United Way of Elgin is Advancing the Common Good
Focusing our efforts
Education, Income and Health
For a building to be stable for the long term, it needs a solid foundation. The same is true in life, and the building blocks for a solid life are a strong education, financial stability and good health. The United Way of Elgin is working to advance the common good by focusing on these building blocks. We are recruiting people and organizations from all across the community who bring the passion, expertise and resources needed to get things done.
United Way of Elgin is making progress in reaching our community goal of helping children and youth achieve their potential. We see progress through the eyes of volunteer Lisa DiMarco who reads to preschoolers at Illinois Park Center for Early Learning, we see it in the 851 at-risk youth who participated in after-school programs supported by United Way that helped them improve their grades and we see it in our efforts to engage community organizations in support of specific strategies to enhance education in our community.
In these troubling economic times, financial stability can be hard to achieve, but through United Way’s partnership with agencies working toward financial stability for our community’s residents, 548 families avoided homelessness. And through collaborative efforts to provide services and to address the barriers that previously hindered families’ success, 11,990 families had their basic needs met in times of crisis and opportunities to become financially stable for the long-term.
Good health and well-being are fundamental to the quality of life in a community. Some components of a healthy community are: safe streets and homes, parks for children to play and for adults to relax, and access to good health care. United Way continues to be a partner for the Kane County’s Fit for Kids initiative that is working on reversing the toll of childhood obesity in our children by 2020. This past year, more community gardens have been built helping to ensure everyone in our community has access to fresh, healthy foods. In addition, nearly 18,000 individuals received quality health care services.
It takes all of us, working together, to make a difference. That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED.
