CHICAGO, May 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CME Group Foundation today announced that it has awarded nearly $3 million in grants to further support kindergarten readiness and K-12 programming across Chicago and Illinois.

“CME Group Foundation is proud to support these innovative programs and the critical work they are doing for our students and our community,” said Kassie Davis, Executive Director, CME Group Foundation. “Our mission is founded on equipping our children with the resources to achieve academic and career success, while also creating a future workforce that benefits the economy more broadly. We look forward to working alongside our grantees to empower future generations through education.”

These grants include $1,275,000 in support of kindergarten readiness programs, which will help to better equip children for later academic achievement, and $700,000 in grants to support K-12 programming with a strong focus on computer science, financial education and personalized learning through technology.

CME Group Foundation also awarded a special grant of $1,000,000 to the Obama Foundation in support of its Chicago programming, which includes partnerships with My Brother’s Keeper Alliance in Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. This funding will support programming that works to reduce barriers and expand opportunity for boys and young men of color from cradle to college and career. This funding will also support the Obama Foundation’s work towards building civic youth leaders in Chicago.

For over a decade, CME Group Foundation has funded transformative projects that promote real, measurable impact and has helped to prepare K-12 students for success in college and careers through the use of technology and computer science education.

A complete list of CME Group Foundation grantees follows:

Kindergarten Readiness

• Illinois State University
• Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL)
• Big Shoulders Fund
• Carole Robertson Center
• Chicago Public Library Foundation
• Christopher House
• Children First Fund, the Chicago Public Schools Foundation
• DeKalb Regional Office of Education
• Erikson Institute
• Fred Rogers Productions
• Holy Family Ministries
• Illinois Action for Children
• Juvenile Protective Association
• Kohl Children's Museum
• LEARN Charter Schools
• Metropolitan Family Services
• Purpose Foundation
• Start Early
• Teach for America
• Teach Plus
• University of Chicago STEM Ed
• University of Illinois-Chicago
• Waterford Institute

Education K-12 – Financial Education   

• Children First Fund, the Chicago Public Schools Foundation
• Everfi
• Junior Achievement

Education K-12 – Computer Science

• University of Illinois Champaign Urbana
• STEMConnector
• After School Matters
• Boy Scouts of America
• Chicago Learning Exchange
• Chicago Pre-college Science & Engineering
• Chicago Youth Centers
• ChickTech
• CPS Children First Fund
• Code Nation
• Deaf Kids Code
• DePaul University
• Distinctive Schools
• Field Museum
• Illinois Science and Technology Institute
• Loyola University Chicago
• Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
• Project Exploration
• Project Lead the Way
• Project Syncere
• Union League Boys and Girls Clubs
• Universidad Popular
• We All Code
• YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago

Education K-12 – Use of Technology to Personalize Learning 

• SAGA Innovations

Special Grants

• Obama Foundation
• GreenLight Fund
• Mikva Challenge
• Civic Consulting Alliance

For more information about CME Group Foundation, please visit the website: www.cmegroupfoundation.org.

About CME Group Foundation

CME Group Foundation helps today's students keep pace with dramatically evolving technology, creating a workforce for the future that is equipped with the skills to meet tomorrow's global challenges. By bringing together the brightest minds in education to generate fresh approaches to early math, computer science, personalized learning, and college and career success, we are sparking system-wide change that benefits all students, from cradle to career.  They will shape the future of the world's most important industries, including our own, so we give them the tools they need to achieve their full potential.

About CME Group

As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals.  The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex® platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing. With a range of pre- and post-trade products and services underpinning the entire lifecycle of a trade, CME Group also offers optimization and reconciliation services through TriOptima, and trade processing services through Traiana.

CME Group, the Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Globex, and, E-mini are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.  CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc.  NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc.  COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. BrokerTec, EBS, TriOptima, and Traiana are trademarks of BrokerTec Europe LTD, EBS Group LTD, TriOptima AB, and Traiana, Inc., respectively. Dow Jones, Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and S&P are service and/or trademarks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC, Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and S&P/Dow Jones Indices LLC, as the case may be, and have been licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 

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SOURCE CME Group