Sunrise Community Empowerment was launched in 2018 from Sunrise Baptist Church by Senior Pastor J.E Storey and Asst. Pastor Jimmy L. Berdin Jr, their vision is to help low income families in the North Lawndale and surrounding communities that are living below poverty levels with one parent households with the youth forced to care for themselves after school while the their parent is working. We believe that the youth become at risk to crime, gangs and drugs.

Our goal is to give the At-Risk Youth a safe supervised environment to grow in academics, performing arts, financial literacy, social skills, conflict resolution, anti-bullying, career building, mentorship and entrepreneurship.

Our future goal is to create programs to help and train youth and young adults to become self- sufficient with job skills in home remodeling and home health care (personal assistant) from 16yrs. to 24 yrs. of age with hands on experience. They will learn team building, discipline, job readiness and most importantly leadership skills in which they will learn how to think analytically in making decisions.

Our Mission is to help provide stabilization and a safer community, North Lawndale ranks 5th among Chicago’s 77 community areas for violent crimes in 2017, there is a 2.5 violent crimes per 1,000 people (Chicago Tribune). The Population is 43,291 (city-data.com), households are 40% below poverty level and income average $12,548.00 per- captia. 40.9% of the population is under the age 18 years old and 38.4% have no high school diploma.1 in 65 people have a chance of being a victim of a violent crime daily.

We believe through hard work and opportunity that our community will be stabilized, economically developed and revitalized by the hands of our youth for a brighter tomorrow.

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