By The Hand Club for Kids Receives Grant
MSC is pleased to announce that By The Hand Club For Kids, a faith-based, after-school program located in Chicago, was approved to receive a $10,000.00 grant from MSC. MSC gives grants out yearly to deserving charities and organizations that strive to make a positive impact in their local community. MSC has been a partner of By The Hand Club for the past couple of years and want to congratulate them on their hard work shaping the lives of inner-city teens. Below is an update from By The Hand Club including their main focus, purpose and success. If one is interested in applying for a grant from MSC, there is an online application process that one can locate on our website.
Support from the Mitchell Swaback Charity was invested to equip By The Hand Club For Kids (www.bythehand.org) to help the 851 kids served achieve academic excellence while nurturing the whole child - mind, body and soul. Located within four of Chicago's most under-resourced, high-risk neighborhoods where overcrowded and underfunded schools abound, By The Hand’s mission is to help kids have abundant life. By The Hand is a faith-based, after-school program, and their goal is to literally and figuratively take kids by the hand and walk alongside them from the time they enroll in the program until they are empowered and equipped to walk independently as responsible, productive adults. To be accepted into By The Hand, a child must be recommended by his or her school principal as a child in critical need, have a grade point average below 2.0. By The Hand is making a difference in and for the lives of the kids they are blessed to serve. As just a few examples: 89% of their high school seniors graduated and 92% continued to college; 73% of By The Hand students passed all of their classes, 160 kids were on the honor roll and most importantly 76% of the children have professed faith in Jesus.
Specifically, support from the Mitchell Swaback Charity was invested to support By The Hand's Hardship Fund, allowing them to share the love of Christ by meeting their kids' and their families' physical needs for things such as rent, utilities, school uniforms, clothes and food. By nurturing the whole child and by ensuring that these physical needs were met, By The Hand is further equipping their kids for success in school and in life. As a result of these comprehensive services and because kids can focus on their education when their physical needs are met, By The Hand is making measurable differences in and for the kids they are blessed to serve.