Staff.  Finally, we will recognize Gads Hill’s own outgoing CEO Barbara Castellán with the prestigious George W. Moss Founder’s Award.  Ms. Castellán has guided the agency to great heights in the 18 years of her professional career with Gads Hill.  These awards are given to those who have made a significant impact on our community.

For more information about our event, or to add a special accolade to this year’s honorees in our program book, contact Denise Stennis at dstennis@gadshillcenter.org
or call 312.226.0963, ext. 242.

With his solo debut, due for song-by-song release throughout 2012, Derek Fawcett presents a bold musical vision that goes well beyond both his own talents and art-making itself.

Mr. Fawcett is also pairing each song with a different Chicago charity. Fans may choose to contribute to Gads Hill by paying an additional dollar for the song. With this partnership, he hopes to bring greater awareness to Chicago’s many important social needs, the organizations that try to serve them every day, and the unique ability that artists have to promote and foster positive change in their communities.

For more information about the event, to order tickets online for the event, or to purchase the song, contact Megan Aebi, at 312.226.0963, ext. 242.

Gads Hill Center’s Building Leaders program is a full-time mentoring and advocacy program dedicated to serving students at Thomas P. Kelly High School on the Southwest Side of Chicago. By developing strong, nurturing, empathic relationships, Building Leaders strives to do just that: Build the Leaders of tomorrow. Each student we reach today will grow to be a vital member of our community tomorrow. We believe that’s how social change happens. We invite you to explore our site to see how our kids are making it happen right now.

Based at Thomas Kelly High School in the Brighton Park neighborhood, the mission of the Building Leaders Program is to promote school engagement by reintegrating disengaged youth into a culture of personal empowerment and academic achievement. Student participants meet with their mentors for one-on-one and group youth developmentopportunities. Additionally, the program coordinates monthly field trips to cultural institutions throughout Chicago and assists students in developing service projects in and around the neighborhood.

Mentors also serve as advocates for the youth in the community as well as within the school setting. We utilize the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets framework to help build core strengths within and around our youth. Students who participate are expected to engage their community in a proactive fashion and work hard for positive change, both at the individual and societal levels.

Through empathic, empowering relationships, Building Leaders and Gads Hill strive to meet the varied needs of all its students and families, making them valuable resources in the community.