Beechmont Neighborhood Association

Beechmont Bugler

Beechmont Gets Grant

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Local/Regional » Neighborhoods » News Item Wednesday, March 19, 2003

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Beechmont Bugle to add ethnic flair, thanks to grant

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STEVE CHAPLIN
Special to The Courier-Journal
For the next six months, The Beechmont Bugle newsletter will be the fastest-growing, most ethnically diverse newspaper in Louisville.

Thanks to a grant from Metro United Way, the newsletter for the Beechmont Neighborhood Association will expand its circulation from 300 to about 3,600 households and businesses, while doubling its frequency of publication from every two months to monthly.

But the most important change that readers will see, and the reason United Way provided $12,000, was the idea that at least one foreign-language story would appear in each edition. Each of these stories will also appear in English.

"The first edition will have a story in Spanish," said Vicki Carter, president of the neighborhood association. "But we don't know what language we'll have in the second edition."

Because the neighborhood is so diverse, the group also expects to have community news and announcements in Vietnamese, Arabic, Bosnian and possibly French during the next six months, she said.

The latest edition, due out this week, contains a message from Carter on what a neighborhood association does, along with stories by residents of the neighborhood about its architecture and the Metro Police Department's Southern Parkway horse patrol.

Longtime resident Elizabeth Rieber's story on architecture will be the first foreign-language story. It was translated and rewritten by Edgardo Mansilla, executive director of the Americana Community Center on Southland Boulevard.

The community center is a partner with the neighborhood association in the publishing project because both have a lot to gain from working together, Mansilla said.

"We want the neighborhood to know that the community center is for all residents, not just those at Americana (Apartments)," Mansilla said. "We have GED classes. We have reading classes. We have all kinds of services to reach American citizens. What we want is not for people to ask `What is your race?' but instead, `What is your neighborhood?' "

Even the article on architecture has a cultural theme, he said.

"It's about the bungalows that are so common in this neighborhood," Mansilla said — "how they came from India, then made their way to England and then to here. It's a history of that style."

Suzanne Singh, associate director of community building for United Way, said Beechmont's grant application was eye-catching because of the idea to have a foreign-language story in each edition of the Bugle.

"It had a component in it that worked with immigrants. We knew it could reach multiple neighborhood groups," she said.

For the past four years, United Way has also supported a civic-involvement and leadership-training program at the community center that's geared to people from other countries. United Way also works with community-building programs around the city, Singh added.

"We've helped to &elipse; organize both the Louisville Coalition of Neighborhoods and the Southwest Community Association of Neighborhoods," she said.

Carter said the goal of the six-month expansion of the newspaper is to increase membership in the association. That should lead to an increase in the number of volunteers who support such projects as next month's breakfast during the miniMarathon and the group's Festival of Flowers on May 10.

"We also want to let people know what we do with a neighborhood association," she said. "A lot of people don't have any idea about that."



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