Welcome to Beacon of Hope

Our name—Beacon of Hope—describes what is desperately needed in the communities we serve. Poverty, family dysfunction, lack of education, welfare dependency, substance abuse, and crime are conditions that span multiple generations. Yet for people caught up in these circumstances, encountering just a gleam of hope for a different kind of life can start a process that interrupts the pattern and leads to a changed future. Beacon of Hope, Inc. serves the Bedford Pine, Old Fourth Ward, and Downtown communities through a holistic approach of early childhood and school age (out-of-school-time) education, human services and community development/housing. We began as an outreach ministry of Tabernacle Baptist Church in 1996 and now operate as an independent 501(c)3 organization grounded in the conviction that community strength begins with families that have emotional security, economic independence, a sense of purpose and a confident vision of the future. Our service area has a significant concentration of low-income, single-parent households headed by females who dropped out of school. The poverty rate is 37 percent. Median household income is less than $13,000 a year according to US Census reports, and almost certainly has declined below that level due to an influx of evacuees from some of the most impoverished areas of New Orleans. Many young mothers of the area are at least the second or third generation of their families to quit school, become an unwed teen parent and try to get by on the frayed edges of society. They have no job skills and do not know how to parent effectively. Their economic survival depends on working the system of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other forms of public assistance. For their children, family life is an unstable, day-to-day, even hour-to-hour drama with little positive guidance, supervision or emotional support. The crime and drug culture of urban street life is never far away. Our motto is “Educating the Child, Empowering the Parent, Engaging the Community … Shaping the future.” This holistic view embraces the entire community, offering proactive help that has the power to turn difficult situations into positive possibilities. Beacon of Hope’s Renaissance Learning Center serves over 200 “multi-cultural” children in a NAEYC accredited environment. Plans are in the making to open Midtown Learning Center to meet the expanding need to serve more school-age children, youth, and their families.

Programs

"Beacon of Hope, a Community Housing Development Organization, is soliciting bids (by invitation only) from certified general contractors that specialize in multi-family housing rehabilitation and lead based paint abatement for a 4-unit, 3 bedroom rental property located at 520 Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30308. Pre-bid conference will be held on December 30, 2009 @ 10:00 AM at the site: 520 Boulevard NE Atlanta GA 30308. If interested, please contact Construction Manager, Michael Brown, at 678-409-8252."