Looking Ahead on Youth Organizing + Cultivate Fellowship

October 2026 — Moving the Needle // Woods Fund Chicago

Youth and young adults are a demographic that is regularly disenfranchised and subject to the rules of environments that don’t offer them a material say in their own conditions. But there is cutting edge organizing happening across the city that is training youth up to demand power and run campaigns driven by their needs and priorities.

Resources from organizations like the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing have informed our own principles and pillars around organizing broadly; and the basebuilding, leadership ladders, and demand development evident in Chicago’s youth movements offer case studies for building power.

We spoke to youth organizers at four grantee partners on emerging campaigns that have the potential to reshape the city.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC): Demanding Noncoercive Mental Healthcare in Schools

In the wake of their work on Cops Out CPS and Treatment not Trauma, youth who organized with BPNC already knew they wanted a future campaign to focus on mental health in schools. In late 2024, an urgent aspect of that problem emerged: students across CPS — including youth leaders at BPNC — were facing forced hospitalizations in response to mental health crisis. The Youth Healing Chi campaign grew from this crisis: BPNC is leading a coalition of young people across the city organizing around two key demands: that the district invest at least $15 million annually into expanded mental health support staff and services, and that they restructure crisis protocols to drastically reduce forced hospitalizations.

“This is not a resource neutral campaign,” says Vanessa Dominguez, BPNC’s Senior Community Organizer. “We’re really thinking through, what is keeping young people in a state of crisis, and how can schools be a part of supporting families and young people with that? If the first time a young person is able to speak to a clinician is when they're being forcibly hospitalized, we have lost.”

The org has formalized a leadership development ladder as its Southwest Side youth work to grow a citywide coalition around the project: “Youth are the best youth organizers.”

UP NEXT: The district’s crisis policy is up for review this year, and Youth Healing Chi is organizing meetings with policymakers to demand protocols that recognize youth needs and autonomy. The campaign released a report this spring: A Call to Action For Mental Health Liberation in Chicago Public Schools that in part works to demystify the district’s current 150-page guide to its mental health crisis protocols.

WestSide Rising: Affordable Housing for Emerging Adults

Last summer, Westside Rising asked their youth how they’d invest $10 Million in the community. All of the answers came back to stable housing. Since then, the organization has built an emergent campaign around housing for young adults transitioning into independent living. They’re calling for a fifty-unit development in Austin that would offer wraparound support. “We come from the perspective that displacement is one of the biggest things that creates poverty, creates unemployment, creates lack of motivation, and severe homelessness among our young people,” says Executive Director Dr. Orr.

The organization didn’t begin with a formal youth organizing wing, but now recognizes intergenerational organizing as critical to the future it wants to build on the West Side. That means taking youth through the same rigorous organizing training they offer adults. “They have the voices that can move people,” says Youth Organizer Nkoya Kidd, “but we know we can't just put them out there; they need the support and training to build that confidence so that they can actually do and lead well.”

Dr. Orr argues that there are throughlines to organizing adults: you can’t skip the relationship-building: “It just cannot be, 'you show up for this issue, or 'you turn out for this issue.’ How does this feed into your future?”

UP NEXT: Youth have already met with the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and local policymakers, and Westside Rising is collaborating with organizations that have secured similar projects as they build a coalition.

ONE Northside: Students Deserve Better than Aramark

ONE Northside’s Itzelle Garza, Environmental Justice Organizer, and Tharina Oris, Community Safety and Youth Organizer both came up as youth organizers, and they’re now working to organize students and young adults within and across Chicago schools. “Our key groundwork is that we believe that young people can be agents of change, and that they're actually key to building a sustainable movement,” says Itzelle.

The org’s youth organizing has been multifaceted: this summer, students canvassed and created a zine to provide C3 voter education around the Chicago School Board race this fall — the first time Chicago’s school board will be wholly elected. Young people also went through ONE Northside’s standard series of organizing trainings, and adapted the program for youth — they’ll lead trainings this fall from the curriculum they created. Tharina says, “Young people right now are at the intersection of multiple crises. We're seeing here, especially on the North Side, that youth organizing is a space where cutting edge organizing is happening.”

As ONE Northside expands its in-school membership, their youth work this fall centers around a campaign to end Chicago Public Schools’ contract with Aramark. It’s the kind of intersectional issue that aligns with the org’s work and membership. Not only does the company fail to offer consistently nutritious meals, but there is also a lack of options for religiously observant students. Add that the company contracts with ICE detention facilities and prisons and Tharina says, “It doesn’t line up with our students’ values.”

UP NEXT: The campaign’s coalition and demands are in development ahead of the district’s contract negotiations. Youth 14-24 can tap in at ONE Northside’s monthly mixers.

Southside Together: Beyond the Peace Room

Last spring, students at Hyde Park High School suffered a series of tragedies when three classmates were killed in the span of a month. In the wake of that trauma, they organized with Southside Together to publicly demand more robust support as they processed and grieved, holding sit-ins, walk-outs, and town halls. From within an uncomfortable spotlight, the school administration severed relationships with Southside Together and multiple other community groups, ending the high school’s Peace Room.

80-150 students a week had engaged with the Peace Room. From its termination, and Southside Together’s longstanding work with students, emerged the More than a Room campaign: students are organizing around decision-makers and school board meetings to challenge how they — and their needs, autonomy, and voice — are treated in the school setting.

Southside Together’s Yvette McCaskill puts it in simple terms: “The work we do at Southside Together is really about building people power, and young people are people.” The questions they ask their young people are formational: “Your needs deserve to be met, so how can we build power, develop leaders, and take this to the decision-makers?”

UP NEXT: As classes resume, the More than a Room campaign is working to hone its demand set and next steps.

This past week, the Woods Fund Chicago Board of Directors shared solemn news about Michelle Morales, President and CEO of Woods Fund Chicago. Michelle has learned that, following complications from a recent surgery, her medical team has no further treatment options to offer. With her family and closest friends, she is now focusing on end-of-life care and planning.

Many of us have followed Michelle's public journey with cancer over these last several years and know how openly and vividly she has fought. We have shared and benefitted from her light and her fight.

If you are moved to reach out, consider:

Sharing a message, memory, or image with Michelle using this form: Support for Michelle
Sending a joyful, funny or colorful note or greeting card via USPS mail to the Woods Fund Chicago office:

Michelle Morales, c/o Woods Fund Chicago
Impact House
200 W. Madison Street, 3rd Fl.
Chicago, IL 60606

Friends and family members are preparing additional ways for our community to offer support, and Woods Fund Chicago's Board of Directors will announce interim leadership soon. Meanwhile, we hold Michelle and her family close in this moment, and we thank you for holding them close with us. Michelle has led with courage, generosity, and an unshakeable commitment to organizing and activism: this newsletter and those it reaches are a reflection of the work and communities she has shaped.

Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership (Cultivate) is a joint effort of the Crossroads Fund, Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW), Woods Fund Chicago, and the Chicago Community Trust. Cultivate seeks to build a cadre of emerging women of color leaders engaged in social, economic, and racial justice movements whose collective voice and power can be leveraged to realize a shared vision of the Chicago region’s future. By bringing together women who lead intersecting but separate justice efforts that may include gender and racial equity, labor rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights, among others. Cultivate aims to transform these movements from the inside.

Application Deadline: Friday, October 9th, 2026 11:59pm

LEARN MORE AND APPLY

A law requires Illinois schools to teach Asian American history. Is it happening?

Why We’re Reading It: In 2021, Illinois passed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act, but the law has yet to be fully implemented in much of Illinois. This piece covers the diversity of tactics Hana Center and other organizations are using to make the Act a reality for students — from teacher training to advocacy by youth councils. In a landscape of censorship and erasure, the piece is a reminder that there are avenues to fight for our full history to be taught.

WBEZ // Read now

Radical Mothering: Caregiving and Resistance Across Prison Walls

Why We’re Reading It: We’ve been anticipating this book from Erica Bentley, Mothers of the Kidnapped (part of the MAMAS Collective), and Nadine Naber, which works to establish the concept of “Radical Mothering” and center lessons from those dedicated to caring for and uplifting incarcerated loved ones. Publisher link below, or request Chicago Public Library stock it!

Haymarket Books // Read now

Massive Public Transit Win in Chicago Shows the Power of Grassroots Coalitions

Why We’re Reading It: If you scanned past headlines on the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA,) this piece offers a deep dive into what the new agency means, and what it took to achieve that victory. This restructuring has meant expanded service for working people inside and outside of Chicago and additional funding for transit across the region. The final plan was the product of a broad coalition of labor, environmental, and transit activists, who held town halls across the region to base-build among commuters in Chicago and the suburbs.

Truthout // Read now