NICI Grantee Spotlight: Proactive Community Services
May 23, 2025
Proactive Community Services (PCS) aims to empower individuals and encourage behaviors that promote long-term healthy lifestyles, economic self-sufficiency and independence through individual achievement. Its job readiness program — Proactive Employment Solutions — provides successful preparation and placement services that target the long-term unemployed, under-employed, dislocated or hard-to-place residents in South Suburban Cook County.
PCS’ second Impact Grant from Nicor Illinois Community Investment (NICI) expands the job readiness program through transportation stipends, healthcare and childcare services, and job placement resources. We spoke with Eula Burge, CEO, and Gloria Harden, COO, about how PCS’s job readiness program helps individuals overcome barriers to employment and how NICI’s support extends beyond financial contributions to enable transformative partnerships within our network.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1. What are common obstacles individuals in South Suburban Cook County face when seeking employment, and how does the Proactive Employment Solutions (PES) job readiness program address these challenges?
Gloria Harden: PCS is like an anchor in the community. We’ve really done well in connecting with other providers to help individuals overcome these barriers. We are there to assist, and if we can’t do it for them, we can link them to somewhere that can help. We partner with places that have common missions and that are aligned with the goals and objectives of our organization. We’re out there and the community trusts us.
You know, we're not in Chicago, so there are fewer job opportunities. That's why we go out and talk to employers and find out what they need, how we can build our curriculum to accomplish what they're looking for and then try to help them find participants.
Eula: We make sure we reach all of the areas in the south suburbs. We have three vehicles and we do intentional, structured outreach. We are part of the place-based initiative that United Way has — they call them neighborhood networks — and they have some in Chicago and some throughout all the different south suburbs and the collar counties in Chicago. Right now, we partner with Higher Heights in Ford Heights. It’s one of those communities that is very poverty-stricken, with no resources. They don’t even have a police department anymore, they don’t have a fire department, it’s a food desert and they don’t have access to health care. So, while we’re located in Flossmoor, we partner with agencies throughout South Suburban Cook County. We bring the community to us because we have vehicles to pick people up, and we also go to the community. We deliver our job readiness program in the various libraries and on-site with the substance abuse agencies we partner with. We always try to seek space within our partner organizations.
2. What success stories have you seen as outcomes of the job readiness program?
Eula: One of the things that we’ve learned is that even though we’re offering a job readiness workforce development program, we integrate all of our services because people need everything. That’s the important piece that oftentimes people don’t get, because you cannot keep a job if you cannot address your barriers.
Gloria: We had a client who went through our program called the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). We have a prevention coordinator who is trained to facilitate programs for people with mental health and substance use, and she did WRAP with several clients. One of the WRAP clients went through our job readiness program and through going through the program, he was able to be employed as a relapse prevention facilitator. We found a place at Lighthouse Sober, and now he’s doing podcasts, newsletters and he’s currently enrolled to become a Certified Alcohol and Other Drug Counselor (CADC). That is one of our better success stories because he went through everything that we do; the case management piece, the job training piece, the mental health piece and then the referral and resource piece — he was able to get housing too — and you know, he refers his other clients as well, so he’s also a referral source. He also connected us to Lighthouse. We did two job fairs and four job readiness sessions there, took people to get clothing for job interviews at no cost, took them to get free haircuts and then took 13 people to a job fair at Malcolm X College.
3. How have these offerings grown through NICI support?
Eula: There is so much need in the south suburbs, and we’re forgotten about. Funders don’t always fund us. Even if you cannot necessarily fund us, you can maybe offer us some level of technical assistance. Most of the funding streams are going to Chicago, but our issues, our social disparities, mimic Chicago. We have as many homeless people per capita as Chicago, but we don’t have the resources. And that’s where NICI comes in.
The first year we got funded, it was like “wow, they understand what’s happening. They understand the needs of the community. They are really, really on point.” And with some of the dollars for our workforce development program, [our services] have grown by leaps and bounds. We got a training room now and it’s beautiful. We purchased furniture for a technology room. What will happen is people from the community come in and work from there. We’re setting up laptops so they can come in and work on their resumes, and they can connect to various learning streams.
Gloria: It doesn’t matter if you’re in the job readiness program or not. The computers are open to you in the community.
Eula: You know, another thing I think is very fruit-bearing for us is partnering with another NICI grantee partner: OAI, Inc. They’re going to be getting funding together to offer a lot of services in Park Forest, and they are in the process of purchasing the old Walgreens that had moved out. They asked us to partner with them because we do a lot of health-related work. Gloria also has a health background because for 30 or so years Gloria was a healthcare executive. So, we’re gonna work with them on public health.
Gloria: We have referred several of our clients for the clean energy program at OAI from the job readiness program, so we are very well connected with them and are hoping to be even more connected once we get in this space with them. Not only do they help with our operations, but they have broadened our connections too. They build our capacity.
Eula: We actually met OAI at the last NICI grantees meeting. As we went around, I met their CEO, and I met Sandra Dafiaghor, and we just talked. We met and said, “Wow, we can partner up and really work together.” And that’s what we try to do. We try to figure out what are agencies that align with our values and mission, and that are really out there delivering services. They’re passionate, they have empathy, they care. We try to partner with those agencies in a real way that makes a difference.
NICI also provides emotional support. Tovah thinks nothing of coming up and hugging me. I’ll get overwhelmed sharing my life story with her about growing up in public housing and how difficult that was, and she just embraces me and says, “You guys are doing good work.” They always encourage us. They’re not standoffish. They step right in. They embrace the grantees in all kinds of special ways.
