TABLE OF CONTENTS
Housing and Homelessness
Youth Engagement
Unity and Equity
Human Trafficking
Housing and Homelessness
The Problem
In 2020, Housing and Homelessness were identified as the #1 Felt Need on both our 2020 and 2022 Community Needs Assessments.
#1 Felt Need in Elgin
Out of 511 interviewees, 241 mentioned housing or homelessness
775
the number of children identified by the school district as without adequate housing in 2020
The Solution
We have worked to build collaborations among people who are unsheltered, government employees and elected officials, faith leaders, social services, and other community members. This collaborative work led to a Summit for Housing and Homelessness.
Based on work done by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and other local communities who have successfully ended chronic homelessness, we developed a community wide shared plan and identified the pathway to housing for someone who experiences homelessness in Elgin.
By working to prevent anyone from entering homelessness through rental, utility, and food assistance, many people can be spared this difficulty. But from time to time, it will happen. The first stage of work involves finding each person who is experiencing life without a shelter and making a connection. Emergency shelter needs to be provided for every person with wrap around services. Then, we work to provide sufficient housing stock for folks who need affordable or supportive housing. All along the path, people are offered “points of entry” as the services provide the dignity of choice — e.g. a person can choose wrap-around services without shelter. We hope this allows each person a better experience of services without feeling like they have lost their autonomy.
Starting in 2023, we have been working to increase capacity for our Winter Shelter. During winter, lack of adequate shelter can lead to life-threatening situations, increased vulnerability to illnesses, and a loss of hope among those affected. The number of individuals experiencing homelessness rises during these colder months, which demands a comprehensive and compassionate approach to alleviate their suffering. With the help of great partners and committed volunteers, we are already seeing lives being transformed through access to a 24/7 secure shelter during inhospitable Illinois conditions. Our recap can be found here!
What can I do to help?
As the collaboration worked to build the community-wide, shared plan and pathway to housing, three distinct gaps in services were identified:
Case work collaboration and data sharing
An emergency shelter option that can house all people
Sufficient affordable and supportive housing
If you have the expertise, resources, or willingness to help solve issues in these three areas, click the connect now button below, and get started helping End Homelessness in our community.
Youth Engagement
The Problem
Youth Engagement and Education were the #2 Felt Need on the 2020 needs assessment and scored highly on our 2022 need assessment. In 2020-21, 30% of high school students were chronically absent from school.
Mental Health Service
Providers have extensive waitlists and low funding
Felt Need in Elgin
30%
School District U-46 estimates that over 30% of its students experience multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
The Solution
The Solution:
One Collective is working on a two-pronged approach to engaging youth:
The first is to partner with the school system, administrators, and teachers. We are working with them to develop a better definition of what it means to be “unengaged” and then identify “unengaged youth.” We plan to build a coalition of youth and their families to understand their problems from their perspective and then empower them with resources from our other coalition partners to solve the problems they face.
The second prong is through the development of a youth-focused counseling center. Utilizing resources we already have, our team launched a counseling center that focuses on helping young people. This for-profit counseling center acts as a “flywheel” for other youth programming -- helping provide an income stream that will benefit nonprofit partnership. The hope is to develop youth centers that heavily emphasize behavioral health, but also provide groups, mentor programs, entrepreneurial training, and connections to existing youth-focused nonprofits.
What can I do to help?
If you have a collaborative spirit and are interested in helping engage youth, we are looking for…
Teachers/administrators who are interested in helping build a collaboration with youth and parents
Youth-focused licensed therapists
Entrepreneurs willing to teach young people business savvy
If you have the expertise, resources, or willingness to help solve issues in these three areas, click the connect now button below, and get started helping Engage Youth in our community.
Unity and Equity
The Problem
Unity and Equity or the revers — division and discrimination are one of the highest felt needs in both the 2020 and the 2022 needs assessments. In these assessments, people included comments about political, religious, geographical, and racial divides.
Political division
division over covid funding, mental health care, and many other topics
Race and Ethnicity
From school performance to leadership roles, people of color seem to be cut off from opportunities
Faith Communities
churches choose not to work with each other because of nonessential theological beliefs
Fox River
East and west side of the river have competitive high schools, separate services, and slander of “the other side.”
The Solution
Rather than making an entirely separate goal, One Collective is using Equity and Unity as a lens for everything we do. Over the past year, our team has written this statement:
Our mission is to bring people together to make sure no one is invisible and all people have access to food, freedom, and forgiveness.
When we’re speaking about Equity and Unity as lenses for our work we mean several things:
What we want…
We want people to feel that in environments that we lead, diverse opinions are welcomed
We want all people to feel heard, understood, and validated
We want all people to feel like they belong together
We want all people to have a voice and make important decisions together.
We want to empower a wide variety of people to have real leadership in our community
We want each coalition of One Collective to have significant representation from the community it is trying to serve
Why we want it…
We believe that a wide variety of perspectives promotes creativity, leads to better problem-solving, and creates opportunities to help more people
We believe that having a wide variety of perspectives will help us avoid the pitfalls of false moral superiority, paternalism, and egotism
How we’ll do it…
We are going to role-model what we think equity and unity should look like, and we are going to advocate for other spaces where we have influence to develop more equity and unity
What can I do to help?
As each collaboration is established, we are working to recruit and empower representative members of the community to influence each of the collaborations and focus points
If you have the expertise, resources, or willingness to help solve issues in this area, click the connect now button below, and get started helping to bring Unity and Equity into our community.
Human Trafficking
The Problem
Human trafficking is the business of stealing freedom for profit. In some cases, traffickers trick, defraud or physically force victims into selling sex. In others, victims are lied to, assaulted, threatened or manipulated into working under inhumane, illegal or otherwise unacceptable conditions. It is a multi-billion dollar criminal industry that is currently denying freedom to 28 million people around the world.*
Kane County stretches 524 miles along the Fox River and has the 2nd largest School District in Illinois with 46.4% low-income students. It intersects with three major freeways, 30 minutes from O-Hare Airport, and the last stop on the Chicago train line making it an accessible location and hub of human trafficking. Poverty, trauma, racism, sexism, and systemic oppression are some of the root causes of trafficking.
Unknown
we have very little data on this issue, but all of the risk factors. Therefore, we believe it is critical to create partnerships and do more research.
The Solution
Work is needed to create comprehensive, ongoing anti-trafficking collaborative work in Kane County.
Communities that have robust anti-trafficking action have strong prevention and education work. We envision creating a collaboration that works to make sure all first responders receive awareness training, all schools implement prevention programs, public service announcements exist to increase community-wide awareness, and internet crime prevention programs make our community safe from victimization.
What can I do to help?
It is critical to work on a significant issue like this from multiple sides, if you are…
Willing to do research on a difficult and sensitive topic — including online, phone, and in-person investigation
Interested in helping with prevention work — awareness education for first responders, prevention education for children, and advocacy and policy work
Compassionate about caring for survivors of human trafficking
If you have the expertise, resources, or willingness to help solve issues in these three areas, click the connect now button below, and get started helping End Human Trafficking in our community.