![]() ![]() IMAN already offered housing for men leaving prison this would be its first housing offering for young people. Chicago Beyond and Chicago CRED provided funding. “The idea was a home for young men who were at these pivotal points of their lives … it was supposed to be a place of healing, respite, a place to start over and really begin again,” Dozier says. So a powerful partnership formed to create it. “That was really the genesis of the safe house - asking, where does this young man go?” After extensive research for options even outside the state, “there was no place,” Dozier found. “What it boiled down to was he was extremely sad, extremely traumatized, and he wanted something different,” Dozier says. ![]() “Losing Jason hit me in my soul.”ĭozier’s former student, who was also Jason’s best friend, was in a vulnerable spot, fearful he could be next and seeking justice for Jason’s death. “Up to that point, I had lost dozens of children,” she says. They were both at the wake of Jason Barrett, who Dozier mentored before he lost his life to gun violence. In early 2017, Chicago Beyond’s founder, Liz Dozier, ran into a young man she knew from her days as a high school principal. “This model does not exist if it’s not holistic and if it doesn’t take into consideration how we address the full needs a person has, social, emotional, physical, communal.” “It’s always been evident to us that it’s not going to cut it to work with young people in a program,” says Alia Bilal, IMAN’s deputy executive director. IMAN has since developed a wraparound support network for the residents, led mainly by formerly-incarcerated men who’ve also received services from IMAN. The Youth Leadership House is the result of a partnership between IMAN, a nonprofit founded in 1997 on the city’s South Side, Chicago Beyond, an impact investor founded in 2016 to ensure all young people have the opportunity to live a free and full life in Chicago communities, and Chicago CRED, an organization founded by former Education Secretary and Chicago Public Schools chief executive Arne Duncan.Īs a response to young men who urgently needed safe and stable housing, the organizations opened the safe home in 2017. “Now I’m trying to do right by my son, trying to change my life.” “I came from not having a job, nowhere to stay,” he says. Travis moved in in July and is now employed by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), the community organization overseeing the home. An unassuming small bungalow on the Southwest Side would provide him a safe and stable place to live while connecting him to job opportunities, counseling and a support network of men who had navigated the criminal legal system. Through a mentor, he found out about a unique living situation designed for young men in vulnerable positions like his. “I was out there on the streets, trying to survive,” he recalls. Last summer, 28-year-old Jordan Travis was facing housing insecurity in his hometown of Chicago. ![]()
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