It’s the most basic right—the right to a life free from oppression, danger, and abuse. But for millions around the world it’s a fleeting dream.

At home and abroad, we offer legal support to ensure that refugees and asylees escape persecution, immigrants gain citizenship, and children live free from violence and terror. Last year, we helped to end that suffering for more than 150,000 people, changing policies and offering justice and a chance to heal.

Watch Elvisa’s story to learn about how finding justice changed her life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X725N7Kwxa8]

Lisa: Investing in Herself

Most of us think of saving as the opposite of spending. Not so says Lisa, a recent graduate of Heartland Alliance’s money management training program.

“The trick is to pay yourself first,” she says. “When you get your paycheck, the first account you pay on is your savings account. Learning that changed how I look at money.”

The mother of a teenage daughter, Lisa had always saved here and there, but she had a hard time maintaining it. She had a stable job and was able to provide for her family but she felt stuck, unable to save for the house she dreamed of and always living paycheck to paycheck.

“Something would always pop up and I’d have to dip into my savings,” Lisa says. “I learned that if I managed my money better, I’d have enough to go around without touching my savings, and that’s what Heartland [Alliance] taught me to do.”

As a part of the program, Lisa participated in workshops on debt management, building credit and spending habits while learning to create a personalized budgeting plan that would meet her needs. To help participants start off on the right foot, Heartland Alliance also matched the money she saved during the program, which she used to pay off her credit card and student loan debt.

Today, she’s watching her budget and carefully planning for her future – and teaching her daughter to do the same.

“She has a good job now, so I’ve given her the ‘financial commandments’,” Lisa says. I don’t want her to have to learn about finances the hard way, like I did. I’m using what I learned [through Heartland Alliance] to help her start off on the right foot.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Lisa.

Jesse: Serving Those Who Serve Our Country

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqglmY8rIC4]

After returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jesse, a veteran, struggled to pay rent as he searched for a full time job. Heartland Alliance provided the help his family needed to stay housed and stable – rental assistance, budgeting training, and connections to well-paid full time job opportunities. Today he’s an admissions advisor at a local college – the well-paid, full-time job he’d always dreamed of. He’s proud to say he provides for his family and that he knows their stability is here to stay.

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Jesse.

Eleven years ago, after being diagnosed with HIV, Frank was in the thick of one of the biggest life changes he’d ever experienced. Struggling to make ends meet while coping with his new medical needs, Frank opened up to his case manager, unsure of where to turn. “She sent me to Vital Bridges,” he says, thinking back on the day as he walks the pantry aisles. “And, well, here I am eight years later.”

A food pantry dedicated to those living with HIV and AIDS, Heartland Alliance’s Vital Bridges Groceryland tailors its offerings to its participants’ unique medical and nutrition needs. As a result, case managers across Chicago refer their clients to Vital Bridges to ensure they receive nutrition plans and groceries that help them maintain their strength and health – all for free.

With the vast majority of the 21,000 HIV positive Chicagoans living at or below the poverty line in a relentless economy, that’s especially important. Providing more than half a million meals annually, the pantry not only serves as a lifeline for those struggling to make ends meet, it offers a sense of community and spirit. As the newest addition to programming, Vital Bridges’ services also allow Heartland Alliance to close the loop, completing our array of available services.

Today, Frank still visits Groceryland, but he’s no longer shopping for just himself. Three days a week, he visits to volunteer and to help fellow participants who aren’t well enough to collect their groceries. While he’s there, he helps them with household tasks they may be too ill to do, including cleaning, cooking, laundry and managing doctor appointments.

“I know what they like,” says Frank. “It’s not just shopping for them, it’s building a relationship. Everyone deserves respect and care. It doesn’t matter how you got sick, everyone deserves to eat.”

Nothing is more empowering than knowing you can support yourself and your family. We provide the opportunities to make that happen. Whether in need of training, retraining, financial education, resume help, or someone by their side as they pound the pavement, Heartland Alliance is there. Last year, we offered that support to nearly 4,000 people, helping them prepare for and find work.

But that’s just the beginning. We’re bringing our success to capitols around the country, helping hundreds of thousands of women and men regain their independence and start life anew.

Watch Wendy’s story to learn more about finding work changed her life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrmobm9umM?list=PL1gcrytZhJ3FgdOajYs42Pl2ozEWu0u0h]

For those in poverty, healthcare is often a luxury they must go without. Last year, our clinics served nearly 50,000 individuals in Chicago and more than 74,000 around the world—often right in their own communities. We work together with participants, helping them manage their physical and mental health and connecting them to our communities of support to help them get and stay well.

It’s a system that serves the whole person, ensuring health issues aren’t just treated, they’re resolved. And it’s made us the national leader in providing care to the homeless, a position we’ve held since opening the nation’s first such program.

Watch Lester’s story to learn more about how receiving quality healthcare changed his life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QltquGZ4QVQ]

Derrick: A Fresh Start

“My favorite movie is ‘Never Back Down,’” Derrick says with a look of determination. “It just tells me you’re gonna have challenges, but you face them. That’s what you do.” The title is fitting for the young man. Only 18 years-old, the formerly homeless teen has been through more in his short life than most of his peers.

His mother, disabled, had often struggled to care for him, and when she could no longer do so, Derrick found himself without a place to sleep. He rotated between the couches of family, friends, and acquaintances, and he counted down the days to his eighteenth birthday, when he would be legally independent. “I kept [my homelessness] a secret,” he says. “I don’t want pity. I promised myself to keep climbing – I knew I could do better.”

Looking Up, Looking Ahead

Six months later, Derrick has kept that promise. On his eighteenth birthday, he started calling shelters, looking for a place he could start fresh. He found Neon House, Heartland Alliance’s residential program for homeless youth. There, he’s learned budgeting, resume writing, and restarted his GED classes – not to mention securing a place to live. He’s also found a job that’s a good fit. It’s a far cry from where he was less than a year ago, but the driven young man isn’t done making plans for himself.

“A lot of people don’t get the opportunity where you know the next day you’ve got a bed,” he says. “You’ve got to take [the time at Heartland Alliance] seriously. Now I’ve really got something to work with.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Derrick.

Juan: Helping Uninsured Chicagoans Get Covered

For many, Saturday morning is a time to sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast with the children, and relax from a long week’s work. Not so for Juan, an In Person Counselor with Heartland Alliance, charged with connecting people to health insurance they can afford. On a typical Saturday morning, dozens of people come to his community events, hoping to finally get covered. He makes it happen.

“People tell me ‘I know I have this disease, I’ve had it for years but I can’t afford to go to the doctor,’” he says of his work. “Insurance is very expensive, we all know this. Many people, they make very little money and they can’t pay for this, so their health just gets worse and worse.”

Many resisted this help getting healthcare at first. Even though people knew they needed care, many were suspicious, and when the Affordable Care Act went into effect, too many of the people most in need weren’t being reached. As the polar vortex descended on Chicago, Juan began going door to door, reaching out to areas with low enrollment rates. There’s nothing to fear, he told them. You can afford this. You don’t have to get sick, or stay sick. Let’s get you well.

“People had a lot of doubt. Insurance is very complicated and people have been burned many times before by the healthcare system. It just hasn’t worked for them,” he says. “It’s a process of building trust with people.”

So why do this difficult, slow moving work? Why, during one of Chicago’s most ferocious winters, go door to door, community to community, convincing people to believe in this system? Isn’t it enough to have given people access where before they had none? As it turns out, the human connection – someone to answer your questions, address your fears, and show you how to get what you both need and can afford – is truly the key.

“We are going where nobody has been helping people and we have the power to change peoples’ lives,” says Juan. “I met one couple, a husband and a wife, and I remember them even now. The husband worked full time, but was in a car accident, a hit and run. He was suspended from his factory job and could not work. They were both on his health insurance, which was cut off. So they had to make a choice, do they pay for the COBRA health coverage, or do they pay their mortgage? We were able to find them a very affordable health plan that could address his health needs and cover them both. That’s why we need to do this work. This family needed us, and we were there.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help support our work.

Harvey: Educating The Community, Educating Lawmakers

“I’ve got some names for you right here!” Harvey pulled several dog eared pages out of his coat pocket, extended them with a shaky hand and grinned. “I think I got ‘bout every one.”

The pages, full of signatures from residents in his building supporting a motion to raise the Illinois minimum wage, were the result of two weeks of knocking on doors. A retired serviceman and a resident of one of Heartland Alliance’s supportive housing facilities in Uptown, Harvey knows what it means to try to live on pennies a day. And now that he’s gotten back on his feet with some help from Heartland Alliance, he made up his mind to pay it forward, saying “actions speak larger than words, so I’m gonna take action to make things better [for others].”

Twelve years ago, Harvey’s life was very different – his future looked bleak. A sick, homeless, veteran with no one to turn to, he had resigned himself to a future spending his nights under overpasses and his days in empty lots. Heartland Alliance found him under one of those overpasses and placed him into a housing unit in Uptown. Next came health care to get his health under control and support while he navigated the paperwork involved in filing for SSDI benefits.

“Heartland [Alliance] found me. I was lost, you see.” He pauses to wipe his eye and take a sip of his coffee before he smoothes his papers. “I’m going to help them now, and help people like me”

Two weeks ago, Harvey took his tenth trip to offer that help the best way he knew how –  he took a trip to Springfield with Heartland Alliance’s Policy & Advocacy Team. He wanted to let legislators know what cuts to social service budgets would do – to let them know that it was only because of the social services Heartland Alliance provides that he had regained his life, his health, and his happiness.

“He caught the bug right away – he was bringing pages of signatures from his community by the second trip. Harvey is a dyed-in-the-wool community organizer” laughed Kim Drew, Policy Associate at Heartland Alliance as she examined the lovingly hand collected signatures. She’ll use them on her next trip to Springfield, this time to advocate for an increase to the Illinois minimum wage. It’s a long, tough battle, but she knows that nothing impacts lawmakers more than hand-written support from their constituents. Harvey will be with her that, too, hand delivering those dog eared pages and helping lawmakers understand how important it is to have help, hope, and support as you stabilize your life.

“Now when I go down [to Springfield] the people in the capitol, they know me by name and they know what I’m about,” he says proudly. “This is how I can make things better, like Heartland Alliance did for me.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Harvey.

Barbara: A Healthy Future

In her youth, Barbara led a happy, healthy life. But on a visit with her family to Poland, where she was born, her beloved father passed suddenly and everything changed in an instant.

“I was very close to my father,” Barbara says softly. “The loss of him was a terrible shock.”

She found herself having a severe nervous breakdown at just 21 years old. It left her hospitalized and in a coma, receiving ongoing shock treatments for a month. As soon as she was well enough to leave the hospital, her mother took her to America. Over the next decade, Barbara found herself hospitalized more than 40 times. The residual stress of her breakdown left her with terrible anxiety and sleep issues, each one compounding the other and resulting in hospitalization. It was a cycle that just wouldn’t stop, leaving her without her health, without income, and without a home.

“The doctors didn’t know what to do or how to help,” Barbara recalls. “So they introduced me [to Heartland Alliance].”

Over the months to come, her doctors transitioned her to Heartland Alliance’s medical team to get her safe, stable, and healthy. Before coming to Heartland Alliance, she was hospitalized eight times in one year. Since first receiving in-home medical care through Heartland Alliance, she hasn’t been hospitalized at all. To help her stay stable, her social worker, Derrick Davis, also helped her file for disability and connected her with a money management course. Now that she’s stabilized, Barbara is enjoying something that’s easy to take for granted – making plans for her future. A few months ago she realized one of them – saying goodbye to her visa and becoming an American citizen.

“I have to thank Mr. D for that,” Barbara says laughing. “He helped me file the forms so I could become a citizen and he quizzed me for the test. And he went with me to get sworn in!”

“I just wanted to see her through it all,” Derrick says, showing off pictures from the day of her naturalization. “She’s been successful because she’s worked so hard. She deserves this.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Barbara.