What is nextTV?
nextTV is an Emmy-Award Winning business and lifestyle program focusing on the urban community. nextTV promotes positive images of African Americans and provides an up close and personal look at how people are changing their lives.
nextTV is a hip, sophisticated and fast-paced half-hour weekly program that showcases the transformation of African Americans as they grow their businesses, makeover their careers, enter the job market, and discover the tools to achieve financial security.
nextTV uses a reality TV approach to track the progress of the Chicago Urban League’s nextONE businesses and clients in the workforce and financial literacy programs.
nextTV’s second season broadcast on FOX Chicago Sunday morning at 8am and an encore at 12:30 pm on WPWR My50 starting April 11, 2010.
The Chicago Urban League was established in 1916 by an interracial group of community leaders to help rural African Americans migrating from the South in unprecedented numbers adjust to urban living. The establishment of the Chicago chapter was viewed then as an important step to spreading the National Urban League’s civil rights agenda across mid-America and parts of the West.
Over the years, the League’s leadership and address changed but its mission of promoting social and economic advancement for Chicago’s African-American citizens remained the same. In January 1956, the legendary Edwin C. (“Bill”) Berry left the Portland, Oregon, Urban League to take the helm in Chicago. Berry once described Chicago as “the most important city in race relations in the world.” (Chicago Defender, November 26, 1955).
In the fall of 2006, Cheryle Robinson Jackson became the first woman to be elected president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Urban League. In February 2007, Ms. Jackson announced the League was “getting out of the social services business” and launched projectNext---a new agenda focused exclusively on economic empowerment as the key driver of social change.
Today, under the leadership of Herman Brewer, acting CEO and President, the Chicago Urban League remains dedicated to its founding mission—the economic empowerment of African Americans, and as a thought leader nationally on issues of economic development for African Americans.
MISSION:
- The Chicago Urban League supports and advocates for economic, educational and social progress for African Americans through our agenda focused exclusively on economic empowerment as the key driver for social change.
- The Chicago Urban League provides African Americans with the tools, the programs and the experiences to help them reach their full economic potential. We are committed to growing Chicago’s African-American workforce and business community with well-informed pursuit of the following four strategies:
- Ensuring that African-American children are well-educated and prepared to lead in the global economy;
- Helping individuals and families attain economic empowerment through employment, homeownership, entrepreneurship and wealth accumulation;
- Advocating for policies and programs that ensure equal participation by African Americans in the economic and social mainstream;
- Creating positive cultural images.
To learn how the Chicago Urban League can help you please visit:
www.TheChicagoUrbanLeague.org
