Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, center left, cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of the Gandhi King Center for Nonviolence food trailer on Feb. 1, 2023, in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago.
May Elementary School closed its doors in 2016 during widespread Chicago Public School shutdowns, but that didn’t stop it from being an active community center. The building, now the Center of Englewood, serves as a food pantry, a child development center, a medical center and, on Wednesday, launched the Gandhi King Center for Nonviolence to celebrate Black History Month.
The new center, housed alongside the other community services in the former school, was named in honor of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. because of their anti-violence efforts, saidThe center received $50,000 from Discount Tire and Medstar Laboratory to help get started and to provide a mobile food pantry to serve Englewood.
Fifteen agencies, including Shepherd’s Hope, Bethel Mennonite Community Church, The Link and Option Center, Medstar Laboratory and The American Association of Multi Ethnic Physicians, worked together for two years to get the center up on its feet.
Founder of the Gandhi King Center for Nonviolence, Vijay Prabhakar speaks at the center’s grand opening on Feb. 1, 2023, in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago.