Our mentors drive to weekly mentoring at our partner schools. Leading a group of 10-25, our mentors build meaningful, lasting relationships with the students, navigating children's interests and dislikes. When navigating their individual interests, challenges, and goals, our mentors empower students to reach their full potential—both academically and personally.Through these strong connections, our mentors not only inspire but also serve as role models who help students unlock opportunities for growth, success, and self-confidence.
Dicuss careers, college and higher education opportunities, and the kids own interests. Through interacting with our mentions, CPS children learn more about the college student and the college experience.
Academic Enrichment oversees Supplies for Dreams’ mentoring program in our CPS partner schools. Through mentoring sessions, we strive to help students develop their confidence, agency, love of learning, and broad worldview. At the Headquarters level, the AE team develops and edits the curriculum used across all SFD chapters. We regularly revise this curriculum to better suit the mentors and mentees who use it and reflect our goals. At the chapter level, school coordinators and mentors implement curriculum at our chapter’s partner schools. We attend weekly mentoring sessions and get to work and connect with the mentees.
Supplies for Dreams believes that every student should have the opportunity to go on a field trip during their K-8 education. The Award-a-Field Trip (AAFT) committee works to provide students with an engaging learning experience at a number of sites in Chicago, extending learning beyond classrooms in an exciting and exploratory way. The field trip team coordinates and leads 4th-8th grade students on field trips throughout the school year. Currently, students are able to visit the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, the Chicago History Museum, and the Northwestern Campus.
The Development Committee is the fundraising arm of Supplies for Dreams. The committee’s primary responsibilities include grant writing and networking. Development is also responsible for managing current donors and building relationships with individuals and organizations within Chicago communities. Members of the Development team have the opportunity to understand the corporate side of running a non-profit and are able to work with corporate partners.
Human Resource Committee Members are: interested in learning more about recruitment practices; willing to engage with the onboarding of our new internal team members (holding workshops, co-hosting All-Team meetings, facilitating Social Justice curriculum); passionate about fostering a positive internal team culture; experienced in conflict management; creative and have unique ideas for team bonding (for recreational and professional purposes). Key qualities of Human Resource Committee Members are reliability, an intrinsic dedication to wanting to create an equitable environment for all, and a willingness to learn about all things HR-related.
The Local Outreach Committee is responsible for fundraising and marketing efforts that occur on campus. LO works to develop engaging, innovative, and effective ways to raise awareness and funds for Supplies for Dreams within our local communities. LO team members get to share our work with the greater community and build meaningful connections with local individuals and organizations.
The Marketing committee is in charge of planning events and building SFD’s brand. We bring the Supplies for Dreams story to life by hosting events and sharing our students’ experiences through videos, social media and journalistic articles. Marketing team members are at their core hard-working and creative. Team members specialize in different roles such as design, content writing and videography, but they are never restricted in those roles. The committee is mainly in charge of conceptualizing a comprehensive marketing strategy for the organization. In addition, team members organize SFD’s annual gala, annual report, and donation campaigns.
Quality Assurance measures the impact of Supplies for Dreams’ programming while working to improve the efficiency of existing processes. QA’s primary responsibilities are to develop and implement improvement initiatives across the organization. Some of these initiatives include collecting and reviewing feedback from students to improve our field trip and mentoring programs, analyzing how we can best develop our team processes, and evaluating the impact of our fundraising strategies. QA works closely with other committees to measure success, analyze existing operations, and offer advice for growth.
SFD Transitions works with 7th and 8th graders making the transition into high school. CPS has various types of high schools that students can apply to, making the process unique. Within SFD Transitions, committee members both write curriculum about the high school transition and present material to middle school classes over essential skills for this transition. This role is intended for folks who both understand and enjoy students and their diverse developmental needs and have a passion for helping them.
