Cleanslate honored by LISC Chicago
as "Community Heroes"

[Excerpted from LISC Chicago's Community Heroes Booklet]

The social enterprise program Cleanslate provides both transitional job opportunities to people who face significant obstacles to employment and neighborhood beautification services in nine communities, including the Quad Communities. This program empowers homeless and poverty-stricken people with the skills, confidence and resources to secure permanent employment and achieve lasting success. Since 2005, Cleanslate has provided internships to more than 320 people, nearly half with at least one criminal conviction, 134 of whom have been placed into quality, permanent employment after their internship.

In the Quad Communities, the program has swept up Cottage Grove Avenue and other commercial strips while maintaining vacant lots and gardens, collecting 13,934 bags of recycling and 9,190 bags of garbage in its first 2 1/2 years of operations. Cleanslate’s host organization, The Cara Program, has placed more than 2,000 people into full-time, quality jobs with leading Chicago-area companies, including several in the Fortune 500, with an average wage of $10.72 per hour, with benefits.

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Community heroes are leaders, teams and families who not only use their individual skills and knowledge to do good work, but also engage the resources and strength of the entire community to make real, positive change.

Community heroes get their neighbors feeling proud of their neighborhoods; get kids excited about the future; get businesses open and services delivered. Community heroes get it done.

“It” can mean a lot of things in Chicago. It can be an oldfashioned tent revival that lasts late into the night, with teenagers dancing and singing with their elderly neighbors. It can be a
garden of nutritious vegetables grown by formerly incarcerated people learning new skills. It can be a way out of gang life, a nearby place to get reliable healthcare, or the opening of a new locally-owned business.

Community heroes see economic and social challenges and don’t wait for others to meet them. They tap into the spirit of their neighborhoods and channel it into real results that enrich peoples’ lives. Job opportunities, affordable housing and safer streets are possible because they are meeting community challenges with community solutions.

These exemplary individuals, teams and couples all represent the best of their neighborhoods and the best of Chicago. Whatever it is their neighborhoods need, these heroes get it done.

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