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On May 29, Byline Bank joined Community Bank of Oak Park River Forest (CBOPRF)* in continuing their dedication to and support of Sarah’s Inn—founded in 1981 by a group of concerned women in River Forest and Oak Park, to address a lack of services for battered women and their families.

Today, Sarah’s Inn is one of the largest and most comprehensive domestic violence agencies serving Chicago and 22 West Cook County suburban communities.

Together We Inspire, an Education Breakfast Forum held at the Oak Park Country Club in River Grove, featured a two-term U.S. Poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Trethewey lives in Evanston where she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.  Her latest collection, Monument, focuses on the trauma of our shared history and her personal trauma of losing her mother to domestic violence.

The Forum was moderated by Michele Weldon, journalist, author, and a faculty member at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism.

Byline has been a proud and integral part of Chicagoland for over 100 years, and we take our responsibility to our neighborhoods, now including Oak Park and River Forest, and those who serve them—like Sarah’s Inn—seriously. We support and applaud Sarah’s Inn in their unrelenting efforts to create safer homes, communities, and workplaces that are free of gender-based violence.

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