Triple Aims Catalyst Seed Grant 2024
This planning grant opportunity supports community-engaged partnerships in the Chicago Metropolitan area around our Triple Aim--community health, equity/environmental justice, and care for our land.
Timeframe for planning will be Take a look at the successful Triple Aims Seed Grantees from our First Round and the Second Round!
Depending on future funding, we will offer another round of grants. What to know:
Who Can Apply?
1. Applicants should ensure that their collaboration includes one nonprofit organization that can serve as the administrator of the grant.
2. Any group or organization in the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area. Check here to see if you qualify!
3. All program planning and implementation in an application should also occur in the Chicago Metro Area.
4. Any organization or group that has not previously received NCH2 grant funds.
Ideas that include the Three Aims (see above for previous Grantees)
Catalyst Seed Grants
A description of this grant in Spanish and English.
Timeframe for planning will be Take a look at the successful Triple Aims Seed Grantees from our First Round and the Second Round!
Depending on future funding, we will offer another round of grants. What to know:
Who Can Apply?
1. Applicants should ensure that their collaboration includes one nonprofit organization that can serve as the administrator of the grant.
2. Any group or organization in the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area. Check here to see if you qualify!
3. All program planning and implementation in an application should also occur in the Chicago Metro Area.
4. Any organization or group that has not previously received NCH2 grant funds.
Ideas that include the Three Aims (see above for previous Grantees)
- Planning an urban farm with a youth group and including education about nutritious food, food security, and future professions in the field
- Exploring ways to create, restore, spruce up outdoor nature spaces that are safe and welcoming in communities that do not have ready access.
- Figuring out how to make communities with high pedestrian and bike accidents more safe and trustworthy for commuting, recreating, and fun.
- Partnering with indigenous organizations to better understand their practices of how they care for their land and ensure food security for their families and spreading these practices into the Chicago region.
- Creating affinity communities around outdoor activities in areas that have low accessibility.
Catalyst Seed Grants
A description of this grant in Spanish and English.
Funded Projects
NCH2 Catalyst Seed Grantees
First Round, Spring, 2023
Stein Learning Gardens, St. Sabina Church, and University of Illinois Medical Center
Project Lead: Richard Kirkpatrick
Since 2018, Stein Learning Gardens has built a successful educational and urban farming projects in the Auburn, Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The NCH2 Catalyst grant will help them collaborate with UIC Neighborhood Health to develop and implement a Produce Prescription Program. Fresh produce on a regular schedule will serve as a dose of prevention and a boost for health to eligible patients due to diet-related health risks or food insecurity. The planning grant will also allow them to develop a plan to have a permanent home for their farmstand in the new Auburn Gresham healthy Lifestyle Hub building, which is a focal point of community health in Auburn Gresham on 79th street. These funds will allow access to fresh organic produce and the Learning Gardens where classes are offered about growing food and provides a beautiful and safe outside space to enjoy nature and expose community members to the joys of community gardens.
Women for Green Spaces (Mujeres por Espacios Verdes) and Abla Homes
Project Lead: Claudia Galeno-Sanchez
Women for Green Spaces (WfGS) developed during the COVID pandemic as women in Pilsen on Chicago’s near South Side observed how nearby nature was essential to their family’s health and well-being. Initially a women’s committee of Working Family Solidarity of Mexican and Latinx immigrants, WfGS cultivated new green spaces in the neighborhood as well as offered education workshops to families. With the NCH2 Catalyst grant WfGS plans to deepen expand the work of Women for Green Spaces with nearby communities and organizations in nearby communities. We will plan how to carry out planning with the ABLA Homes area (on the north/northeastern edge of Pilsen), where the population is African American; and in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, where the populations are primarily Mexican/Latinx. Funds will be applied to educational workshops on the importance of more green spaces in Pilsen, and to the organizations in these communities.
Gateway to the Greater Outdoors and Chicago Public Schools
Project Lead: Bridget Grabowski
Gateway will use Catalyst Seed Grant funds to plan a community-sanctioned expansion of its nature-engagement programming at Mozart Elementary School located in between the Logan Square and Hermosa neighborhoods. Currently Gateway works on Chicago’s South side with Chicago Public Schools where they aim to increase equitable opportunities to engage in nature and environmental education. The project will be planned in collaboration with Mozart Elementary’s staff, teachers, and students and DePaul University’s Stean Center. Their programming focuses on improving student health by empowering them to live healthy lifestyles through physical activity, healthy foods, nature contact, and meditation and on caring for nearby lands and habitats through hosting nature-contact field trips and environmental maintenance events.
Femme Defense and Pilsen Solidarity
Femme Defensa (FD) and Pilsen Solidarity Network (PSN) will collaborate on their Catalyst Seed grant to develop a Grow Club among a cohort of intimate partner violence survivors and others. The Grow Club will cooperatively build safe community spaces or support survivors in their interest in home growing, whichever is more possible for the individual. Femme Defensa is a group of survivors of intimate partner violence who work towards collective freedom through community self-defense, land connection, and supporting survivors. Femme Defensa considers Little Village and South Chicago as home bases. Pilsen Solidarity Network is a mutual aid group based in Pilsen which provides free food, clothing, and resources to residents of Pilsen but also other neighborhoods such as Back of the Yards, Englewood, Little Village, and Bronzeville. Demographics we prioritize in our work include youth, women and femmes, survivors of domestic and/or intimate partner violence, BIPOC people, queer people, people living in food deserts, people with little or no resources for growing their own food, people who visit free stores for food.
YMEN Garden to Table Farm and North Lawndale Greening Community
Project Lead: Kimberly George
Garden to Table (G2T) Farm will use their Catalyst Seed funds to engage North Lawndale neighbors and stakeholders to plan, design and build an urban agriculture hub on five adjacent vacant lots and 18 community gardens that make up the Garden To Table Pipeline. The final design concept will not be created until input from neighbors and stakeholders is solicited and absorbed. This is a collaborative project between the Young Mens Educational Network (YMEN) and the North Lawndale Greening Committee (NLGC). This project is endorsed by the NLCCC GROWSS Committee, Chicago Community Garden Association, and the Bionutrient Food Association, Chicago Chapter. The G2T Pipeline is a resilient circular and sustainable food system that connects proven, community, grassroots organizations to combine locally grown nutrient rich produce with donated/rescued food in order to feed the community.
Second Round, Spring 2024
North Lawndale Greening Committee with YMEN and Garden2Table Pipeline
Project Lead: Dr. Shemeul Israel
For over 25 years the North Lawndale Greening Committee has endeavored persistently to offer better access to quality, nutrient dense food to a community with virtually no such access. The NCH2 Catalyst Seed funds will be directed to community planning for enhancing a large open (currently vacant) space that will be dedicated to growing food, and creating a native landscape for the nearby community. These funds will continue to improve equitable access to fresh produce, nature space, and community gathering space. This land, as with many other pieces of land in Chicago includes degraded environmental conditions. Seed funds will be used to improve the soil and the habitat for the microbes, the hundreds of plant species, the arthropods, the insects, the pollinators, the birds, and the animals--creating healthier, more resilient, and more empowered communities. With healthier growing environments the community around the space will be able to access a complete food system that allows consumption of the freshest, most nutrient rich food from nature.
The Maywood Emerald City Arts: Radiant Vessels Community Services in Maywood with Proviso Partners in Health
Project Leads: Kelley Gray & Aliaa Eldabli
NCH2 Catalyst Seed funds will be used to plan the Maywood Emerald City Arts (MECA) Initiative. Rooted in equity and racial justice as core values, MECA will lead community-based designing, planning, and implementation. MECA will not only support the green skills and community leadership development of underserved youth in Maywood but will also address a major environmental justice issue--flooding. Through the newly reimagined Youth Green Corps, BIPOC and low-income youth will be offered the opportunity to learn to grow their own food in a community with access to no fresh produce, to build green infrastructure to mitigate climate-change-driven flooding, and to co-create traffic-calming street art as an avenue to support health equity in the built environment. Most explicitly, MECA will plan for improving community health through providing on-site mental health services at the already-established Giving Garden through collaboration with area mental health partners. Health and well-being for community members will be improved through access to green space, improved social connectivity and taking better care of the land.
Cultivate Collective: Academy for Global Citizenship with Neighborspace and the Field Museum
Project Lead: Ryan Jones
The Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC), a charter school in the Archer Heights community, will use its NCH2 seed funding to plan its outdoor spaces adjacent to the school. The AGC site will infuse nature-based solutions to restore a vacant plot of land alongside the outdoor spaces. With native trees and shrubs, the newly restored space will help with flooding and create new green space--a reprieve from the more industrial, concrete-heavy landscape in the neighborhood. AGC plans to host community activities and events in these two spaces such as yoga, Zumba, nutrition and cooking classes. These spaces will pair with their three-acre farm, walking trails, and marketplace, which provide a location for community members to purchase low-cost produce and healthy meals and gather with other members for a meal outside. Additionally, this will provide gathering points for community members for our weekly produce pickup program with Urban Growers Collective.
Southside Nature Play with Kenwood Park Nature Play Steering Group and Wayward
Project Lead: Heather Ring
NCH2 funds will be used to support the South Side Nature Play initiative, a BIPOC-led environmental education cooperative that addresses the lack of safe, high-quality natural play spaces on the South Side of Chicago. A nature play space will be created at Kenwood Community Park where Shoesmith School is located. Shoesmith has 98 percent students of color and have very limited access to quality nature play space. The nature play space will be community run, cared for and managed by neighbors and local volunteers through a collaborative effort with the Kenwood Park Nature Play Steering Group, creating a strong sense of ownership for the local area. The stewardship of the nature play space will also be integrated into the curriculum of Ancona School, a nearby elementary school, as part of their environmental education with the hope of building a similar initiative to become part of the curriculum at Shoesmith School. Introducing a nature play space would improve community health by promoting physical activity, mental well-being, and social interaction. With loose parts that children can use to move, build and play, it would encourage unstructured play, fostering creativity and imagination.
Stein Learning Gardens, St. Sabina Church, and University of Illinois Medical Center
Project Lead: Richard Kirkpatrick
Since 2018, Stein Learning Gardens has built a successful educational and urban farming projects in the Auburn, Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The NCH2 Catalyst grant will help them collaborate with UIC Neighborhood Health to develop and implement a Produce Prescription Program. Fresh produce on a regular schedule will serve as a dose of prevention and a boost for health to eligible patients due to diet-related health risks or food insecurity. The planning grant will also allow them to develop a plan to have a permanent home for their farmstand in the new Auburn Gresham healthy Lifestyle Hub building, which is a focal point of community health in Auburn Gresham on 79th street. These funds will allow access to fresh organic produce and the Learning Gardens where classes are offered about growing food and provides a beautiful and safe outside space to enjoy nature and expose community members to the joys of community gardens.
Women for Green Spaces (Mujeres por Espacios Verdes) and Abla Homes
Project Lead: Claudia Galeno-Sanchez
Women for Green Spaces (WfGS) developed during the COVID pandemic as women in Pilsen on Chicago’s near South Side observed how nearby nature was essential to their family’s health and well-being. Initially a women’s committee of Working Family Solidarity of Mexican and Latinx immigrants, WfGS cultivated new green spaces in the neighborhood as well as offered education workshops to families. With the NCH2 Catalyst grant WfGS plans to deepen expand the work of Women for Green Spaces with nearby communities and organizations in nearby communities. We will plan how to carry out planning with the ABLA Homes area (on the north/northeastern edge of Pilsen), where the population is African American; and in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, where the populations are primarily Mexican/Latinx. Funds will be applied to educational workshops on the importance of more green spaces in Pilsen, and to the organizations in these communities.
Gateway to the Greater Outdoors and Chicago Public Schools
Project Lead: Bridget Grabowski
Gateway will use Catalyst Seed Grant funds to plan a community-sanctioned expansion of its nature-engagement programming at Mozart Elementary School located in between the Logan Square and Hermosa neighborhoods. Currently Gateway works on Chicago’s South side with Chicago Public Schools where they aim to increase equitable opportunities to engage in nature and environmental education. The project will be planned in collaboration with Mozart Elementary’s staff, teachers, and students and DePaul University’s Stean Center. Their programming focuses on improving student health by empowering them to live healthy lifestyles through physical activity, healthy foods, nature contact, and meditation and on caring for nearby lands and habitats through hosting nature-contact field trips and environmental maintenance events.
Femme Defense and Pilsen Solidarity
Femme Defensa (FD) and Pilsen Solidarity Network (PSN) will collaborate on their Catalyst Seed grant to develop a Grow Club among a cohort of intimate partner violence survivors and others. The Grow Club will cooperatively build safe community spaces or support survivors in their interest in home growing, whichever is more possible for the individual. Femme Defensa is a group of survivors of intimate partner violence who work towards collective freedom through community self-defense, land connection, and supporting survivors. Femme Defensa considers Little Village and South Chicago as home bases. Pilsen Solidarity Network is a mutual aid group based in Pilsen which provides free food, clothing, and resources to residents of Pilsen but also other neighborhoods such as Back of the Yards, Englewood, Little Village, and Bronzeville. Demographics we prioritize in our work include youth, women and femmes, survivors of domestic and/or intimate partner violence, BIPOC people, queer people, people living in food deserts, people with little or no resources for growing their own food, people who visit free stores for food.
YMEN Garden to Table Farm and North Lawndale Greening Community
Project Lead: Kimberly George
Garden to Table (G2T) Farm will use their Catalyst Seed funds to engage North Lawndale neighbors and stakeholders to plan, design and build an urban agriculture hub on five adjacent vacant lots and 18 community gardens that make up the Garden To Table Pipeline. The final design concept will not be created until input from neighbors and stakeholders is solicited and absorbed. This is a collaborative project between the Young Mens Educational Network (YMEN) and the North Lawndale Greening Committee (NLGC). This project is endorsed by the NLCCC GROWSS Committee, Chicago Community Garden Association, and the Bionutrient Food Association, Chicago Chapter. The G2T Pipeline is a resilient circular and sustainable food system that connects proven, community, grassroots organizations to combine locally grown nutrient rich produce with donated/rescued food in order to feed the community.
Second Round, Spring 2024
North Lawndale Greening Committee with YMEN and Garden2Table Pipeline
Project Lead: Dr. Shemeul Israel
For over 25 years the North Lawndale Greening Committee has endeavored persistently to offer better access to quality, nutrient dense food to a community with virtually no such access. The NCH2 Catalyst Seed funds will be directed to community planning for enhancing a large open (currently vacant) space that will be dedicated to growing food, and creating a native landscape for the nearby community. These funds will continue to improve equitable access to fresh produce, nature space, and community gathering space. This land, as with many other pieces of land in Chicago includes degraded environmental conditions. Seed funds will be used to improve the soil and the habitat for the microbes, the hundreds of plant species, the arthropods, the insects, the pollinators, the birds, and the animals--creating healthier, more resilient, and more empowered communities. With healthier growing environments the community around the space will be able to access a complete food system that allows consumption of the freshest, most nutrient rich food from nature.
The Maywood Emerald City Arts: Radiant Vessels Community Services in Maywood with Proviso Partners in Health
Project Leads: Kelley Gray & Aliaa Eldabli
NCH2 Catalyst Seed funds will be used to plan the Maywood Emerald City Arts (MECA) Initiative. Rooted in equity and racial justice as core values, MECA will lead community-based designing, planning, and implementation. MECA will not only support the green skills and community leadership development of underserved youth in Maywood but will also address a major environmental justice issue--flooding. Through the newly reimagined Youth Green Corps, BIPOC and low-income youth will be offered the opportunity to learn to grow their own food in a community with access to no fresh produce, to build green infrastructure to mitigate climate-change-driven flooding, and to co-create traffic-calming street art as an avenue to support health equity in the built environment. Most explicitly, MECA will plan for improving community health through providing on-site mental health services at the already-established Giving Garden through collaboration with area mental health partners. Health and well-being for community members will be improved through access to green space, improved social connectivity and taking better care of the land.
Cultivate Collective: Academy for Global Citizenship with Neighborspace and the Field Museum
Project Lead: Ryan Jones
The Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC), a charter school in the Archer Heights community, will use its NCH2 seed funding to plan its outdoor spaces adjacent to the school. The AGC site will infuse nature-based solutions to restore a vacant plot of land alongside the outdoor spaces. With native trees and shrubs, the newly restored space will help with flooding and create new green space--a reprieve from the more industrial, concrete-heavy landscape in the neighborhood. AGC plans to host community activities and events in these two spaces such as yoga, Zumba, nutrition and cooking classes. These spaces will pair with their three-acre farm, walking trails, and marketplace, which provide a location for community members to purchase low-cost produce and healthy meals and gather with other members for a meal outside. Additionally, this will provide gathering points for community members for our weekly produce pickup program with Urban Growers Collective.
Southside Nature Play with Kenwood Park Nature Play Steering Group and Wayward
Project Lead: Heather Ring
NCH2 funds will be used to support the South Side Nature Play initiative, a BIPOC-led environmental education cooperative that addresses the lack of safe, high-quality natural play spaces on the South Side of Chicago. A nature play space will be created at Kenwood Community Park where Shoesmith School is located. Shoesmith has 98 percent students of color and have very limited access to quality nature play space. The nature play space will be community run, cared for and managed by neighbors and local volunteers through a collaborative effort with the Kenwood Park Nature Play Steering Group, creating a strong sense of ownership for the local area. The stewardship of the nature play space will also be integrated into the curriculum of Ancona School, a nearby elementary school, as part of their environmental education with the hope of building a similar initiative to become part of the curriculum at Shoesmith School. Introducing a nature play space would improve community health by promoting physical activity, mental well-being, and social interaction. With loose parts that children can use to move, build and play, it would encourage unstructured play, fostering creativity and imagination.