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Welcome to the Mothers Trust Foundation

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Mission Statement

The Mothers Trust Foundation is a non-profit organization supporting social service providers by offering assistance to children in need in Lake County, Illinois. We make benefits and opportunities available which cannot be obtained from other sources. Our goal is to assist children in trouble or crisis, raise awareness of children's needs, link needs with community resources and provide opportunities for volunteers to be involved.

The Mothers Trust Foundation provides emergency funding to children in crisis in Lake County Illinois. Since our founding in 1998, this little kitchen-table group of volunteers has granted more than $1,100,000 to help approximately 12,000 kids.

Every week, we review requests for help from social workers, court officers and school counselors in Lake County who work with children in difficulty or crisis. Through our funding, we provide emergency assistance for the least fortunate children in Lake County - assistance no one else can provide.

Examples of our grants are as different as the children we help.

• We paid for anti-rejection medication for a young child who received an organ transplant. The child's mother had a gap in health coverage because of a job change and she couldn't afford the life-saving medication.
  
  
• We helped a 17-year-old girl who had been abandoned by her family take a critical step toward college.

• We provided a stroller, clothing and personal hygiene items for a 19-year-old girl who gave birth prematurely because of domestic abuse and is now living in a shelter with her five-day-old baby.

• We provided winter clothing for four homeless children.

• We paid basketball fees for three high school boys to keep them on the court and out of gangs.

• We provided eyeglasses for a first grader who didn't know what it meant to see clearly.

These are needs that fall through the cracks - needs that never get met without Mothers Trust Foundation. While not usually life threatening, each of these issues was an emergency to the child, and an opportunity for Mothers Trust Foundation to fulfill our promise of helping kids when no one else can.

Requests we fund must meet certain criteria:

• The referral must come from a qualified professional social worker or counselor. The need must be time-limited, not continuous.

• The requested assistance must provide an identifiable benefit. The requested assistance will not be available from another source.

• The payment must go to a business, school, tutor or other provider, not the family or referring agency.

• The beneficiary must live in Lake County, IL and be between birth and 21 years old.

Despite their size, charities such as Catholic Charities, Lake County Health Department, and DCFS rely on the Mothers Trust Foundation to provide for needs that fall outside their specific goals and mandates. As a result, we are often their only hope.

Service Committee Responds The Mothers Trust Foundation is unique in another way - because our Service Committee meets each week, we can respond immediately to emergency requests. Our average grant to a child is only $100, but that $100 can make a huge difference to a child or family in need. The Mothers Trust Foundation, established in 1998, is a nonprofit 501 (c) 3 organization. Click here to learn more about the history of the Mothers Trust Foundation.

Eunice Bridges, Emergency Services Counselor of Zion Township and Nancy Wells, our Service Committee Chair