East Side Aligned, a local nonprofit serving youth, received a nearly $450,000 Illinois state grant to help bring more after-school programs and services to children and families in East St. Louis and the surrounding communities.
The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s Restore, Reinvest and Renew program funds community organizations that work in areas that have been harmed by economic disinvestment, violence and excessive incarceration. It is funded through state revenue from adult recreational cannabis sales.
East Side Aligned and its youth after-school program, East St. Louis Youth Development Alliance, serves about 1,000 children a year through 10 after-school programs across the Metro East. The grant funds will help it expand its STEAM programs, offer on-site mental health services and build out its college and career pathways program.
These programs will equip students in the area with leadership and life skills, Evan Krauss, executive director of East Side Aligned said.
“It opens up new worlds, opens up new possibilities, and they really relish when they get to do that,” he said.
Krauss wants to spotlight the necessity of after-school programs because he said many often go overlooked and underutilized, which forces them to close their doors.
The youth development alliance helps services organizations like the Christian Activity Center, Catholic Urban Programs, Sinai Family Life Center, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation and the East St Louis School District 189. It provides tutoring services, arts and crafts, summer activities, field trips and mentoring.
Illinois Sen. Christopher Belt, D-Swansea, remembers having sports as his outlet after school growing up in the Metro East. He said it taught him discipline and kept him from getting into trouble. He wants children in East St. Louis to have access to more activities after school.
Many of the cities he represents are some of the poorer cities in Illinois.
“When you have situations like that, they're conducive to crime, they're conducive to despair, hopelessness,” he said. “It is very important that our kids have programming after school that offers them the opportunity to be whatever it is that they want to be.”
Belt said he championed this grant in the Illinois legislature because he wanted children to see that their communities care about their quality of life.
“We're planting seeds today that will harvest later on, and you'll see the beautiful harvest that will come about because these programs are here, and it'll show the kids that they matter,” he said.
