Foundations of East Chicago has helped many individuals and organizations in the community. It has also launched several programs of its own to benefit the area. One of these programs, Greenhouse Fellowship, works to revitalize the city of East Chicago in a new and inventive way.
Greenhouse Fellowship is a program comprised of eight recent high school graduates from East Chicago. These young people were not chosen for their GPAs but for their abilities to lead, network and think outside the box. They have been working with local nonprofit organizations to gain an insight on different aspects of the community. The fellows will work individually to identify specific problems or areas of East Chicago that would benefit from some renovation.
After spending some time with these organizations, the fellows will be tasked with devising and implementing a strategy for improving the East Chicago community as a whole.
FEC has chosen young people for this project because of their capacity for creativity and forward-thinking. Also, the program strives to bring something new to the community; something that hasn’t been influenced by previous or existing strategies.
The Greenhouse Fellowship initiative began in the summer of 2014. Fellows were selected from a pool of recent graduates. These fellows began work with their nonprofit organizations in September of that year.
The group is currently working on projects that are to be implemented in the community within the year. FEC is hoping that this program will revitalize East Chicago in a way that could initiate a domino effect for the rest of Northwest Indiana as well as urban areas across the country.
