Jane Addams (1860-1935) exemplified activism dedicated to creating holistic solutions to the challenges faced by real people. Inspired in part by the Toynbee Hall settlement house in London’s East End, where university graduates lived in community with working class and poor people, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr founded their own settlement house on Chicago’s West […]

February 23, 2023 Our kids need help… After two years of lockdowns and other pandemic-related measures, many children are still falling behind in school. In the city of Baltimore, 23 schools have zero students proficient in math. In the state of Illinois, it’s 53 — and 30 have no students proficient in reading. Study after study shows that the United States

February 18, 2023 Alarming Studies Prove Girls Deserve Better! As you likely know, FFL has expanded our efforts to reach teens, especially at-risk younger girls, before they hit college and the workplace. Unfortunately, the abuse and violence they face have risen exponentially. The surgeon general has recently confirmed that 13-year-olds are way too young to be online. But

Abolitionist and suffragist Frederick Douglass was born into slavery to a mixed-race mother and a White father on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland, in February of 1818. Although no official record of his birthday exists, it is commonly attributed to Valentine’s Day, because his mother called him her “little