Chicago Youth Centers invests in youth in underserved communities in Chicago to help them discover and realize their full potential.

Chicago Youth Centers (CYC) is Chicago's largest independent, locally based, multi-site youth services organization. It was founded in 1956 by two visionaries, Chicago businessmen Elliott Donnelley and Sidney Epstein, who wanted young people living in poverty to have an alternative to the streets.

CYC was born out of three boys' clubs that had fallen on hard times. With the merger of the American Boys Commonwealth Club and the Boys Brotherhood Republic in North Lawndale together with the South Side Boys Club (later renamed the Elliott Donnelley Youth Center) in Bronzeville, a new city-wide agency was formed:

The year was 1956, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower had successfully transitioned from the head of an army at war to the head of a country at peace. By the mid-fifties, many Americans had gotten quite comfortable with the new post-war prosperity ….