Founded in 1990, TaskForce Prevention & Community Services (TaskForce) is located on the west side of Chicago, in the heart of the Austin community. The agency’s board of directors, staff, and community stakeholders work together to approach preventive healthcare holistically.
TaskForce is a grassroots organization committed to improving the sexual health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth of color in Chicago living in systematically disenfranchised communities with limited resources by providing a safe space for fellowship, HIV/STI screening and education, and on-site referrals to medical, housing, and other social services. We are dedicated to making a difference by working towards solutions in partnership with our community in order to improve our overall quality of life. We are proud to serve 260 LGBTQ+ young people each month, including 700 unique LGBTQ+ youth each year.
We do this work through our values:
Collaborative: We build relationships, create and sustain partnerships, and develop networks.
Committed: We are unswerving toward our mission, the health of our community, and finding resources to make a difference.
Client Driven: We listen to voices, respond to the needs and direct our work toward impacting the syndemics of our community.
Proactive: We look ahead, watch the trends, and engage in the research to be on the leading edge.
Youth Empowered: We integrate youth in all our work, provide peer to peer guidance and support, and mentor role models for the future.
Culturally Responsive: We enhance our knowledge, actions, and interventions to address the needs of our community.
Our service model reflects the reciprocal relationship between our grassroots history, our community led programming and services, and our commitment to evidence based and informed practice.
Drop-in Space (“The Vogue School”): Provide a safe drop-in space for community members to freely express themselves and build a sense of community. Check out a video of The Vogue School above!
HIV Testing: Conduct outreach to test youth and connect them to care.
HIV Education: Provide culturally- specific sexual health promotion information and STI prevention education to community youth members.
Medical Services: Provide onsite medical services regardless of ability to pay.
Food Pantry: Provide LGBTQ+ youth members and local community members with food to mitigate food insecurities.
Legal Services: Provide community members with access to free legal services, including name change assistance, record expungement and legal representation for misdemeanors.
Mental Health Counseling: Provide mental health counseling services to community members through a mental health mobile van.
Job Training and Advocacy: Advocate for companies to hire transgender community members and provide job training skill to transgender community members.
Prevention: Culturally tailored the Cure Violence intervention to address intra-community violence and currently piloting the intervention.
Advocacy and Organizing: Work with community members to advocate and organization against structural violence and use performing arts to highlight those concerns.
Spotlights & Recognition
- Chicago Magazine Feature: For years, LGBTQ youth have met in a West Side storefront to practice the iconic dance form. Read the full article here.
- Chicago Mayor's Award: To kickoff LGBTQ+ Pride 2021, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot awarded four Chicago community based organizations, including TaskForce. Check out the video.
- Supporting Bill HB2542 - Name Change Registration (102nd Illinois General Assembly): This year we joined the call to adopt HB2542. Read more about the bill and its' current status here.
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