By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
The Brighton Center is celebrating its 60th year of service, helping people all over the Northern Kentucky area.
On Saturday, March 28, the organization will highlight its 60 years with a fundraising dinner and auction, held at the Mercantile Immersive at 120 East 4th Street in Cincinnati. The event will feature a VIP reception, with a cocktail hour, a gourmet dinner, live and silent auction, entertainment and dancing.
Tickets are available through Brighton60.givesmart.com, and sponsorships are available.
The Master of Ceremonies will be Bob Herzog, the lively, zany member of the Local 12 news team, who will definitely keep people laughing and having a great time. The music will be by The Touchables.
“At Brighton Center, we believe in the power of opportunity,” said Wonda Winkler, Executive Director. “We believe that every person who walks through our doors should have the opportunity to build the lives they have always dreamed of for themselves and their families.”
In order to be as successful as Brighton Center has been, a lot of resources need to be kept in motion. There are two principal fundraisers, one in the spring and one in the fall that go a long way to providing funds, but a team of financial minded people are constantly applying for grants and making sure the funds the Center receives from the state and federal governments, as well as the fiscal courts, are in place so they can keep their doors open, and the Center can keep doing the good work they are known for.
The center opened in 1966 in Newport, and were known as the Brighton Street Center. People from the Appalachian area in Kentucky migrated to the Northern Kentucky area to find work during the early years, and they could find help with housing and food at the Brighton Center. Other residents were beginning to move to the suburbs, so it was a busy time in Newport.
The religious order from Corpus Christi Church saw that there was a need for these new families, and they opened a small storefront at 8th and Brighton Streets. The center was only open in the summer the first year, and it offered recreation programs for children in the neighborhood. From that humble beginning, the center grew every year, with help from the cities, the counties and the community.
“Our theme for this year is “lighting the way’, a reference to the old Lamplighters’ Ball which has changed into our annual gala,” said Lauren Copeland, senior director and vice president of the Center. “Our mission is to create opportunities for individuals and families to achieve self-sufficiency through family support services, education, employment, and leadership. During our last fiscal year, we impacted the lives of 31,076 individuals, from infants to older adults, across all eight counties of Northern Kentucky, and some in Hamilton County and Clermont County.”
She said that the challenges families and communities face are often complex, but making positive change requires long-term holistic and comprehensive services.
“Our vision is to be an innovative leader that strengthens the vitality of the community and engages people as they work and live to achieve their hopes and dreams,” said Copeland. “We started in 1966, but in 1968 sisters from Catherine Spaulding college came to visit, and they really encouraged us to conduct our first community assessment. That is where we would ask individuals and families what their hopes and dreams were for themselves. Something I am really proud of is that every four years we do a community assessment and ask individuals what their hopes and dreams are for themselves, their children and their communities. That is what ultimately drives our strategic plan for the next four years. Since we listen to the voices of families in the community, that is ultimately how we determine the programming for the next four years.”
There are now 17 locations in the eight Kentucky counties.
The Brighton Recovery Center for Women is a 100-bed facility located in Boone County that uses the recovery dynamics curriculum and is a peer-driven model of recovery. It is a program that helps women recover from chronic substance abuse and addiction and assists them in moving forward to a life of sobriety and productivity. As an average, women spend 9-12 months surrounded in a supportive environment which allows them to recover in a more holistic way from the effects of addiction, and encourages them to rebuild their lives.
A Financial Opportunity Center is located on Ann Street in Newport, and it helps families achieve financial stability based on the philosophy that families become partners with the center in creating change, and then setting goals to accomplish them. This financial center offers workforce development, financial coaching, and family and work supports, so that the family can connect to public benefits, health insurance, and utility and child care assistance that are so critical to existence and success. The center focuses on improving the bottom line for low to moderate income families by helping them learn to reduce their expenses and increase their earnings, while learning to save and make appropriate financial decisions.
There is a Clothing closet also located on Ann Street, and it is a neighborhood thrift store where anyone can come and buy used clothing. People who cannot afford clothes can go to the Family Center and get a shopping pass.
The main program at Brighton Center was originally conceived to target one of the prime causes of homelessness in Kentucky; drug and alcohol addictions which had people often seeking help at shelters, public hospitals, psychiatric institutions and detoxification centers. So many people ended up either on the street, in jail, or dead.
Care and change are the underlying principles of the Recovery Kentucky peer-driven model used at Brighton Center. When people come to the center, initially they don’t know if they really want, or are capable of the change that is necessary for recovery.
As they experience the type of gentle confrontation and feedback which they get from their community of peers, and they see others like them change, many of them understand that they would like that change for themselves. The use of Peer Mentors as teachers who share their experiences with other residents is considered a very powerful tool that helps people start to change themselves.
“Creating a safe, respectful, predictable living environment is very important for recovery,” said Copeland. “Residents are able to try on new behaviors, so they need a safe, predictable structure in place so they have the confidence to take on the risk of change.”
She said seeing the success that people can achieve is very gratifying. This is why all the work that they put in is worth it.
Their work will continue, with the help of the communities, and money raised through the gala, as well as the fall fundraiser, Wine over Water, that is scheduled for September 13 and is held at the Purple People bridge.