‘An honor to give back.’ Young the recipient of Downers Grove’s Montrew Dunham Award

Former school board member and nonprofit founder Mary Ellen Young recently was honored with the 2024 Montrew Dunham Award.

The Montrew Dunham Award was created in 2019 to celebrate an individual whose remarkable service and contributions to the village of Downers Grove secure them a place in its history.

The award’s namesake, Montrew Dunham, was a teacher, author, local historian and community volunteer.

When Young, a longtime Downers Grove resident, first heard she was the recipient of the award, her first thoughts were “No, pick someone else.”

Being raised in a household that was committed to giving back to the community and church as “just something you do,” Young said, “I thought, ‘I don’t need recognition; I have enjoyed everything I have ever done.’”

From the president of Downer Grove Grade School District 58 school board to working on nonprofits to forming her own, Young said she decided to accept the award for all the hard-working volunteers she worked with in her volunteer roles.

The award ceremony, hosted by the Downers Grove Historical Society, took place in October at the Lincoln Center and was attended by more than 50 residents.

At the ceremony, Downers Grove Commissioner Chris Gilmartin said, “Mary Ellen Young is a pillar in our community, a beacon whose contributions continue to resonate and who’s efforts ripple out, touching the lives of so many, in so many ways.”

It was Young’s career in the hospitality industry that initially led to her nonprofit involvement.

She would travel all around the country doing feasibility studies and meet with the local chambers of commerce or convention bureau representatives to assess the market.

Reading about the creation of a new Hotel Tax Advisory Board, which was tasked with advising the Downers Grove Village Council on what they should do with hotel tax money, Young volunteered to join the group.

The board developed a strategic plan, which led to the formation of the new Downers Grove Visitors Bureau and the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation, both funded by the hotel tax.

Young served on the visitors bureau and became its chairwoman.

When Young’s children started elementary school, she heard rumors that District 58 was going to fall short in its funding.

Young started attending school board meetings and researched how schools are financed.

She ended up joining the school board a few years later and served two terms.

From there, Young shifted her work to the mental health of teenage students.

She learned about the struggles of young girls in school with regard to friendships and bullying after reading an article in the “American School Board Journal” called “How Girls Hurt The Quiet Violence in Your Schools.”

“The article completely changed my belief system,” Young said.

Originally, Young had the mindset “this is just how girls are.”

However, she said, the article stated that any girl who is a target at school is so “traumatized and stressed out” they don’t learn.

Young decided to do something about it. She worked on developing a program to help girls at a time when there wasn’t any attention paid to social-emotional learning.

These efforts led Young to create the non-profit, Helping Girls Navigate Adolescence (HGNA) with the assistance of co-founder Cathy Fisher and several committed board members.

“We developed programs that helped girls understand themselves and relationship issues,” Young said.

One of the group’s first programs, Chick Chat, featured small group discussions led by trained counselors engaging girls in topics including empathy, managing emotions, friendship skills and self-acceptance. It also included games, crafts, yoga and lunch.

The program was shared with other communities that developed similar programs for girls in elementary and middle school.

The organization later became Navigate Adolescence, which now coordinates programs with the Downers Grove Park District to serve both girls and boys.

“We knew boys were suffering also,” Young said.

“We created cool programs for boys—totally different than the ones for girls,” she said.

In addition, Young and Fisher published a book, “Elements for Girls,” which focuses on social-emotional skill development.

Since that time, the idea of relational aggression and bullying has “more common knowledge now,” Young said.

“When we started, we were changing beliefs,” she said.

Young also served on the board of The Grove Foundation, a local nonprofit that supports educational, recreational and social programs in Downers Grove, including a stint as president.

“We have two fundraisers a year that are used to provide grants to local nonprofits,” she said.

To date, the group has given more than $300,000 to the community.

“When I think of The Grove Foundation, I cannot imagine it without Mary Ellen,” said Leslie Sadowski-Fugitt, a Downers Grove Commissioner and a Grove Foundation board member since 2020. “She has been a board member since April 2008, and has been our president since 2018, and clearly has been an integral part of the success of The Grove Foundation for over 25 years.”

“Downers Grove has given me so much. It is such a wonderful community to live and raise a family,” Young said. “It has been an honor to give back.”