INTRODUCTION
 When
we’re at our best, people understand that our programs
aren't just about individuals, they're about the community," says
Greater West Town Community Development Project (GWTP)
Executive Director and Founder Bill Leavy. "They're
about empowering people to be community resources, community
leaders, and community assets."
Since
1988, GWTP has earned a reputation as one of the top performing
community based education, employment, and training providers
in Chicago. But its mission goes much deeper than excellent
programs and consistent performance. At its core, GWTP's
strength can be found in four essential principles around
which its programs have been designed and executed:
- practicality
- innovation
- advocacy
- personal
empowerment through community responsibility.
Since
its inception, Greater West Town has recognized
that effective long-term community development
strategies must be practical, with an awareness
of the diverse needs of residents in the Greater
West Town area--from limited English-speaking
immigrants to long-term public aid recipients--as
well as the market forces affecting area employers,
public institutions, and the body politic.
GWTP
responds to these needs by offering a broad
range of model programs that address the
interrelated problems of the community,
such as low educational achievement, limited
job skills and employment opportunities,
and poverty related family stresses. These
programs combine "old-fashioned" approaches
with necessary innovations, supported by
aggressive but thoughtful advocacy that
often challenges the status quo.
Uniquely,
the agency’s strongest advocates
and strongest assets have always been its
participants. GWTP encourages participants
to seek not only the improvement of their
own lives, but to become instruments of
positive change in their families, at their
workplace, and in the broader community
by identifying with the agency, its programs,
and its mission of community development.
"Its
not about us ‘fixing’ individuals," says
Mr. Leavy. "It’s about us
building institutions that work for the
community and the community can participate
in and support. If the participants don't
experience the value and believe in what
we're doing, then surely we have missed
the mark."
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