While now serving as a nationwide model for gang intervention and citywide model for after-school programs, New Life Centers of Chicagoland, NFP was originally created in 2005 to address the needs of the neighbors surrounding locations of New Life Community Church. As neighbors approached the church with pressing issues–youth violence, gang violence, teen pregnancy, justice system involvement, unemployment–New Life responded with custom-made Centers programs that fit the community. Initial sites grew in the Little Village and Midway neighborhoods (2005). Subsequent programs sprang up at Humboldt Park (2008), Cicero, Jefferson Park, and Oak Forest. To this day, New Life Centers continues in its culture of creating programs that address expressed neighborhood need and empower neighborhood involvement, rather than the normal social service pattern of initiating programs based on funding availability.