The Annual Peace and Education Coalition Fundraiser will be held May 20, 2017, 10 AM at the Back of the Yards College Prep High School (2111 W 47^th Street, Chicago).  Thank you so much for your support last year. The fundraiser was a wonderful success raising enough money to offer supportive scholarships to the 40 students who applied from the neighborhood. The fundraiser itself featured a breakfast donated by restaurants from around the neighborhood, and we honored two former recipients.  Claudio Rivera, was quoted in local newspaper The Gate, “I didn’t want to tell a story about myself today, because sometimes people try to turn that story into one that says, ‘Well, you did it because you worked harder than everyone else.’ I don’t buy that bootstrap narrative,” said Rivera, who is about to receive a Ph.D. in psychology from DePaul University. “First of all, there are plenty of other people who have done it, too. Many of them are in this room today. And of course, I have failed thousands of times. I have doubted myself many times. But there are people around me who pick me up when I fall and who see something in me that keeps them by my side. They give me opportunities even when I have doubted myself or lost belief in myself. Our story is a collective story of success. So, I encourage you to give young people chances, and not just one or two chances, but three or four thousand chances.”

Jose Alonso, a lawyer who graduated from Loyola University and who works with our local community said, “Many of the same recipients that accepted the invitation to serve in their college years have also accepted the invitation to lead in our community after college.  We have past scholarship recipients who have led reflection groups with our youth, who have led neighborhood-wide cultural celebrations, who have engaged in civil disobedience to bring justice for our immigrants, who have created jobs for people in our community, who have also created scholarships, and the list goes on,” he said. “We really do have something exceptional here…a community-focused effort which instills the importance of service in our youth and develops them as leaders in our community.  I can’t think of any other scholarship in Chicago with that kind of mission and that kind of impact.”

Join us as we prepare to continue a special tradition of supporting our students in their dreams for a higher education.

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