This isn’t a new problem.
In the 1890s, Chicago social reformer Jane Addams tackled it by building one of the nation’s first playgrounds. She had determined that “children robbed of childhood were likely to become dull, sullen men and women working mindless jobs, or criminals for whom the adventure of crime became the only way to break out of the bleakness of their lives.” Childhood play, she surmised, was as essential as the other offerings of food, shelter and security at the Hull House settlement she founded with other activists of her time.
That first playground, which the Tribune hailed as a “jolly romp” when it welcomed a “clamorous throng of youngsters” at Polk and Halsted streets in 1895, is long gone. But the goal endures: that in order to keep our young adults engaged and productive, we must begin reaching them when they are children.
Today, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board launches “Chicago Forward — Young lives in the balance,” a six-month, communitywide initiative to address the challenge of reaching Chicagoland’s disconnected youth.
Our aim is to engage the most innovative and creative voices — through editorials, live events and ideas proposed by you, our readers — so that, as a community, we can explore new approaches, forge new partnerships and discover new solutions to help our youth, and prevent them from slipping into the quiet torrent of disconnected lives — out of school, out of work, out of touch.
For generations, Chicagoans have invested deeply in mentoring, tutoring, antiviolence and life-skills programs with the goal of keeping our region’s most at risk youth on a positive track toward paying jobs and stable lives. The stakes have always been high — we take pride in being “the city that works,” after all — yet the proliferation of guns and the intractable presence of gangs in our neighborhoods has upped the ante. And while some pockets of Chicago are experiencing unfettered growth and prosperity, others remain burdened with chronic poverty and insecurity — the “bleakness,” as Addams called it. Live in wealthy Streeterville and the life expectancy is 90 years, one recent study found. Less than 10 miles south, in Englewood, it’s just 60.
A staggering challenge
Within Chicago, about 47,000 youth ages 16 to 24, or 15%, were neither in school nor working in 2019, according to Thrive Chicago, a nonprofit that seeks to align the efforts of youth service providers. Chicago is well above the 12% national average. And an estimated 6,000 CPS freshmen aren’t expected to make it to graduation, according to Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention group. By one measure, a 2012 Columbia University study, each disconnected young person costs society about $37,000 a year, or $900,000 over his or her lifetime, in lost earnings, lower economic growth, lower tax revenues and higher government spending. That’s nearly $2 billion a year for Chicago.
By cold statistics alone, it’s a staggering cost. Yet it is the young lives themselves that compel us — and, we hope, you — to take action.
Young lives such as Javier, Caleb and Willie, who at 6 and 7 already have a mentor to help prevent them from joining those statistics.
These rambunctious West Side first-graders participate in Friends of the Children, an intensive mentoring program for children who, as the organization says, “are statistically at serious risk of continuing the cycle of poverty in their own lives.” Each of the boys meets twice weekly with Keenan Palmer, 28, a trained mentor and employee of Friends of the Children. If the boys (girls are matched with female mentors) stay in the program, they will have a dedicated mentor for 12 1/2 years.
On a recent balmy January afternoon, we joined Palmer and his mentees at Douglas Park, where the benefits of Addams’ playground idea were evident. The three boys made a jolly romp of their time on the jungle gym and swings, and then tumbled into Palmer’s car for a trip to McDonald’s for a dinner of Happy Meals. Palmer has been working with these boys (plus five others) since early 2019, and their bond is deep. He says his own childhood in a tough neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri, with a single mom and little money, helps him relate to the boys now in his charge.
The Friends program is unique. Potential child mentees are identified during the first few weeks of kindergarten at partner CPS schools. It can take months for mentors to earn the trust of wary parents, whose own contacts with school officials, outside organizations and child welfare groups often have been negative. But when parents agree to let their child participate, Friends commits to more than a decade of mentoring — six years with an early-childhood mentor, and six with another trained to work with teens.
Founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1993, Friends of the Children now operates in 18 cities. Taal Hasak-Lowy launched the Chicago chapter a few years ago and now oversees a program that employs seven full-time mentors who work with 56 children. The goal is to give the children long-term adult commitment to their success.
The absence of that sort of commitment is on stark display at Cook County Jail. There, several young men told us that it is only now, behind bars, that they’re learning the kinds of life skills they need to resist the gangs, stay in school, survive the temptations of the streets. With a “better late than never” approach, programs such as the impressive Sheriff’s Anti-Violence Effort, or SAVE, offer willing participants a shot to catch up, maybe prepare for a job, maybe get back on track.
Plenty of programs exist. Thrive Chicago estimates more than $40 million a year in federal, state and local public funding currently supports or could support disconnected youth in Chicago. Millions of dollars more come from private sources. Since Jane Addams’ day, thousands of institutions, nonprofits, churches, community groups and driven individuals have been running programs, conducting voluminous research, launching new ideas and providing generous financial support to keep young people on track — yet the problem persists.
Why? In a 2018 report, Thrive Chicago, which partners with the University of Chicago Urban Labs on research, identified four reasons:
Lack of clear data identifying the characteristics of disconnected youth and their needs.
Lack of a comprehensive view of existing services.
Little evidence about how to effectively reach disconnected youth.
Poor translation of existing evidence into improved practices.
How you can be part of the solution
This, we believe, is where our Chicago Forward initiative, and your involvement, can make a difference. Think of this editorial as an RFP — a request for your proposals.
Six years ago, we launched a similar opinion leadership campaign to create a “New Plan of Chicago.” We were inspired by the great architect and planner Daniel Burnham, who in 1909 laid out a vision for Chicago’s future in his seminal Plan of Chicago, which set the stage for a century of staggering growth. Burnham didn’t address the city’s formidable social problems, though, so we took up the challenge and asked you, our readers, to help.
The response was overwhelming: We were flooded with thousands of ideas, several of which came to life and improved Chicago. We expect nothing less this time.
We urgently call on you to join us again in this “Chicago Forward” campaign, “Young lives in the balance: How to reach Chicagoland’s disconnected youth.” We call on you and your employers, your organizations, your community groups to help this critical mission succeed. Please use the online form at https://bit.ly/2sLkhSf to submit your idea.
We’ll examine this issue in editorials and devote our commentary pages to ideas, including the best ideas generated by our readers. This is your chance, your place, to be heard.
We also will hold three events as part of this campaign. Two will focus on discussions with civic and community leaders and young people who have stories to tell. One will focus on how the arts engage young people and will include performances by some of Chicago’s most talented artists.
We’ll invite you to join us for these events.
Our new “Chicago Forward” project has the support of community sponsors: Bank of America, AT&T, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Their financial assistance expands our resources to confront one of metropolitan Chicago’s most enduring challenges, and we’re grateful for their support. Their logos will appear on the Editorial page when we’re writing about this issue. We independently will deliver the journalism, from shaping how this series of editorials unfolds, to evaluating your proposals, to advocating achievable, affordable solutions.
Chicago is a city of bold ideas. More than a century ago, Jane Addams proposed the radical idea of building a playground. In the past few years alone, more than 300 playgrounds were added to Chicago neighborhoods, where kids like Caleb, Willie and Javier can hang with a mentor and just be kids. Will a push on a swing by a mentor with a beaming smile keep these boys from slipping through the cracks? We know it will take more than a jolly day at the park, but we see the potential in these small, crucial moments.
We look forward to hearing your bold ideas.
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