Helping From the Heart

Since 1888, Heartland Alliance has been providing housing, health care, and other social services to Chicago’s needy. Its staff of 535 works at 40 locations throughout the city, and it annually mobilizes more than 650 volunteers who contribute 44,500 hours of their time.

Heartland provides a range of traditional services, but also many unusual ones. The organization is especially well known for its efforts in behalf of immigrants and refugees. Its Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center succeeds in obtaining political asylum for 93 percent of the people it has helped, a record that it says is the best in the nation. It also runs a center to provide psychological counseling, social services, and health care to people who have been tortured at the behest of government officials worldwide. And its Bosnian Mental Health Program has developed a special effort to meet the needs of people who suffered from the conflicts in the Balkans.

In addition to providing services, the organization also works to promote human rights locally, nationally, and internationally. It runs a special project with nonprofit groups in Mexico to deal with migration, trade, and other issues. In addition, it conducts research on poverty in the Midwest and has gathered organizations throughout Illinois to work together to promote public policy to help the needy.