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Monday, May 12, 2008

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GROUPS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

Bethel New Life

Bethel New Life
Mary Nelson, Founder and President
Pat Broughton, Development Director
Wanda Williams, Assistant
367 N. Karlov
Chicago, Ill. 60624
312-826-5540
312-826-5728 fax

Chicago's West Garfield Park neighborhood, most people here would agree, has a reputation of "ruin and despair," as Bethel New Life's striking 15-minute video puts it. Hit hard by neighborhood riots during the middle '60s and blasted by white flight and the careless hand of absentee slumlords that followed, this leafy neighborhood of sturdy houses on Chicago's west side for a long time seemed without hope.

But hope was there, and from a very small beginning in 1979 has grown one of the nation's most exemplary community development corporations. It's tempting to compare Bethel New Life with Newark's outstanding New Community Inc., but not to say that one is better than the other; rather, both are great, and it's only to be wished that every inner city had a grass-roots organization like this.

Bethel New Life began in 1979 as an effort of the neighborhood's Bethel Lutheran Church, with a budget of just $5,000 and two volunteers, taking on a devastated community's need for decent housing. They started with just one building, an abandoned three-plex apartment purchased from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for just $275. With the labor of volunteers, they restored the house . . . and since have gone on to develop more than 850 housing units in West Garfield Park, returning an estimated $37 million to the tax rolls, creating hundreds of jobs, and adding that intangible benefit that comes when even one or two houses on any inner-city block get turned around.

If Bethel New Life had done nothing but rehabilitate the neighborhood's once and future sound housing stock, that would be credit enough. But this remarkable organization has spread out literally scores of programs and projects, scattering its happy rainbow logo throughout the area on buildings ranging from its Mother Hen Day Care Center for children to the old St. Anne's Hospital, abandoned, rehabilitated and now reopening as the Beth-Anne Campus, a community center and home for local cultural arts.

Just to highlight a few of its programs:

The Westside Isaiah Plan built 250 new townhouses on infill lots, pulling together a multi-million dollar package with the joint efforts of local banks, government and 20 area churches.

The Employment and Training Center places an average of 500 residents a year into full-time jobs at an average cost of only $275 per placement, using the common-sense approach of having staff develop jobs by intensive interviews and sales pitches to local and regional employers, then setting up or locating specific training to prepare neighborhood residents to fill those jobs. CNA Insurance, for example, opens many job slots for local folks and sends in trainers and material to give them the skills they'll need to take and keep those jobs. Bethel New Life itself has added more than 350 jobs to the local economy and hired residents to fill them.

Bethel's own Recycling Center and Material Recovery Facility not only puts cash back into the neighborhood economy to the tune of $9,000 a week paid out for cans, glass and newspapers, but also created 35 community jobs in the waste-recovery business.

The Bethel Self-Sufficiency Program and Families With A Future Programs focus counseling and assistance on WIC mothers and mothers-to-be and homeless women, helping them move back into the mainstream and, not coincidentally, helping reduce the neighborhood's infant-mortality rate from 33 deaths per 1,000 in 1985 to 17 per 1,000 in 1989.

UMOJA Care, one of 10 national model demonstration programs, provides a full range of care and services for 350 frail elderly people under a "one-stop shopping" umbrella.

All this and a health center, adult day-care center, partnerships with local schools and more. Bethel makes it happen with a staff of 400 and a $9.4 million annual budget: A long step from a $275 three-family house!

"It's realism and idealism," Bethel's video concludes. "Applying the bottom line of the marketplace to visionary goals. We have miles to go before the dream becomes a reality for all the people of West Garfield Park. But Bethel New Life is charting the course, one step at a time."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
Send him E-mail.
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