October 2022: Fall 2022 Newsletter
Fall has arrived in Chicago, bringing with it stunning colors, chillier mornings and a world beginning to open up! We’ve found our sweaters and coats again. We’re sitting in more traffic than we have in a while. We see our neighbors’ and friends’ faces without masks. Here at The Coleman Foundation, we’re in fewer Zooms and leaving the office more to meet grantees and community partners in person. We’re enjoying touring sites and venues and listening to stories without being on mute.
Along with the changing seasons, our team continues to evolve. Program Officers Nathan Stevens and Jennifer Oh spent this quarter settling into their roles and getting to know our grantees. Some of you may have heard that our beloved grants manager Lisa Torres is moving across the country to be closer to her family. We wish Lisa all the best in her next chapter, and we treasure the service that she provided to our grantees.
In this newsletter, you will see our most recent grants list. Here are a few programmatic highlights.
This quarter’s grants reflect Coleman’s legacy of entrepreneurship education while investing in the next generation of business leaders. We continue our partnership with Professor Mike Morris of the University of Notre Dame and the Experiential Classroom, a three-day clinic for educators and business support organization staff who teach entrepreneurship courses and lead programs at the college level and in communities. We were pleased to sponsor 20 Chicago community leaders to attend this year’s Classroom. Our grantee partner Sunshine Enterprises facilitated two sessions: Impactful Engagement: Making Mentoring of Students and Community Entrepreneurs Actually Work and Entrepreneurship on the Ground and in the Community.
In Health and Rehabilitation, we proudly support the heroic work of palliative medical professionals while investing in their professional development. The Coleman Palliative Medicine Conference is part of a six-month training program for healthcare professionals caring for patients with advanced illnesses. The conference covered topics such as cultural humility and implicit bias, communication during serious illness, and setting goals with families.
Our Health and Rehabilitation grants also demonstrate our commitment to support culturally appropriate cancer care and the help Community Health Workers provide for patients with limited or no access to comprehensive health services.
In Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, we stretched across the Chicago metropolitan region to invite suburban organizations to tell us about their areas of highest need. We heard repeated stories of workforce shortages and underpayment of state reimbursement formulas from all the IDD service providers we visited.
In addition to our grants list, our program officers have penned spotlights on missions and organizations we support. We hope you enjoy these stories.
Bidding Lisa Torres A Fond Farewell
