About Us
History
The year was 1995 when Mary A. Santana, founder and Executive Director of The Miracle Center, dreamt of spending more time with her son Adrian. As a single mother, Mary felt the burden of being at work and away from her child. In a complete act of faith, Mary resigned from her position as Sales Associate at Petersen Publishing to turn her desire into a reality. Initially, she wanted to tap into the gifts and talents of her son, but soon realized many other children in her neighborhood had untapped potential.
Mary’s Camp was born; a 9-week Summer Arts Camp out of her basement apartment. The children were taught dance, choir, music, and theater, and were taken to new and exciting places like the Field Museum, Lake Michigan’s Oak Street Beach, and Lincoln Park Zoo. More importantly, Mary’s camp provided a structured, loving, fun environment for the children in her neighborhood.
As the children whose lives she impacted nearly ten years ago have grown, so has Mary’s Camp. By the summer of 1997 the name had changed to The Miracle Center and the vision had expanded. Over the next five years, The Miracle Center became incorporated and recognized as an official non-profit organization. Mary forged numerous partnerships throughout Humboldt Park, where she ran the Summer Arts Camps. In 2002, The Miracle Center expanded its programs, offering eight week Saturday Arts activities, Christmas Break activities, carnivals and festivals for the community. The Miracle Center also opened two centers in Tampa, Florida to meet the needs of that city’s youth.
In January of 2003, The Miracle Center began offering year round after-school programs for children and youth of all ages. Today, The Miracle Center is a vibrant not-for-profit whose success is driven by a visionary leader and a diverse team of experienced full and part-time paid and volunteer staff.
Return to Top
Mission
The Miracle Center is a Christian based agency whose purpose is to help children, youth, and families particularly through the arts to grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally, socially and physically during after-school and out-of- school programs.
Return to Top
Vision
Our vision is to replicate our programs to serve children, youth and families in various communities through Chicago, the United States and internationally with the goal of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and giving them the chance to have a personal relationship with God. As a result, they will have a greater chance at experiencing joy and fulfilling their God-given purpose in life.
Return to Top
Goals
-
Develop children’s support networks.
-
Empower Youth and build a foundation for them to become active citizens and leaders in their communities.
-
Set boundaries, limitations, and high expectations for children.
-
Create opportunities to engage in creative, challenging, fun activities.
-
Strengthen children’s commitment to their own education.
-
Develop children’s values and their moral foundation.
-
Develop children’s view of their own personal identity.
-
Develop children’s abilities needed to maintain healthy, meaningful relationships.
Return to Top
Strategies
In order to achieve our goals and reach our mission
we implement all of our programs using the following two strategies.
1. We use multi-disciplinary arts instruction as a vehicle to spark creativity, foster self-expression, and create opportunities to boost children’s self-esteem, self-image, and self-worth.
Numerous research studies demonstrate the benefits of arts programming on the development of a child’s social development. “Self-concept is positively enhanced through the arts…as are language acquisition, cognitive development, critical-thinking ability and social skills,” reports Jerry Trusty and Giacomo M. Oliva (The effects of Arts and Music Education on Students’ Self-Concept, 1994).
2. We employ the Search Institute’s model of equipping young people with 40 Key Developmental Assets.
A similar study of 429 economically poor Hispanic and African American students from Houston found that students with higher asset levels had 24% to 52% more indicators of thriving, including getting mostly A’s, than students at lower asset levels. Also, those with few assets (0 – 10) were 7 times more likely to skip school frequently and have below C averages than students with above average levels of assets (21 – 30). (Insights & Evidence, Scales, Roehlkepartain, Bartig, Benson, Sesma, and Manfred; October 2003, vol.1, no.1)
Return to Top
|
773-276-5933
