Special Initiatives

Community Works

Community Works is a project that will administer $1.6 million collected in the next 5 years from a grant from the Grand Victoria Foundation, located in Elgin, Illinois. The project will focus on improvements in work force development/job growth, childcare, and land use/protection.

Work Force Development Initiative

This initiative is a 3-year demonstration project in which Champaign will receive a grant of $250,000 per year from the Grand Victoria Foundation in Elgin, IL. The initiative is intended to move low-wage/low-skilled incumbent workers closer to economic self-sufficiency, increase the community's ability to respond to the needs of the workers and to encourage further collaboration between community based organizations engaged in service delivery to these workers and their employees.

Illinois Facilities Fund

This fund aids in capital improvement programs for child care services. For more information, visit www.iff.org.

Access to Recreation

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has been very generous to organizations since its establishment in 1930. One of their focus areas is making recreation accessible to people of all ages and abilities.

In late 2007, the Community Foundation was awarded one of only four Access to Recreation grants in Illinois. One of the areas that Kellogg found interesting about our project was that it would be a collaboration with many partners. The Community Foundation, the Champaign Park District, the Urbana Park District and the Champaign County Forest Preserve are the lead partners.

In addition, folks with disabilities provided input and on-going suggestions and direction as we went about designing three very different fishing piers. They all have something in common, however, and that is an adherence to the principles of Universal Design.

This goes beyond the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to make facilities usable by our residents with and without limitations.

All three of the universally accessible fishing piers are now open to the public. The structures at Urbana's Crystal Lake Park, Champaign County Forest Preserve District's River Bend and Champaign's Kaufman Lake are spacious and include benches and tackle box tables.

As part of the grant, the Community Foundation has to raise $135,000 for an endowment to continue to explore and support accessible recreation. The Kellogg Foundation will match all gifts on a one-for-one basis. The matching opportunity allows your gift to have double the impact.If you have questions about this project or other ways you could help, please let us know.