Opportunity Youth Reconnection Hubs
Gaps Found Through Data
Tapping collective insights from numerous community organizations, Thrive achieves milestones for Opportunity Youth agreed upon by a wide variety of stakeholders. Thrive makes every investment more impactful by acting as a connective tissue between multiple organizations.
What We Do
THRIVE CHICAGO’S RECONNECTION HUBS
Reconnection Hubs in two communities—Little Village and Roseland—are neighborhood-based physical assets, housed in partnering organizations, providing coordinated care to meet the expansive needs of the city’s more than 45,000 Opportunity Youth (OY). Specifically, the hubs support OY in navigating and accessing the complex systems of social services to connect them with jobs, skills, training, education and other opportunities. At the core of the hub model, is a system of ongoing, coordinated support among a full range of direct-service providers centralized in and tailored to specific neighborhoods. These services are related directly to reconnection and to addressing underlying factors that cause persistent disconnection: housing insecurity, transportation challenges, lack of child care and need for mental health support. Thrive’s hubs make navigating the full range of services seamless—allowing each organization to do what they do best—coordinating with others that are doing the same, and, ultimately, serving the whole person.
To support reconnection, Thrive facilitates several cross-sector efforts around improving career pathways in specific sectors (e.g. retail, construction, technology). Thrive is working with partners across the city, including the Reconnection Hubs, to stitch these efforts together and develop shared universal employment goals for all 16-24 young adults. The focus is on targeted populations and communities that anchor the various stakeholders. Thrive is creating mechanisms to coordinate these efforts—grounded in community and youth voice—to document learnings, increase the city’s understanding of OY and scale emerging, high-priority, multi-system city initiatives focused on youth employment.
BEFORE RECONNECTION HUBS
THE RECONNECTION HUB MODEL
Our Collective Achievement
Two Reconnection Hubs are actively serving OY in the Roseland and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago. To date, they have served more than 700 youth.
IMPACT STORIES
A RECONNECTION HUB IN PRACTICE
A 24-year-old woman—a participant at the Roseland Reconnection Hub—called me on my office phone on the verge of a panic attack. I was nervous about her well-being, but as her hub coach I was relieved that I was the person she could call to calm her down. She once told me that she doesn’t have anyone she trusts who she can open up to. She opened up to me about her suicidal thoughts and her ideologies on why she shouldn’t exist.
I’ve worked with this participant for two of the four weeks that I have been the Outreach Specialist for the Reconnection Hub. With our partnership with Metropolitan Family Services, she was able to experience the intake process at Phalanx Family Services where she is familiar and comfortable over the phone. She pleaded for individual counseling and spoke with an intake officer, making her first step into mental health recovery.
Our next step is to get her back into school and to find her a new job. But we made one big step and it all started with the hub. Since the day of her over-the-phone intake, she has been responsible for assisting me in looking for jobs for herself. She has been adamant about getting back to school and is looking forward to her first session of therapy.
Having graduated with above a 3.0 GPA, he was eligible to receive the STAR scholarship for tuition free classes at City Colleges. Enlace made sure to connect him to Level Up to receive test preparation, resulting in his placing in college level classes and receiving the STAR scholarship. GEAR UP took Alberto to via CTA to enroll for classes at Harold Washington College that fall, get his student ID and become familiar with the campus. Alberto is about to finish his freshman year at Harold Washington. It took a group of dedicated individuals and community partnership to ensure that a bright young student could continue his education. Currently, there are also GEAR UP staff members reaching out to students at the college offering support.
Kyra Mitchell, Outreach Specialist
Roseland Reconnection Hub