MEF and the Midtown Center for boys and the Metro Achievement Center for girls are periodically in the news. Below are some articles written about our programs.
16th Annual Awards Gala Covered by Crain's
The Midtown Educational Foundation was founded in 1965 with the goal of helping inner-city kids grow in intellect and integrity as they advanced though school.
That’s just what thousands of children have done with the benefit of the organization’s after-school and summer programs. Its Metro Achievement Center for girls and Midtown Center for boys help prepare kids to compete for spots in college prep high schools and eventually enter college.
At its 16th awards dinner on Monday night, an overflow crowd of more than 550 guests packed the Four Seasons Hotel for dinner, performances by students, and the presentation of the Reach for Excellence Award to John A. Canning, Jr., chairman and CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC.
Students showed off their smarts with an onstage spelling bee, and dinner included an autumn salad with goat cheese, roasted pears and spicy pecans, followed by chicken in wine sauce and pumpkin crème brulee. At the end of the evening, guests learned that the dinner had raised almost $900,000 for ongoing programs.
In Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, as in so many others across the country, the infrastructure of civil society has broken down at the same time that many of the institutions counted on to replace it have been found wanting. How do we rebuild that crucial “third place” where young people from chaotic backgrounds can interact, learn, play, and hopefully forge their characters? Two educational centers in downtown Chicago seem to have an answer.
When Sharon Hefferan, who runs a program called Metro achievement Center, called recently and said, "Come see what we do," I hesitated. There are 10,000 good programs for the needy in the naked city, and even a good do-good program isn't necessarily a good story. So I compromised. I'd come see but wouldn't write anything. Then I saw the girls. Actually, you don't so much see the girls as feel them here in this bright former ceiling tile warehouse in the West Loop, where five full days a week in the summer; 300 girls burst in from such turbulent Chicago neighborhoods as Pilsen, Lawndale, Little Village and Cabrini-Green. Waves of girl energy ripple through the cozy halls, in and out of airy classrooms, energy that manifests almost as visibly as neon. This isn't school, it's a sorority of girls studying their way up in the world.
CHICAGO-Chicago's Midtown Educational Foundation was honored to be one of 50 model programs chosen from across the country to participate in the President's Summit for America's Future. The foundation operates after-school programs for inner-city kids-programs that are built-on the generous and enthusiastic work of more than 500 volunteers.
The distinguished educator Mortimer Adler, Who taught the great ideas to university intellectuals here and to business executives in Aspen, said that his most satisfying experience was thrashing out Aristotle's basics to inner-city minority kids. That's because they came out swinging with a vigor that entranced this great philosopher. I must say I doubted Adler until this week. That's when I began teaching politics and journalism in summer school to mostly Hispanic teenage boys sponsored by the Midtown Educational Foundation. Compared to them, the seminars at Harvard, the Wharton school and Oxford, et al., including Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola and Roosevelt universities, never had the same zing.
The Midtown Educational Foundation was founded in 1965 with the goal of helping inner-city kids grow in intellect and integrity as they advanced though school.