West Side Forward

West Side Forward (WSF) is committed to driving the economic revitalization of Chicago’s West Side by investing in people, systems, and infrastructure to foster thriving communities.

 

WSF asserts that to transform Chicago’s West Side the focus must be substantially reducing poverty utilizing tactics that will move 63,000 people into skilled work that can sustain their families. West Side Forward envisions a vibrant, healthy, economically progressive West Side of Chicago boosting stabilized homeowners, businesses, healthy dining options, gathering spaces, and job opportunities nestled throughout the community.

 

Our vision of Chicago’s West Side becoming an economically thriving community, with opportunities to increase income and wealth for local residents serves as the impetus for a hyper-focus on building the local economy through small business development and training the local workforce.

 

We recognize that thriving communities have five core elements - opportunity, access to resources and healthy social networks, stability, and safety. The first step in transformational change to bring about a thriving community is to reduce the concentration of poverty via opportunity.

 

WSF's strategy is to reduce concentrated poverty on Chicago’s West Side by focusing exclusively on the tactics that will move 63,000 people into skilled work that can sustain their families. Through in-depth analyses of the communities we serve, what ails them, and the best remedy to increase the probability of sustained economic transformation, we have identified the specific scope and scale of what must be accomplished our structured our core work to address the work that must be done.

 

_{Our efforts are targeted to assure that the development of businesses and jobs for the West Side aligns with the economic growth, development}, _{and jobs of the Chicago region. We believe that it is essential that the economy of the West Side move from one of the high levels of government support and low levels of sustainability into the mainstream regional economy, interconnected with the economy of the larger region and producing a net export economy for the West Side.}

 

_{West Side Forward’s primary investment areas for bringing about community transformation are business development, workforce development}, _{and industrial development advocacy on the West Side of Chicago.}