About By The Hand Club For Kids

A child can struggle with reading because they need a tutor.

They can also struggle because they're hungry.

Because they can't see the board.

Because something difficult is happening at home.

Because they don't feel safe.

Because no adult has convinced them yet that their future can look different from their present.

By The Hand Club For Kids understands those problems are rarely separate.

So instead of choosing one piece of a child's life to address, the ministry tries to walk alongside the whole child.

Mind.

Body.

Soul.

And it keeps walking.

It Began With 16 Kids

On March 20, 2001, By The Hand opened its doors to 16 children from Chicago's Cabrini-Green neighborhood.

The beginning was remarkably small.

Founder Donnita Travis had a vision for reaching children living in under-resourced communities, and the earliest program operated from classrooms at The Moody Church.

Even the first staff member agreed to begin working without pay until donations could support her salary.

There wasn't yet a large organization behind the idea.

There were children.

There was a conviction that God was calling someone to serve them.

And there was a willingness to begin.

Those 16 children became the foundation for everything that followed.

Stay Longer Than an After-School Program Usually Does

The phrase after-school program can make By The Hand sound smaller than it is.

The club certainly operates during those important hours between school and home.

Children receive transportation, meals, academic help, enrichment opportunities, mentoring, and other support.

But By The Hand's relationship with a child isn't supposed to end when the afternoon ends.

It isn't supposed to end when elementary school ends either.

The ministry intentionally walks with students from kindergarten through high school, college, and beyond.

That changes the relationship.

A struggling second grader isn't simply today's tutoring assignment.

They're someone the ministry hopes to watch grow into a healthy, educated, hopeful adult.

Teach a Child to Read

Academic achievement is one of By The Hand's major priorities.

Literacy receives particular attention because falling behind in reading can affect nearly everything that follows.

A child who can't comfortably read the textbook may begin struggling with science.

Then history.

Then written instructions.

Eventually, a reading problem can look like a student who simply isn't good at school.

By The Hand intervenes with personalized academic support, tutoring, technology-enabled instruction, homework help, and literacy specialists.

As students grow older, the conversation expands.

Which high school should they pursue?

Could college become realistic?

What career interests them?

How will they get there?

The ministry wants children to see education not as something happening to them, but as one of the tools that can expand what becomes possible for their future.

Remove the Things Getting in the Way

Sometimes tutoring isn't enough.

A child can't concentrate well on an empty stomach.

Glasses matter when the board is blurry.

Dental pain can make an ordinary school day miserable.

Trauma doesn't disappear because homework starts at four o'clock.

By The Hand therefore addresses physical and emotional needs alongside academics.

Students receive hot, nutritious meals.

Healthcare partnerships provide services such as vision and dental care.

Professional counseling can help children work through emotional difficulties.

Sports, camps, field trips, art, and enrichment activities allow them to experience parts of childhood that shouldn't be swallowed by hardship.

Meeting those needs isn't separate from education.

It helps make learning possible.

Put Jesus at the Center

By The Hand is explicitly Christ-centered.

Its vision is for children living in under-resourced neighborhoods to experience abundant life, language rooted in Jesus' words in John 10:10.

Students participate in chapel and receive spiritual guidance and personal mentoring.

They learn about God's love.

They encounter Scripture.

They are encouraged to understand their worth in relationship to the God who created them.

For By The Hand, spiritual development isn't an extra program added after the academic work is finished.

It's part of caring for the whole person.

A student needs more than good grades.

They need character.

Wisdom.

Hope.

A sense of identity.

People who will pray for them.

And ultimately, By The Hand believes abundant life is found in Jesus.

Go Where the Need Is

The ministry didn't remain in Cabrini-Green.

As it grew, By The Hand intentionally established clubs in other under-resourced Chicago neighborhoods, including Altgeld-Murray, Austin, Englewood, and North Austin.

Those locations matter.

By The Hand doesn't expect every child to somehow find their way to opportunity.

It moves into the neighborhood.

Schools help identify students who need intervention.

Staff members get to know families.

Transportation helps students move safely between school, the club, and home.

Over time, a club becomes more than a building where homework gets finished.

It becomes part of the community surrounding the child.

Don't Forget the Family

A child's life doesn't restart when they walk through the club doors.

Whatever is happening at home comes with them.

By The Hand has therefore developed ways to support families facing crisis and compassionate needs.

That might involve circumstances affecting housing, food, stability, or other immediate pressures.

The ministry recognizes something important:

Helping a child while ignoring the environment they return to every night can only go so far.

Sometimes loving the student means coming alongside the family too.

Let Kids Become the People Who Give Back

Eventually, something beautiful begins to happen.

The child who received help becomes old enough to help someone else.

Former students return.

Graduates become professionals.

Young people begin serving their neighborhoods, mentoring younger students, caring for their families, and showing another child what's possible.

That multiplication is part of By The Hand's vision.

Success isn't merely getting a student out of a difficult neighborhood.

It's helping that student become someone capable of bringing goodness back into it.

The story stops being about rescuing children from communities.

It becomes about raising young men and women who can help transform those communities from within.

Keep Holding the Hand

There are faster ways to run a children's program.

Long-term relationships aren't one of them.

Walking with someone from kindergarten through college requires years of tutoring, meals, conversations, prayer, transportation, celebrations, disappointments, graduations, mistakes, mentoring, and showing up again.

But that's exactly what the name promises.

By The Hand.

Not push from behind.

Not point from a distance.

Walk beside.

At the heart of By The Hand Club For Kids is the belief that a child's circumstances should not be allowed to define the limits of their future. The ministry enters under-resourced Chicago neighborhoods and stays for the long journey—helping children learn to read, feeding them, addressing health and emotional needs, introducing them to new opportunities, mentoring them through adolescence, preparing them for college and careers, and pointing them toward the abundant life found in Jesus. It began with 16 children and a willingness to follow God's call. Twenty-five years later, the method is still captured in the name: find a child who needs someone beside them, take them by the hand, and keep walking.