NICI Grantee Spotlight: Harvey Brooks Foundation
September 19, 2024
The Harvey Brooks Motivation & Development Foundation is over 25 years old, but its connection and commitment to education, progress, and family resources date back more than eight decades. The organization, named after the first pastor of Joliet’s All Nations Church of God in Christ, is located “in the heart of the Black community” and roots itself in the faith and community necessary to survive reconstruction and the racist policies of the 20th century.
From economic mobility and confidence-boosting curriculums provided in its after-school and community programs to its role in addressing the southeast side of Joliet’s designation as a food desert, modern iterations of inequity within the Black American experience still drive the programming at the Harvey Brooks Motivation & Development Foundation.
Through grant support from Northern Illinois Community Initiatives (NICI), Harvey Brooks’ Eden Community Garden and Food Pantry are beacons in the community and focal points for nutrition classes and financial literacy lessons.
NICI spoke with Melvin Leach, Harvey Brooks’ Business Community Liaison, about how the organization’s programs have grown over 25-plus years, why “Nutrition and Health” is a key pillar of its work, and how to support Harvey Brooks at the Masquerade Sneaker Ball on September 27, 2024.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photo caption: Harvey Brooks Foundation Business Community Liaison Melvin Leach speaks at a community event.
1. How has Harvey Brooks Foundation’s programming grown throughout over 25 years?
Since ‘98, the Harvey Brooks Foundation has consistently done a food pantry for the community and a summer school program. Our three levels of influence with the work that we do are first the children — the summer school and the after-school program — then their parents, and then the community who comes to partake of the various programs that we run. So we try to make sure that what we do is getting out in those three levels of influence.
And then there’s the Eden Community Garden that provides fresh produce in addition to what the Northern Illinois Food Bank provides for our weekly food pantry. We're very proud of the work that we do to encourage the community.
2. What role does the business community play in supporting Harvey Brooks’ programs?
Because we've been here a while, the role of business from Harvey Brooks’ perspective is to be a hub for businesses to come in and share their wares with this community. The Harvey Brooks Foundation promotes a Women's Health Month seminar every October. Last year, NICI was a sponsor. And for the past three years, since it’s in the harvest season, we've tested our farmers market set-up. Whenever we have an event like that, we’ll bring in other businesses to set up vendor booths — or what have you — in the space to provide access to the community, and then we put our table out as well.
So that's the role we think of for business: They can come in and tell us what they're doing and how they are providing for the community, but then also they can be an expert to our children, parents, and community on how to build entrepreneurship, how to grow from the ground something that will help you to sustain. We have many business owners who will come in and speak with our children, and the children will take field trips to various businesses. For example, the children all took a trip to one of the hairdressers who runs a full salon 10 minutes from here. She closed down the shop for half the day, fed them, and told them how she runs her business. That’s the role, to tell us what they're doing and then also to educate us on how to do it.
3. What challenges do communities face in Joliet, and what opportunities does Harvey Brooks provide to combat these challenges?
Growing up in the city of Joliet downtown, I had access to Jewel-Osco and a grocery store across the street from our church. There were two Certified Grocers branches [a former retailer cooperative that serviced grocery stores] in the Joliet area. There are some grocery stores that have come up that mainly serve the Latino community, but since my childhood, all of those grocery stores that served the Black community are all gone. So food insecurity is one of the challenges. In order to shop the way we were used to shopping, we have to cross the bridge from east Joliet to the west side of Joliet or take I-80 Highway over to get to the Walmart. And so that's a 20, 30-minute commute — if you have a car [chuckles]. So if you do not have transportation, then you take the bus, you bike, or what have you. So that's one of the challenges. Being a community garden and food pantry — and there are several food pantries in the area — we soften the blow of not having access to a full grocer in this area.
And then, being in a low economic area, there’s academics and having a place where the kids can come, participate, and learn in STEM classes through our partnerships. We have a full garden class program that uses our garden to educate the children so they know how to plant, they know how to harvest, they know how to dry herbs, bottle, and package them, and even present them in sort of a makeshift farmers market for small donations. Our garden instructor Esther Leach works with us annually from spring to fall. She's with those children when they come in the after-school program or in summer school to get them hands-on in the garden.
4. How has NICI’s support empowered the organization's work?
Early Spring 2022 was when [NICI Executive Director Tovah McCord] got involved. She found this lonely article about how the Will County Land Grant came to develop several community gardens in areas that were food deserts — and we happened to be one of those places that was still running in spite of the pandemic. [Since then], the NICI grant each year supports pantry workers who order the food, store the food, package the food, and distribute it. Right now, the community knows every Wednesday, from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., they come and our workers who are supported by the NICI grant take the food out, loads it in their car, that kind of thing.
[Also] in 2022, for our Black History Program, I came up with the seven pillars that have, in spite of the tough times, been available to help us progress. And this was when Tovah came along and said, “Let’s put some more meat on your programming.” It was just perfect how it came about.
The goal of the seven-pillar program is for every initiative and every activity that Harvey Brooks does to relate some kind of way back to one of these pillars. They are:
Financial Literacy
Education
Employment
Marriage, Family, and Relationships
Life Skills and Values
Rest, Relaxation, and Leisure
Health, Wellness, and Nutrition
The seventh pillar is the one that really connected to NICI, the community garden and food, and that was the Health, Wellness, and Nutrition pillar. That one has become the anchor of all of the pillars because we can produce the herbs in order to make a donation, we can grow into being a hub for a farmers market where Lange’s Farm and different people who want to give away corn or what have you. We’re still looking to develop that for this third year, to develop into being at least a monthly or biweekly spot where other people can bring what they do to our farmers market and be a place where people can come.
NICI is also supporting strategic planning. Harvey Brooks has been around for 25 years and we want to be here for the next 25 years. So we just completed a six-month strategic planning session with the University of St. Francis. This will be the outlook for the next three to five years, and that was something that NICI helped us to secure.
The Harvey Brooks Foundation’s Masquerade Sneaker Ball is September 27 at Harrah’s Casino ballroom in Joliet, Illinois. Tempie Bates, Garden Coordinator, shares Harvey Brooks’ excitement to bring partners, community residents, staff, parents, and program participants together in fellowship to honor supporters of the foundation.
The event will showcase the impact the Harvey Brooks Foundation has in the community including testimonials from individuals who have benefited from the youth, gardening, and food programs.
Harvey Brooks is putting a spin on formal attire by asking attendees to wear their “dress up, after 5 p.m.” attire styled with their best “kicks” or sneakers. Masks will be available and provided but are not required.
Tickets are on sale now and sponsorships are available. Learn more about the Harvey Brooks Foundation and support the Sneaker Ball at https://www.harveybrooks.org.