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The Rex Foundation has identified the following organizations to each receive $5,000 from the Black Tie-Dye Ball. These Chicago-vicinity programs carry out excellent work in the arts and in providing needed social services.
Albany Park Theater Project
Founded in 1996, the Albany Park Theater Project (APTP) is a multi-ethnic ensemble of teenagers creating original performance works out of real-life stories from Chicago’s immigrant, working class Albany Park neighborhood. The program emphasizes three goals: To 1) Create dynamic original theater that represents the real stories of teens and other Albany Park community members in a manner that culturally, economically and age-diverse audience members finds compelling, challenging and inspiring; 2) Help teenagers recognize and achieve their potential, with a particular emphasis on encouraging and nurturing their educational ambitions; 3) Contribute to the vitality and vibrancy of the Albany Park neighborhood, an arts-poor community where ATPT is the only performing arts organization. Today, APTP performs for more than 4,000 people each year, and has built a repertoire of more than 50 performance works integrating theater, dance and music.
Cathedral Shelter of Chicago
Since 1915, Cathedral Shelter has provided effective and compassionate social services, particularly to people suffering from addiction. Through crisis intervention, addiction recovery, community assistance and life skills development programs, Cathedral Shelter works to prevent homelessness and hunger. The Rex Foundation will specifically help support the Christmas Basket program which works to prevent hunger and homelessness through the distribution of emergency food, housing and utility assistance, clothing vouchers and crisis counseling to low-income seniors, people with HIV and low-income West Side families.
Chicago Women’s Health Center (CWHC)
Founded in 1975 by a group of women, including several medical professionals, the Chicago Women’s Health Center provides women’s reproductive health care, embracing the following mission: 1) Provide quality health care and counseling services to all women regardless of ability to pay; 2) Help women gain the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective advocates for their health care; 3) Share information and promote preventative health practices through community outreach; 4) Work in coalition with other groups to identify women’s public health concerns and bring these concerns to the attention of policy makers. CWHC operates as a modified collective, and is the oldest existing women’s health collective in the United States.
Grand Avenue Club, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI)
The Grand Avenue Club was founded in 1991 by a community-wide coalition consisting of adults who had themselves experienced mental illness, their families and friends, as well as organizations that were concerned about the issue of mentally ill adults and their exclusion from every important opportunity that makes life satisfying. The Club provides hundreds of Milwaukee area adults with pre-vocational, employment, educational, housing and recreational opportunities that support their full integration into community life. In 1993 the clubhouse initiated its very successful Employment program, in 1996 its Housing program, and in 2003 the clubhouse secured funding to focus on newly diagnosed younger people (ages 18 to 25) who might otherwise drop out of school because of mental illness. In 2002 Grand Avenue Club moved to a new, permanent downtown location that is easily accessible to every metropolitan area neighborhood.
Family of Glenn Carrier
Glenn Carrier, a long-time member of the Grateful Dead crew, and more recently with Dark Star Orchestra, passed away in early February 2004. In honor of Glenn's memory, the Rex Foundation designated some proceeds from the March 6, 2004 Black Tie-Dye Ball Benefit for Glenn's family.
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