Community Purse Awards $14,150 to the Beacon Place Community Center in Waukegan

On December 10, 2015, members of The Community Purse awarded $14,150 to the Beacon Place Community Center in Waukegan.

“We are so grateful for this donation,” said Beacon Place Executive Director Barb Karacic of Lake Forest. “These funds will help us expand cooking classes for our neighborhood families, obtain technology to support our afterschool tutoring programs, and obtain fresh produce for our children during the summer months. The need is great in Lake County. We’ve been able to help more than 700 individuals in the area.”

Newly formed in February 2015, Community Purse is a giving circle of approximately 145 women who meet to raise funds for charities that serve people in the Lake County, Illinois area. Its members are from Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Gurnee, Green Oaks, Lincolnshire, Deerfield, Hawthorne Woods, and Grayslake. In only a year, they have collectively granted $58,000 to four different Lake County charities.

“It’s all about generosity and loving our neighbors,” said Carolyn Dun, Founder of Community Purse. “We want to be good stewards and giving back to our community is a very important part of that.”

During each Community Purse quarterly meeting, presentations are heard from three nominated local charities. After the presentations, each member votes for her preference of the featured charities. Once the votes are tallied, the selected charity is announced and then each member donates $100 directly to the winning cause. Beacon Place was the proud winner of November’s meeting.

“We were ‘wowed’ by Beacon Place,” said Dun. “We were impressed with the quality of the organization, as well as all the volunteers, staff, and especially the kids. In just three short years, they’ve made an amazing impact.”

In 2012, the founders of Beacon Place pooled resources to purchase an abandoned home at 603 McAlister in Waukegan and turned it into a local community center with the belief in the power of neighbors helping neighbors. Today, Beacon Place bridges education and community needs, providing an integrated approach that delivers support through a neighborhood-based, non-threatening community center. Year-round programs foster commitment, responsibility, and self-reliance, and enable adults and children to develop as stronger individuals and families, and as a community as a whole.

Beacon Place is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization. For more information or how you can support their efforts, please visit www.beacon-place.org or email admin@beacon-place.org.

To learn more about Community Purse, please visit www.communitypurse.org, or join them for their next meeting on February 10 at Mickey Finn’s Brewery, 345 N Milwaukee Ave, Libertyville. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m.