Our Strategy
Mission Statement
With residents and partners, LISC forges resilient and inclusive communities of opportunity across America – great places to live, work, visit, do business and raise families.
For over 40 years, LISC has deployed a comprehensive strategy for
Empowering People: People are our greatest source of strength. Connect underserved populations and communities to resources. (job skills, career development, financial coaching, access to healthcare, good food, and recreation space and investing in education facilities)
Transforming Communities: Communities like Peoria are rich with opportunity and physical assets – which are the prerequisite for healthy, happy lives and a strong society. We work with partners to support vital local economies and safe, affordable places to live, work and go to school. This takes many forms, including preservation and construction of affordable housing, commercial and industrial district development, creative placemaking, transit-oriented development, sustainable building and disaster resiliency and community-law enforcement partnerships.
Supporting Local Economies: Our approach to economic development embraces small business lending and coaching, building capacity for local partners, leadership development and deployment of AmeriCorps members with community organizations across the country.
Fostering Leadership & Innovation: We promote resource advocacy and coalition building, help forge collaboration across sectors, and advocate for policies and practices that sustain and protect this work at the national, state and local levels.
LISC Central Illinois focuses on:
Transforming Communities
LISC believes a safe, affordable home is one of the basic requisites of life - a key to individual health and well-being and the foundation for sustainable, economically vibrant and diverse neighborhoods.
Housing is where LISC started. And it’s still the cornerstone of our mission, even as our vision has expanded to incorporate work to improve education, health, safety and economic growth in the places where we work. LISC helps make quality, affordable housing available to low-income and vulnerable residents—from seniors to veterans to the formerly homeless—in underserved communities.
Empowering People
Healthy, sustainable communities are made up of people who have living wage jobs and feel confident about their economic futures. To get there, residents need the skills to advance along the path of employment and manage their money well.Financial Opportunity Centers (FOCs) are career and personal finance service centers that help low-to moderate-income people build smart money habits and focus on the financial bottom line. LISC has a network of nearly 100 FOCs across the country that are trusted, known for their history of providing quality services, and convenient to where people live and seek out services.
Supporting Local Economies
Our work hinges on the insight, experience and expertise of hundreds of community development groups rebuilding neighborhoods across the country. The better they do their job, the better we can do ours--and the more communities we support together.
So we help them to become more effective change-makers. We do this through financing, in the form of operating grants and working capital. And it happens via training programs and learning opportunities for staff and leadership at the community development corporations (CDCs) and many other local groups with whom we partner.