Bronzeville is the site of the first physical space for the nonprofit Free Root Operation, an organization that provides wellness and economic development services for women to combat generational trauma.
With Free Root Operation, founder and executive director Eva Maria Lewis combats the impacts of systemic inequalities — such as disinvestment and residential segregation — that have caused disadvantages for Black people living on the South and West sides. Her goal is to mitigate what she describes as “poverty-induced gun violence.”
“I believe the gun violence that we experience here is directly tied to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade,” Lewis said. “In order to combat that, we don’t need to necessarily look at behavior and modification in people and individualistic prevention methods, but we need to look at systems as a whole and also to approach a person through a multi-lineage analysis.”
The 4,000-square-foot center includes three main rooms for programming and space for counseling. Also included is a kitchen and a full bathroom, which Lewis said is essential in helping women who are battling housing insecurity to have a place to take care of their basic needs with “dignity.”
To respect the privacy and safety of the network, Lewis keeps the address of the center on a need-to-know basis.
Free Root Operation received a nearly $500,000 grant through the Cook County Health Office of Behavioral Health Stronger Together initiative last year. In 2023, the nonprofit also received a Cook County Starting Block grant through the Justice Advisory Council for $100,000 over two years, which helped secure the site. The grants also helped Free Root expand its staff to include an in-house clinical team and to hire a full-time director of operations.
Free Root services women through its main community component, the Bloom Network. The network includes the Bloom Cohort, a six-month program in which groups of women aged 18-65 go through professional and learning development and workshops to help build up their professional resumes and prioritize self-care. Participants receive counseling and access to entrepreneurship workshops, nature retreats and professional headshots.
Upon completing the Bloom Cohort, participants receive a certificate in professional leadership development, which Lewis said has led some women to go back to school, start a business or tap into unknown gifts such as public speaking.
“It’s really in-depth, wrap-around services, pretty much forming a hedge of protection and innovation and imagination around these women, and then helping them to knock down the walls that have been blocking them throughout the course of their lives,” Lewis said.
The move into the new space marks a milestone for Lewis who is celebrating 10 years of her nonprofit. Founded when Lewis was a junior in high school, Free Root was officially incorporated as a nonprofit in 2020.
“This is like my 10th year of doing things to this degree. And I think there were so many stepping stones, like getting the 501(c)3, was a big deal, and it was an aspiration,” Lewis said. “Getting donations, getting grants, just getting foundational pillars up so that the organization was a real organization.”
Lewis started Free Root Operation as a blog where she allowed others to share their stories of the impacts of gun violence while living in disinvested areas. Growing up in South Shore and traveling up North for high school, Lewis said she saw the lack of investment in her community. That was part of what motivated her to start her work to feed the needs of her community.
“What jolted me into action was trauma and trying to reconcile my experience, having the intersections that I have with being a refugee from my community, never being able to be in public schools in my immediate community because the programs were not equitably funded, the schools were not safe. There were a lot of factors in the community that would have created glass ceilings for me,” Lewis said.
The organization has gone through various concepts in its 10-year life span, Lewis said: from a “catch-all” for any social justice and community engagement-related mission to morphing into the Bloom Cohort and network.
“We were just picking apart these different pieces of divestment in general, because that’s been the focus,” Lewis said. “And it was through hearing people’s needs that we narrowed down [the focus] to women.”
In collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, Lewis said Free Root Operation will release a research project this summer that will show the impact of the organization’s methods.
“It’s gonna be really amazing, not just for Chicago, but for the whole country. A lot of people will be able to go to it and say we should pour into Black women.”
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