History and Mission BPNC is a community based grassroots organization uniting individuals, block clubs, churches, schools and businesses in the Brighton Park neighborhood. Our mission is to create a safer community with a strong infrastructure, improve neighborhood schools, provide a voice for our youth and stabilize the local business and housing structure. BPNC is dedicated to developing strong grassroots leadership by utilizing the capacity of residents to organize and mobilize their own resources. BPNC serves a low-income working class neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side. BPNC was founded in 1997 when community members decided they were no longer going to tolerate the deterioration of their community and take action to affect real and substantial change.
Community Area BPNC serves Brighton Park, a low-income working class neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side. Brighton Park has been experiencing vast changes in both its ethnic and socio-economic make up. Brighton Park is bound by the Stevenson Expressway (North), Western Blvd. (East), Central Park Ave. (West) and 49th Street (South). The community's ethnic make up has changed from being predominantly Polish, Irish, Lithuanian and German to being predominantly minority (Latino, Asian, African American). Nearly 80% of its 45,000 residents are Latino, many of whom are immigrants.
Brighton Park is the second fastest growing neighborhood of Chicago's 77 community areas. In 2001 BPNC was one of nine organizations chosen from over 400 applicants for a national award sponsored by the Rolling Stone Magazine and MTV. In 2000, BPNC won the Award for the Best New and Emerging Organization in Chicago, which is sponsored by the Wieboldt Foundation, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust and Mayer Kaplan Family Foundation. Since its inception BPNC has affected substantial change in the community it serves. BPNC has helped to improve neighborhood schools, increased community lending, increased lawenforcement resources throughout Brighton Park, developed many youth alternatives, won numerous capital improvements and most important brought together adults, youth, businesses, churches, schools and other neighborhood institutions to reclaim a community that had long been forgotten.
