Celebrating 30 years of health education: Our work with the Chicago Women’s Health Center

For more than 40 years, the Chicago Women’s Health Center (CWHC) has provided affordable health care to women, nonbinary, and trans people within the Chicago community and across the Midwest. CWHC provides an extensive range of services on a sliding pay scale—from gynecology and counseling to fertility awareness and trans health. And 30 years ago, CWHC established an education program to provide comprehensive and inclusive sexual health education to young people, especially those in underserved communities. To support this work, Leff partnered with CWHC to develop a campaign that celebrates 30 years of accessible, compassionate, health-education programming.

The campaign is built around a cornerstone event CWHC is hosting on May 30, “It Starts with Sex Ed.” Education, and inclusivity in sex education, is critical for young people of all backgrounds, experiences, and orientations to feel empowered and make health decisions that are right for them. Experts say that students who don’t see their experiences reflected in sex ed are more likely to “check out.” As a result, they can miss opportunities to gain the knowledge they need to live healthy, safe lives rooted in body positivity, self-respect, and empathy. Not only does CWHC provide comprehensive sex education to young adults but they offer courses for adults, as well as parent-and-child workshops. The theme of the campaign speaks to the CWHC perspective—it starts with education, but it doesn’t end there. CWHC offers critical programming and services that bridge the gap between sex education and empowerment around overall health.

We at Leff are proud to support their campaign leading up to this event through design and video work. Our partnership with CWHC began in February, when a small team at Leff was tasked with reviewing a large list of nonprofit organizations nominated by our team members and making the difficult decision on which one we are well-positioned to support through pro-bono, skills-based work. We’d asked that the nonprofits be local, so that we could take an active role supporting members of our community. It was not an easy choice. Luckily we were quickly in alignment that CWHC provided a deeply valuable service to the Chicago community, particularly its underserved young people. And in a climate where access to health care and women’s rights are contested fiercely, we felt strongly that equitable access to health care and health education was of the moment—and timeless.

As a first step, our design team created new branding for event and marketing collateral. The designs, which feature hand lettering, have been shared on the CWHC website, social media, and email. We’re also developing a fundraising video that will be launched at the May 30 event, which we’ll share in a future post.

Although our partnership with CWHC is far from over, we’ve already enjoyed the experience thus far. The team has been eager to share their story and help us better understand their role in the Chicago and greater Midwest community. We’re excited to play a small role in helping them share that story.

We’ll be at the “It Starts With Sex Ed” event on May 30, supporting CWHC and all the work they’ve done for the Chicago community—and what they will do in the future. We hope to see you there.

To learn more about other important nonprofits serving the Chicago community, check out our posts on Growing Home here and here.

Leave a Reply