Sun Times Judge Marovitz Laywers Lend-A-Hand to Youth Program awards grants ranging from $2000 to $10,000 to support exceptional youth mentoring programs in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs.

LAH also makes available three special grants:

1. Thomas A. Demetrio Award - A $10,000 grant that is given to most outstanding established tutor/mentor program
2. Much Shelist Founders Award - A $7,000 grant that is given to a tutor/mentor program showing the most promise and in existence 5 years or less
3. Sun-Times Literacy Award- A $10,000 grant that is given to a program that uses literacy as a key component in its tutor/mentor program.

There is no separate application to be completed to be considered for these grants.

We support well established programs, as well as start-up and emerging programs who are encouraged to apply. We also strongly encourage collabortive projects that involve two or more programs as well proposals that will help being programs to areas where no programs currently exist.

To be eligible for a grant, a program must meet the following core requirements:

• The program must be operated by a 501(c)(3) organization or have an appropriate fiscal agency agreement with a qualified 501(c)(3) entity.
• The program must primarily serve young people from disadvantaged communities in either Chicago or the Cook County suburbs.
• The program must have a stated organizational goal or objective to provide regular one-on-one mentoring between an adult mentor and a young person, which means one adult paired with the same young person.
• At least 50% of the program’s mentor/young person relationships must be consistent one-on-one mentor/young person relationships and there must be a plan in place to reach 100% long-term, one-on-one relationships in the program.

For tutoring programs, there must be consistency and longevity in the relationships between the tutor and the young person (i.e., tutors are not constantly changing) and there must be a mentoring component to the tutoring relationship that goes beyond simply assisting with schoolwork.

Click here for the complete application

Click here for the grant application due October 15, 2008