For generations, Chicagoans have invested deeply in mentoring, tutoring, antiviolence and life-skills programs with the goal of keeping our region’s most at risk youth on a positive track toward paying jobs and stable lives. The stakes have always been high — we take pride in being “the city that works,” after all — yet the proliferation of guns and the intractable presence of gangs in our neighborhoods has upped the ante. And while some pockets of Chicago are experiencing unfettered growth and prosperity, others remain burdened with chronic poverty and insecurity — the “bleakness,” as Addams called it. Live in wealthy Streeterville and the life expectancy is 90 years, one recent study found. Less than 10 miles south, in Englewood, it’s just 60.