By Susan Flood, BAPA Executive Director
This is my favorite Villager of the year because it’s all about YOU. BAPA is you. Your story is our story. Your concerns are our concerns. Your reasons to love where you live are our reasons to love where we live.
Our most important job at BAPA is listening. Listening to the people who oversee our schools, nurture our churches and charities, operate our institutions, run our businesses and walk our beats. Listening to our members and listening to every voice in our community.
Listening is the oxygen of community action. Whether it’s a phone call from a neighbor in need, a resident who stands up at a meeting to share a concern, a new neighbor who stops by to find out more about the neighborhood or an old friend who takes time to pass along an important observation, BAPA breathes in the information and the inflection, then works to be a catalyst and a connector.
Every fall when we start asking BAPA members why they make their annual gift a priority, we’re energized by the answers.
Knowing that BAPA has been working for decades to ensure that our community stays stable, safe and diverse is important to us.
BAPA is the glue that holds all of us together by our mutual interest in . . . our neighborhood.
The community growing and diversifying . . . We see neighbors supporting one another and creating even stronger bonds.
BAPA is constantly promoting local businesses through their social media, The Villager and their events.
BAPA works hard to maintain and strengthen [community] spirit through activities and programs designed to expand the quality of life we all enjoy.
Being a business member opens up avenues for networking and advertising in my own community.
BAPA makes it easy to love where you live.
A community organization is only as powerful as the connection among the people it serves. In Beverly/Morgan Park, there’s a powerful connection, and that’s what makes Beverly/Morgan Park unlike any other neighborhood in Chicago.
Although the BAPA office is staffed by only a few employees, it is driven by a community of people who volunteer for events and programs, call on us to share ideas and concerns, join us in celebrating this amazing community, and stand with us to make sure life in our little area of the world is rooted in what is good for families and friendships and that it stays that way.
