During Morning Ex on Friday, May 11, the Susan F. Berkowitz Award for Outstanding Service to Children committee announced their annual $10,000 grant winner. The winning organization, the Kedzie Center, is a mental-health and suicide prevention center in North River that students on the Berkowitz committee selected after a year-long process.

During the MX, grades 6-12 were addressed by the Kedzie center’s executive director, Angela Sedeño, PhD. Lower and intermediate schoolers were not present due to the sensitivity of Sedeño’s presentation about youth suicide. Sedeño noted that the Kedzie center, which serves 20 elementary schools and four high schools in North River, is planning to use the grant from Parker to expand further.

“We are honored to have received the Berkowitz Award,” Sedeño said. “It has special meaning because it was awarded by students who are concerned about youth suicide.”  

The Kedzie center opened in 2010 and “was founded… by a group of mental health professionals and advocates who were concerned about an increasing shortage of accessible, quality community mental health services in Chicago,” according to Kedziecenter.org.

“Our plan is to use the funds to pay a clinical supervisor who will coordinate school-based services in our area,” Sedeño said. “We were inspired to routinely incorporate suicide awareness and prevention in our school workshops.”

The Berkowitz Award, established in 2000, grants funds to “organizations who, on a day-to-day basis, demonstrate imagination and dedication, and who provide children and/or adolescents with the strength, self-confidence and resources needed to sustain healthy learning and development, and to achieve future success,” wrote group advisor and Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen.

Students sign up to be on the Berkowitz committee, for which they attend meetings every other Friday, supervised by Jurgensen. The two-dozen strong team of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors decide on an overarching theme that involves Chicago youth at the beginning of each year.

This functions as an “umbrella topic,” as described by junior and first-year committee member Sydney Garelick. The committee chooses the topic by proposing a larger list of options which are then voted on in subsequent meetings. “Some things were too broad,” Garelick said, “so we voted them off.” Eventually, the committee decided on mental health and suicide prevention.

Next, organizations whose missions fell within the umbrella topic identified themselves through a grant-proposal process. “There are a number of nonprofits around the city of Chicago that we network with,” Jurgensen said. “We then get proposals back from those organizations who feel that they fit well within the theme. Then they answer a series of questions, like how they plan to use the money and interact with Chicago youth.”

The organizations came to Parker during lunch periods to pitch to the committee about why they should be chosen. The Berkowitz committee then deliberated and voted.  Junior and committee member Amaya Contractor said, “We wanted something that would be relatable to the Parker community.”

The Kedzie center, which relies primarily on grants for funding, will be able to expand its programming to more schools because of the Berkowitz award.