The Romeoville Fire Academy is proud to announce its selection as a partner in Endeavor Health's 2024 Community Investment Fund (CIF). This year, the Fire Academy has been awarded $100,000 to support workforce development aimed at recruiting, training and launching firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) careers with a focus on young adults from diverse communities.
“Our fire academy does such a tremendous job training not only Romeoville’s firefighters and EMTs, but also those from surrounding communities, states, and even other countries,” said Romeoville Mayor John Noak. “This grant will allow the academy to apply that training excellence to new recruits who have dreamed of being firefighters, but could not afford the training.”
Endeavor Health selected the Fire Academy as one of 43 local organizations across the Chicagoland area to collaborate on programs focused on behavioral health, violence prevention, housing and food insecurity, access to care and workforce development.
“Our Community Investment Fund has made a remarkable impact since its launch in 2022, touching over 211,000 lives and supporting a significant expansion of behavioral health counseling, bilingual health education and mobile medical services in our communities,” said Kristen Murtos, Chief Innovation & Transformation Officer at Endeavor Health. “At Endeavor Health, we are not just funders but conveners, bringing together diverse groups to cultivate collaboration and innovation. We are thrilled to grow and deepen the impact of our Community Investment Fund this year, marking a significant step forward in our commitment to enhancing health and wellness across the communities we serve.”
Right now there is a nationwide shortage of firefighters and EMTs. During recruitment sessions, the Romeoville Fire Academy was seeing a trend where students of different ethnic groups wanted to join up, but would become defeated when they heard the cost of getting through training. With this grant money from Endeavor Health, the academy will target 10-12 students of underserved communities and put them through fire academy and EMT school with the hopes of successful job placement by the end of the year. This benefits the whole area by seeing new firefighters/EMTs ready to serve and benefits these individuals by helping them enter a career that may otherwise have been unobtainable.
For more information about the Fire Academy, click here. To learn more about Endeavor Health’s Community Investment Fund, visit endeavorhealth.org/cif
About Endeavor Health
Endeavor Health℠ is a Chicagoland-based integrated health system driven by our mission to help everyone in our communities be their best. As Illinois’ third-largest health
system and third-largest medical group, we proudly serve an area of more than 4.2 million residents across six northeast Illinois counties. Our more than 27,000 team members and more than 7,100 physician and advance practice provider partners are the heart of our organization, delivering seamless access to personalized, pioneering, world-class patient care across more than 300 ambulatory locations and nine hospitals, including eight Magnet-recognized acute care hospitals – Edward (Naperville), Elmhurst, Evanston, Glenbrook (Glenview), Highland Park, Northwest Community (Arlington Heights) Skokie and Swedish (Chicago) and Linden Oak Behavioral Health Hospital (Naperville). For more information, visit endeavorhealth.org.