Helping Children Thrive From the Start
Room to Grow is expanding to Chicago, furthering our mission of promoting equity and opportunity by helping children thrive from the start.
As we take this significant step, we invite you to join us in supporting more families across the U.S. Become a Windy City Champion and help us equip families with crucial resources needed throughout a child’s first three years of life.
For any questions or potential opportunities, contact Chicago Director Kim Furey at kim.furey@roomtogrow.org.
The Expansion
We are bringing our commitment to closing equity and opportunity gaps in early childhood to Chicago. Our goal is to raise $500,000 by Spring 2026. With your support, we can:
The Challenge
2 million babies and toddlers are living in poverty, making them the largest age group affected
Only 17% of children in low-income circumstances in Chicago are prepared for kindergarten
$0 is the net worth of Black families in Chicago, compared to $210,000 for white families, due in part to decades of discriminatory practices, such as redlining and segregation
$500 per year is all the U.S. contributes to newborn/toddler care, compared to other wealthy countries that contribute an average of $14,000
The Solution
Room to Grow’s two-generational approach offers wraparound support to families along these early developmental milestones so that their children can thrive from the start, and for the long term. Our holistic, evidence-informed model includes three pillars of support:
Personalized guidance
to support the emotional well-being of families and strategies to bolster their children’s development
Community connections
to expand families’ support networks and simplify the navigation of complex systems
Essential baby and toddler items
to alleviate material hardship and to better position families to focus on what matters most to them
The Impact
Since our founding in New York in 1998 and our expansion to Boston in 2005, we have provided hundreds of thousands of hours of personalized guidance and over 4,000,000 baby and toddler items worth over $31 million to nearly 6,000 families.
