More Help for Chicago

World Vision helps equip hundreds of community organizations across the U.S., including Chicago’s H.E.L.P.S., which nurtures those working to overcome addiction and depression. This Chicago ministry runs on a limited budget, so when its building needed renovation, they turned to World Vision for assistance.

Thanks to World Vision’s generous donors, we were able to provide many of the building supplies for the ministry's renovation.

Eight years ago, Angelo Valdez left his full-time job at a homeless shelter because he wanted to work one-on-one with people in need and understand the cause of their brokenness. Soon Angelo founded H.E.L.P.S. (Hope, Encouragement, Love, and Prayer) ministry in St. Charles, a Chicago suburb.

“I just realized that there’s a whole set of people that need hope,” he says. “Somebody to give them hope that they can be different, that their life can be better.”

In 2007, World Vision opened a satellite warehouse facility in nearby Elgin, offering new donated supplies to local organizations working with low-income families. These building materials went a long way to helping Angelo build his organization’s live-in recovery program with donations of tiles, flooring, paint, sinks, faucets, and even tub surrounds for his live-in recovery program.

“It’s a wonderful place,” says Angelo of the World Vision facility.

H.E.L.P.S. also purchased a building previously owned by the Salvation Army—a place where Angelo once worked. Now he had come full circle and was starting his own organization, this one a community center that serves neighborhood children, youth, and families.

In creating the new center, Angelo again turned to World Vision, receiving building supplies including sinks, faucets, windows, tiles, counter-tops, doors, carpet tiles, and lighting fixtures. Terina Erb, a former client who now serves with H.E.L.P.S., says, “It wouldn’t be completed right now if it weren’t for the Storehouse because the cost would’ve been way too much.”

Through a partnership with World Vision, H.E.L.P.S. has expanded its outreach—impacting and changing so many lives. “They’ve helped out a lot of families,” Terina says.

World Vision is thankful for the generosity of corporate partners providing the necessary building materials that enable us to come along side families and community organizations like H.E.L.P.S. Together we are building a better world for children.