Motorola Mobility Foundation honors working women through the Eleanor Foundation

Award recognizes senior leadership and support the public grant-maker’s 10-year anniversary

 

CHICAGO, IL – The Motorola Mobility Foundation today became the first corporate foundation to bestow its highest recognition for volunteering to Eleanor Foundation Board member Courtney VanLonkhuyzen, Senior Commercial Counsel at Motorola Mobility, Inc. Motorola Mobility’s Volunteer Award for Leadership in Community awarded the Eleanor Foundation a $5,000 grant as part of the company’s 20-year program that recognizes its employees’ service. The company’s philanthropic arm, the Motorola Mobility Foundation, further supported working women as a sponsor of the Eleanor Foundation’s recent benefit that marked its 10-year anniversary as Chicago’s only public foundation dedicated to advancing the economic self-sufficiency of single working women and their families.

“We are grateful to the Motorola Mobility Foundation for supporting Courtney’s contributions to advancing our mission and our work as a whole,” said Nicholas J. Brunick, Eleanor Foundation Board Chair and Partner at Applegate & Thorne-Thomsen PC. “Courtney is a dedicated and dynamic member of our board and foundation committees whose passion for service is contagious. We deeply appreciate her tireless efforts as she engages her family, friends and colleagues to support other working women through the Eleanor Foundation.”

After 104 years of providing working women affordable housing and educational opportunities, in 2002 the Eleanor Foundation began building new programs for Chicago’s single working women who earn less than sustainable wages. The public foundation’s most recent grants awarded $850,000 to diversify job-training opportunities for working women through its Eleanor Network—a citywide collaboration of 14 programs delivered by 17 nonprofit organizations whose service delivery the Eleanor Foundation actively manages to identify what works in moving working women toward greater economic independence.

“One of the most important initiatives of the Motorola Mobility Foundation is the support and encouragement of the incredible work our employees do in our communities across the world,” said Eileen Sweeney, director of the Motorola Mobility Foundation.  “We are proud to recognize Courtney’s dedication to the Eleanor Foundation and contribute to the cause she is so passionate about.”

About the Eleanor Foundation

The Eleanor Foundation invests in innovative programs that help working female heads-of-households in Chicago with incomes of between $10,000 and $40,000 to achieve and maintain economic independence. A public grant-making fund, the Eleanor Foundation is building the Eleanor Network, a unique collaboration with nonprofit organizations and other partners to build and maintain programs that provide these women with access to job-skills training and career development services, along with access to affordable housing, dependable childcare, and financial coaching. The Eleanor Foundation also sponsors research on the needs of the women in its target population, which helps ensure that programs in the Eleanor Network deliver the services these women need. More information is available at www.eleanorfoundation.org.