“In Lexington we’re building a Great American City by challenging ourselves to constantly strive for continuous improvement in all we do.”
-Mayor Jim Gray
Community Development
Our Founder and Chief Executive Officer Adrian Wallace continually states that the city of Lexington will only become a great American city upon ensuring that our most under-resourced communities are involved in the prosperity that the “Horse Capital of the World” promises to yield in the global economy of the 21st century.
Truly, there can be no community development without economic development and vice versa.
Youth Engagement & Development
The Bishop & Chase Foundation's goal is to foster a commitment to young people that will promote pro-social friendships, strong interpersonal skills, and reassert a sense of hope in the future. Only through personal relationships can a sense of individual responsibility be reestablished that will give youth the commitment to follow through on path to adulthood with a sense of pride and accomplishment. The Bishop & Chase Foundation
Through repeated failures in the classroom and the development of destructive habits, at-risk young people have lost faith in the possibilities that await them if they are successful in putting their lives together. To accomplish this goal, young people must be in a caring, inclusive learning environment that promotes their best effort and reinforces personal respect. Our afterschool programing will create those environments.
The Bishop & Chase Foundation was founded in direct response to the growing number of young people that are either falling through the cracks at school or are already entangled with the juvenile court system. The goal of our youth engagement initiatives is to identify youths who are going to have a turbulent transition to adulthood and offer positive support systems to avoid the pitfalls that can derail their lives. The focus is slightly different at each level but the goal remains the same; empower the young person to make positive changes in his/her life, thus impacting the entire community for good.
At-Risk Youth Intervention
In July 2015, the White House released a report entitled “Economic Costs of Youth Disadvantage And High-Return Opportunities For Change”. This report, along with data compiled nationally and locally here in Lexington, Kentucky, presents our country with a particularly troubling issue that must be addressed.
It is a fact that today, millions of American youth face persistent opportunity gaps that prevent them from reaching their full potential and contributing to their communities and the economy, as they are excluded in the spheres of education, economics and social opportunity. The Bishop & Chase Foundation (BCF) seeks to diminish and ultimately eliminate these devastating issues within Central Kentucky.
Focusing initially in the East End of Lexington and secondarily in the Tates Creek neighborhood, BCF is currently implementing preventative and intervention services that will serve the entire community, though have targeted efforts around the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative that realize the urgency of reaching out to young boys and young men of color.
The BCF youth development initiative operates after school programs, provides mentors that also serve within the schools during educational hours and recently launched the first evening reporting center in Fayette County to assist in the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative where the school to prison pipeline is over-realized in far too many neighborhoods and families.
Economic Development
As the correlation between economic development and community development is undeniable, The Bishop & Chase Foundation realizes that in order to have a thriving city-to build a great American city-there must first be a strong focus on economic development; there can be no community development without economic development.