DuPagePads operates the county’s first, around-the-clock interim housing shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

The Wheaton-based nonprofit marked another first on Tuesday: the largest private gift in its history. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos have recognized DuPagePads with a $5 million grant from the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund.

“We were ecstatic,” said April Redzic, president and CEO of DuPagePads.

The 40-year-old organization plans to use the $5 million over the next five years to expand outreach, create year-round family overflow shelter and accelerate rapid rehousing for families, officials said in a grant announcement. The funds will also sustain educational and transportation supports for children experiencing homelessness.

“We are incredibly grateful to be recognized for our visionary work in ending homelessness with more dignity, respect and success, and honored that we were selected among the 32 recipients, and the only one in Illinois to benefit from the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund this year,” said Chad Pedigo, chief development officer at DuPagePads.

The organization historically relied on rotating, church-based overnight shelters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, advocates moved unhoused people from those congregate sites to empty hotel rooms to shield them from the virus.

With the help of $5 million from the county, DuPagePads made the arrangement permanent. The nonprofit acquired and converted a former hotel into its interim housing center, providing individuals and families with the privacy of their own room.

Currently, there are close to 110 children at the hotel-turned-shelter. That’s “more than a third of our entire population at our interim housing center,” Redzic said.

“We’re going to use this to do more to get them housed faster, and to make sure our kids have all those educational supports that they need,” she said of the grant, formally announced on GivingTuesday.

Since moving into the new model of shelter, “one of the things that we have seen happen is we have kids who go to school, and they are back in a regular school environment, after the instability that comes from being homeless,” Redzic said.

However, “so many of their friends at school get to go to park district events and after-school activities, and we haven’t had a way to transport them. So part of this grant will go to giving them, our kids who are in shelter, that opportunity,” Redzic said.

The schools and park districts that kids at the interim housing center attend don’t have a bus service available for after-school activities, and many do not have personal transportation, Pedigo explained. DuPagePads will be able to use a portion of the funds to secure transportation to provide that access for students to participate in those programs.

That, in turn, means students can have “a greater sense of self and normalcy, and then hopefully be able to thrive by being able to do what they’re seeing their peers doing,” Pedigo said.

This year, Bezos Day 1 Families Fund issued $102.5 million in grants to 32 organizations.

“I think one of the things that specifically stood out to them was our vision that no child sleeps in a car,” Redzic said.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20251202/news/dupagepads-receives-historic-5-million-grant-from-jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-bezos/