The Beloved Community has a well-established partnership with The SOS Children’s Village of Illinois.  This groundbreaking development in our community unites foster children with their biological parents by placing them in the same home under the supervision of a trained caretaker.  The Beloved Community has a licensed social worker and Academic Coordinator dedicated to serving the needs of this community.

The Beloved Community provided academic enrichment services to 17 students last year from the Village.  As students in our programs, SOS children participate in all of the activities made available by The Beloved Community.  SOS children have received tutoring, ACT test preparation, and entrepreneurship education, along with fitness and nutrition training.  We have also provided life skills development instruction in areas like etiquette and conflict resolution.  In addition, The Beloved Community has independently provided counseling to 2 foster children who chose not to participate in our traditional programming but needed extra attention.  Some of the services that these students received included test preparation for high school and exposure to the abundance of available colleges within their reach.

In addition to providing programming, our Academic Coordinator actively works with the SOS community to engage the biological parents in the lives of the foster children by going door-to-door in many instances to ensure that they have access to all of our resources.  We also actively engage members of the surrounding community to participate in the lives of the foster children to create a more sustainable and healthy community.  To this end, our Academic Coordinator worked closely with the SOS Coordinator last year to reactivate a block club bringing together local residents & foster parents.