The Urban League of Champaign County was founded in 1961 to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights.

Our four-point strategy for pursuing this mission is:

• Education and Youth Empowerment: Ensuring that all of our children are well educated and prepared for economic self-reliance in the 21st century
• Economic Empowerment: Empowering all people in attaining economic self-sufficiency through job training, good jobs, homeownership, entrepreneurship and wealth accumulation
• Civic Engagement and Leadership Empowerment: Empowering all people to take an active role in determining the direction, quality of life, public policy and leadership in their communities by full participation as citizens and voters, as well as through active community service and leadership development
• Civil Rights and Racial Justice Empowerment: Promoting and ensuring our civil rights by actively working to eradicate all barriers to equal participation in all aspects of American society, whether political, economic, social, educational or cultural.

The National Urban League has been in existence for more than three-quarters of a century. Over the years, it has developed into one of the nation's largest and most respected community service organizations.

The Urban League is the nation's largest national, non-profit, community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. The National Urban League, headquartered in New York City, spearheads the non-partisan efforts of its local affiliates.

In 1910, when the National Urban League was founded, 90,000 African Americans from the south had migrated to New York City, hoping to improve their economic circumstances. Instead, they confronted a host of new urban problems, including a job market requiring more sophisticated skills, poor health services and overcrowded housing and schools. The National Urban League was organized to help those new arrivals overcome the problems involved in making the transition from rural to urban living.

Today, the National Urban League continues to provide assistance in its traditional areas of concern, such as education, economic self-sufficiency, health and quality of life, civic engagement and leadership, and social welfare. Through the delivery of both direct and indirect services, Urban Leagues across the nation serve more than one million persons annually.