Ada S. McKinley Moves Headquarters to West Loop

Ada S. McKinley Community Services moved it administrative offices to a new headquarters in the West Loop September with the purchase of a 20,000 square-foot, corner structure at 1359 W. Washington Blvd.

The two-story, atrium-style building was purchased by the agency’s property arm, Samaritas, Inc., and marks the realization of a long-term plan laid out by McKinley Executive Director George Jones, Jr. and its Board of Directors.

“This acquisition has been a dream in the making for some years, now,” said Jones, who has headed the agency for 16 years. “As a community service organization that has been a fixture in Chicago for almost 95 years, it was high time for Ada S. McKinley to have a permanent, administrative home.”

McKinley's new administrative headquarters in the West Loop.

The former home of the Chicago Patrolmen’s International Federal Credit Union—now the permanent home of McKinley’s administrative offices—houses 26 employees, including the organization’s executive director and executive officers, as well as Development, Financial, Human Resources, Information Technology, Property Management and Quality Assurance.

The post-modern structure, which makes extensive use of skylights to bring light to interior space, originally included an interior roof deck off a second floor lunchroom. The building was renovated slightly to convert a credit union teller lane into additional office space and the banking lobby into a sweeping, two-story conference room. Additional offices and file storage rooms were added on the second floor. McKinley’s administrative offices were previously located at 725 S. Wells St. in a first-floor suite of offices that the agency occupied for 21 years.

McKinley serves more than 15,000 people each year at 38 program sites located throughout the West and South sides of Chicago. Services are provided within three major divisions: Behavioral Health and Clinical Services, Child Development and Youth Services and Employment and Community Support Services.

Services rendered daily include: tutoring, mentoring and college placement for disadvantaged youth, foster care, residential, youth and family counseling, employment training and placement, special and alternative schooling, daycare, and after-school and senior-care.

Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, UMBC President, to Give the Keynote Address at Making College Real Luncheon

Photo courtesy of UMBC.

We are proud to announce that a trailblazer in education, Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, will provide keynote address at our 2nd Annual Ada S. McKinley Making College Real Luncheon, to be held on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at the University Club of Chicago.

Hrabowski, who will also accept the McKinley Gold Medallion for Excellence in Education, was rated one of the 10 Best College Presidents by Time Magazine and is nationally renowned for his thought leadership in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Dr. Hrabowski was recently profiled on 60 Minutes for his extraordinary contributions to the field of higher education, which we've included below for you to watch.

The luncheon celebrates the work of McKinley’s College Preparation and Placement Program and its sister component, the Early Intervention College Preparation and Placement Program, which together have helped more than 50,000 low-income, minority students attend and graduate from some 400 colleges and universities across the country. Dr. Timothy Knowles, the John Dewey director for the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute (UEI), will also accept the McKinley Gold Medallion for Excellence in Education for his experience and innovation in urban schooling. An outstanding College Prep student will also be recognized with the McKinley Gold Medallion for Student Achievement. 

Learning the Signs of Child Abuse

Image from helpguide.org.

If you want to reach out to victims of child abuse and help break the circle of violence, the first thing you have to realize is that the old “stick and stones” saying is wrong. Words do hurt. Emotional abuse and neglect often leave scars just as deep – or deeper – as those inflicted by physical abuse. Scars that are harder to see and harder to cure.

The better informed you are, the better your chances of making a positive change in a child’s life. Make sure you can recognize the different types of abuse and their most common indicators. Learn some of the more subtler signs of child abuse and what you can do to get help for the children and their caregivers. The earlier these children are saved, the better their chances of recovering and leading fulfilling lives are. For more, be sure to visit this link on the Helpguide.org.

Indiana University South Bend Brings Opera to McCrone

McKinley clients pose with the cast. Photo credit IUSB.

Clients from Ada S. McKinley’s program for adults with disabilities are featured pictorially in the 2011 issue of the Indiana University (IU) South Bend Raclin School of the Arts annual periodical, “Aspire.” The school performed the opera, “Amahl and the Night Visitors” at McKinley’s Walter C. McCrone Industries, a job training site for clients with disabilities last winter. 

Click here to read the full story about this exciting performance. The full print version of "Aspire" is also available for download here on the IU site. IU has kindly allowed us to reprint photos of the performance, which we've put together in a slideshow for you at the end of the post.

IU intends to present a second opera at McCrone this winter for McKinley clients, and we'll be sure to bring you more details about it here on the McKinley Medallion. In the meantime, hats off to IU South Bend for its tremendous commitment to making opera accessible to all--and to McCrone Center Director Thom Maxwell for forging the partnership!  

Welcome to the online home of the McKinley Medallion!

Ada S. McKinley Community Services, Inc. proudly welcomes you to the McKinley Medallion website, the new online home of the bi-annual McKinley Medallion newsletter. Designed to complement our print publication, here you'll find frequent updates about the latest Ada S. McKinley news and events, along with client success stories, donor profiles, community resources, volunteer opportunities and much more. You'll also find archives for past issues of the McKinley Medallion and our annual report. 

We're looking forward to showcasing the many the important ways in which Ada S. McKinley and partners like you are working together to build a stronger, safer and more prosperous Chicagoland for all. Thank you for visiting the McKinley Medallion--and for supporting Ada S. McKinley's mission to help the most vulnerable Chicagoans gain pathways to healthy, productive and fulfilling lives.