The Alpha Illinois Leadership Foundation’s (AILF) mission is to develop youth and families to become community advocates through awareness, education, and advocacy. To advance our mission, the Alpha Illinois Leadership Foundation was founded to develop, advocate and support our Community Empowerment and Advocacy Institute. The Community Empowerment and Advocacy Institute’s target population is African American and Latinx residents living in Illinois communities with high-risk factors such as poverty, single-parent households, community unemployment, and high school dropout.

AILF serves this at-risk population by engaging community residents with strategies to engage on multiple levels to help them overcome these barriers to success. Unlike many programs that view residents as clients or cases, we empower residents as individuals with meaningful contributions toward problems plaguing their community. In collaboration with many of the chapters and partners of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., for more than four years, Alpha Illinois Leadership Foundation has provided services, addressing youth and other community violence, lack of economic development and financial empowerment, disparities in mental and physical health, and the pressures found in low-to-moderate income communities to drop out of school and participate in street activities.