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Night Ministry Hopes 'Baby Bonding Room' Overhaul Can Help Teen Moms

 A mother and her child at the Night Ministry's teen mother shelter.
A mother and her child at the Night Ministry's teen mother shelter.
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The Night Ministry

RAVENSWOOD — An emergency homeless shelter for young mothers and pregnant teens is seeking a $50,000 grant to renovate its "Baby Bonding Room" where the struggling moms get to know their new babies.

The Night Ministry has been asking supporters to vote online by Tuesday to support its entry in the "Ultimate Neighborhood Give Back Challenge" sponsored by national real estate company Guaranteed Rate.

The Night Ministry, 4711 N. Ravenswood Ave., operates the Response-Ability Pregnant and Parenting Program for girls and women ages 14-19.

RAPP, located in Lakeview, serves pregnant youths as well as new moms — and includes a "Baby Bonding Room" the Night Ministry wants to give a makeover. The Baby Bonding Room is where mothers rock their children to sleep, "nourish them, play with them, [and] get to know them at the earliest stages of life," the Night Ministry's online entry says.

If the renovation proposal —  currently one of 50 semifinalists for the $50,000 grant — is chosen as one of the Give Back Challenge's final six projects next week, it faces another round of voting before August when judges choose a grant recipient. Five runner-ups also are slated to receive up to $10,000 each.

The Baby Bonding Room is "not a particularly homey space," said Night Ministry spokeswoman Stacy Massey, adding that it has "the cheapest carpet you can imagine," dully painted walls and old furniture.

"The space where RAPP is currently located was bequeathed to us by a very generous family in [1992], and it hasn't been renovated with the exception of one room since then," Massey said.

The Night Ministry would use the grant to transform the Baby Bonding Room into a warmer, more inviting space with a new paint job and hardwood floors, and purchase new furniture, breast pumps for nursing, bookshelves, books and other things young mothers and kids can benefit from.

"We feel like it matters because this room is really where the moms' and babies' relationship begins, and it's really important for us to make that as comfortable as possible," Massey said, stressing that most of the youth at the shelter "have experienced trauma."

With about 150 votes, the Night Ministry proposal wasn't one of the top vote-getters as of Monday. But while votes help, they aren't everything.

Contest rules say a panel of judges will evaluate each Ultimate Neighborhood Give Back Challenge proposal. Half the decision will be based on a project's potential impact, 30 percent based on the project plan and feasibility, and 20 percent based on number of votes.

Other proposals out of Chicago include a plan from nonprofit organization Rescue, Release and Restore, to rehabilitate a donated storefront in Roseland and "set up a safe meeting space for youth to gather, gain entrepreneurial knowledge and brainstorm income-generating ideas."

Revitalize Trilogy, a Rogers Park behavioral health organization offering various services to people suffering from serious mental illness, also seeks a grant to expand its North Side digs.

And the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council seeks a grant to provide youths and adults in its Ballet Folklorico dance program a dance floor more suitable than the linoleum and concrete one that organizers said "is hard on the dancers' joints and could lead to injury."

Click here to vote for an Ultimate Neighborhood Give Back project.

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