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Will county

604 initiative offers mentorship to youth program focuses on giving minority and underprivileged youth the tools for success by marK gregory editorial director

@Hear_The_Beard mark@buglenewspapers.com If it truly takes a village to raise a child, then rest easy Will County — the village is here.

The 604 Initiative, a non-profit organization designed to serve minority and underprivileged youth in Northern Will County is “committed to educating and inspiring leaders of tomorrow through leadership and character development, mentorship and partnerships.”

While the 604 Initiative came to be after the civil unrest in the world this past year, it is something Howard has been thinking about for a long time.

“This is something that has been floating around in the back of my mind for a while,” said CEO Marc Howard, who works for the Village of Romeoville and also serves as head boys basketball coach for Romeoville High School. “We are all passionate about community and we all grew up in church organizations or little league sports organizations and we all grew up being mentored by companies we worked for as teenagers or adults in the community and I felt that was missing.

With this new digital era, a lot of things we grew up with as kids has vanished and we wanted to bring it back and fine tune it and make it relate to kids in this generation.

“A lot of these kids have the skills where they don’t see color or orientation, but they are missing some strong

characteristics that we developed, like professionalism, structure and discipline. We want highlight the things that have and provide the things they are lacking. Because this digital technology, they don’t understand how to communicate with an adult or authority figure.”

Howard and COO Noel Maldonado, who is also employed by the Village of Romeoville, originally set out to create and village-based programming, however, leaders in Romeoville encouraged them to look beyond the borders of the village and serve a larger area.

“What we wanted to do was serve Will County and not just one particular town or city,” Maldonado said. “We want to work with minority and underprivileged youth in the communities we call our home. We want to create a better space for them and break down some of the barriers they are having with older generations. The way to do that is to start a grass roots effort to give them the tools to be a better person, to be a leader, to be a more well-rounded person.”

In six short months, the idea has come to life and the 604 Initiative has already begun programming to serve the minority and underprivileged youth in the area, while connecting those youth to programs already in place by other organizations they may not have known about — but this is just the beginning.

“I feel like we are just getting started,” said Executive Director Bridgett

the 604 initiative is a non-profit organization designed to serve minority and underprivileged youth in northern Will county.

Beene. “We have a ton of ideas for programs – we did our first one and it was very successful. We have a program in May where we are targeting the parents and giving them information and resources on how to support their children this summer. A lot of parents are feeling this school year, a lot of the kids didn’t get the best experience with ev-

erything being online.

“We are also going to gather a ton of resources to share for summer camps and academic resources and free tools that will be available for them to take advantage of to help support their children’s education.”

At the end of May, the 604 Initiative will offer a program that aids first-time

job seekers with filling out job applications, and how to land summer employment.

“We are not just offering our ideas,” Beene said. “We are not the ones that will always do the programming. We are partnering with other organiza-

see 604 page 6

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cooK county > oaKton community college

Hatch donates $100K to support scholarships for cannabis students

SUBMITTED PHOTO

From left, Katherine sawyer, oakton community college chief advancement officer; Joianne l. smith, ph.d., oakton community college president; brian baker, hatch vice president of operations; gary leff, hatch president; and eric Fisher, hatch chief financial officer at hatch s Wheeling dispensary on monday, april 5.

Students enrolled in Oakton Community College’s cannabis education programs will benefit from a generous donation from Hatch, a cannabis dispensary with two locations in Illinois.

Hatch donated $100,000 to the Oakton Educational Foundation to create the Hatch Social Equity Opportunity Scholarship. Scholarship award priority will be given to students with financial need or who have been adversely affected by previous cannabis laws. Hatch and Oakton marked the occasion with a ceremonial check presentation during the grand opening of Hatch’s newest dispensary in Wheeling on Monday, April 5.

This new scholarship will sup-

port Oakton students enrolled in the College’s Cannabis Dispensary and Patient Care Specialist program by providing resources for tuition, books and fees. Additionally, the gift is expected to provide internship opportunities at Hatch for qualified students interested in learning how to operate a dispensary and applying for a dispensary license in the future.

“Hatch’s support for our students seeking employment in the emerging cannabis industry will be life-changing,” says Joianne L. Smith, Ph.D., Oakton President.

“We are grateful to partner with Hatch and privileged for their recognition of Oakton as a leader in cannabis education.”

“We’re thrilled to support qualified social equity students interested in a career in cannabis and perhaps applying for their own dispensary license in the future,” says Gary Leff, Hatch President.

“We’re proud to be partnering with Oakton given its status as a leader in cannabis education and its commitment to helping

to build a trained cannabis workforce.”

In 2019, Oakton launched the Cannabis Dispensary and Patient Care Specialist Certificate — Illinois’ first community college health communications program focusing on medical cannabis.

In 2020, Oakton added the Cannabis Transportation, Logistics and Supply Chain Management Certificate - further expanding the training available for students interested in obtaining jobs in the growing industry. More than 300 students have enrolled in cannabis education programs and the College has awarded more than 70 credentials.

Pending approval, Oakton will introduce a Cannabis Cultivation Certificate in spring 2022, including hands-on learning in Oakton’s new cannabis program cultivation lab.

For more information about cannabis education at Oakton, contact cannabisprograms@oakton.edu.

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state

Pritzker urges schools to focus COVID relief funds

by peter hancocK

Capitol News Illinois

Gov. JB Pritzker took to the road Monday to urge local school districts in Illinois to carefully target the roughly $7 billion in federal funds they will soon receive in order to help students overcome the learning loss they may have suffered during the pandemic.

“We’re all wondering if this was a lost year for our children,” Pritzker said at an early childhood learning center in the Champaign school district. “We worry if a year’s worth of online classes and virtual play dates will impact their future in some negative way in the future.”

Pritzker highlighted a report released last month by the state’s P-20 Council, the Learning Renewal Resource Guide, which outlines many of the issues schools around the state are likely to face as they prepare to return to full inperson learning and some of the strategies they should consider.

Those strategies include things like diagnostic testing to get more precise measurements of where students are in their academic

progress; offering more tutoring, counseling and afterschool programs; and possibly even lengthening the school calendar to add more days of school.

Most of the money schools stand to receive – about $5 billion of it – will come through the recently-passed American Renewal Plan. The rest is the result of two earlier rounds of federal relief funding.

According to guidelines from the U.S. Department of Education, those funds may be used for things such as buying personal protective equipment or acquiring additional space to ensure social distancing in classrooms, hiring additional staff to address learning loss, implementing strategies to address the social, emotional, mental health and academic needs of students, and funding afterschool and other extended learning or enrichment programs.

Schools can also direct the funds to target populations that have been the most disproportionately affected by the pandemic such as students from low-

income backgrounds, students of color, students with disabilities, English language learners, students experiencing homelessness and students with inadequate access to technology.

Suzan Zola, superintendent of Champaign CUSD 4, which stands to receive about $39 million in federal aid, said improving student access to technology is among her district’s top priorities.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic we have invested, and will now be able to continue to invest in improving access to technology for students and staff,” Zola said. “There should never be

604 From page 3 tions that we want to promote great things that are going on as well.”

“We want to connect all the dots,” Howard said. “There are so many organizations out there that people are missing because things aren’t communicated as well. We want to be the umbrella. We will offer programs, but we also want to be a unique organization that everyone views as a partner.”

Aside from being a community partner and bringing unique programming to the youth, the 604 Initiative is looking down the line to work on helping in the way of providing scholarships for athletic programs and bringing volunteer tutors to students that need help.

a time again where students don’t have access to a computer and internet connection in their home.”

What remains unclear, however, is how long it will be before all schools can fully reopen. The Illinois State Board of Education has left that decision largely up to local school boards.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, as of Monday, just over 72 percent of seniors age 65 and over in Illinois, and 40 percent of all adults age 16 and older, have received at least one dose of vaccine.

But Pritzker said that a recent uptick in new cases and hospi-

talizations is still preventing the state from entering Phase 5, or full social and economic reopening.

“You know, we’ve seen this before. I think other places in the nation have had three surges. We’ve had two,” Pritzker said. “We’re now seeing a rise in cases here.

But these things come in waves.

I am hopeful that with the rising number of vaccinations we’re doing – we’re averaging over 100,000 a day – the increasing number of people who are fully vaccinated, at the same time that we’re dealing with a surge, I’m hoping that we can sort of overcome the surge for the very first time ever.”

“From the feedback we got from our first workshop and all the support, it is moving in the right direction,” said Board of Directors member Demetris Anderson, a member of the Romeoville Police Department and has served as a juvenile and school liaison officer. “This is our way of doing what was done for us. Recognizing the importance of coaches, pastors at our churches, educators, business owners — all coming together to do things behind the scenes that we didn’t pay much attention to as kids, but now as adults, we understand the importance.

This is our opportunity to get it started for a new generation and develop leaders.”

With all four core members of the

604 Initiative being raised in the greater Joliet area and growing up to be leaders in their communities, they understand the importance of giving back.

“We feel that Will County has made us who we are as young people and now as adults and we want to give back to Will County,” Howard said. “For the youth, no matter the color of their skin, to see an organization coming together for the betterment of all, it can inspire a lot of future leaders.”

Programming notes and how to get in contact with the organization can be found on Facebook by searching ‘604 Initiative.’ The website will be completed shortly and will be found at 604 Initiative.com.

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