Yesterday, Pilot Light was among fellow Chicago non-profits attending the Embracing Youth Opportunities Award ceremony. Pilot Light is excited to be the recipient of the Chicago Housing Consulting Services grant, providing $5000 to help extend food education programs.
With the support from the Chicago Housing Consulting Services grant, Pilot Light will extend its “Love Lunches” program at Claremont Elementary in the West Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. The student-envisioned project, “Love Lunches”, came out of a community inventory that identified an increase in the number of homeless families in the area. With “Love Lunches”, students plan and source healthy lunches, package them and deliver them to local homeless shelters and food pantries. To enhance the impact, each lunch contains a hand-written note from a student that shares what they have learned about healthy eating.
The grant’s $5,000 in funding enables Pilot Light to increase of “Love Lunches” delivered to those in need from 100 (last year) to 500 in the 2019-2020 school year. The grant supports the costs of food, lunch bags, and note cards as well as delivery costs, tracking and reporting and program management.
The Chicago Housing Consulting Services launched its pilot grant making initiative to support program expansion, implementation and capacity building. The focus of the program is child and youth development, education and community beautification.