ABOUT US
Building Brighter Futures
BBF|Building Brighter Futures Center For The Arts is a comprehensive human services organization that offers six program and service areas: Community Engagement, Education, Employment Services, Family Services, Health Equity, and Youth Services. The mission of BBF is to improve the quality of life for underprivileged youth and their families by providing safe, stable, and nurturing experiences that enhance social, emotional, academic, and career development.
BBF envisions a thriving, self-sustaining community where empowered children and families have access to all opportunities. In pursuit of this vision, we provide coordinated programs and services that combat poverty, low educational attainment, chronic disease, criminal activity, and trauma for people from the age of 5 and up.
Since our founding in 1961, BBF has remained dedicated to transforming the community by improving the lives of youth and families. Please explore this site to learn more about our organization’s history, facility, programs, and the many individuals who make it’s work possible.
HISTORY
BBF was founded by Joseph “Joe” Kellman (1920-2010), a native of Chicago’s North Lawndale community area. Rising from humble beginnings, Joe helped to build his family glass business, The Globe Group, into the largest privately-owned auto glass replacement company in the nation.
In 1961, with the help of long-time friend and entertainer Buddy Hackett, civil rights activist Fr. Dan Mallette, insurance company owner Marvin Zimmerman, and other local business associates, Kellman opened the Archie Moore Boxing Gym. The gym soon evolved to become the Better Boys Foundation, a youth services agency offering afterschool sports programming to boys and, later, girls in North Lawndale. Joe soon realized that sports were the lure and not the cure and transitioned the organization into a social services agency offering a variety of supports including scholarship assistance.
BBF has grown into a comprehensive, human services organization offering for youth ages 5 to adults. BBF programming directly addresses the well-being of all family members, helping the low-income, primarily African-American population we serve move from a place of impoverishment, educational challenges, joblessness, marginalization and trauma to a place of stability, academic success, employment, inclusion and wholeness. BBF also focuses on supporting serving girls and women. BBF provides and coordinates resources that meet the entire family’s needs, from reentry services for ex-offenders to parenting classes for single mothers, from mentoring and tutoring for youth in at-risk situations to job readiness training for the unemployed.
Facility
Designed by famed architect Lucien Lagrange and constructed by FCL Builders, the BBF Center is a gift to the community from the Joseph Kellman Family Foundation and represents the culmination of the work Joe started when he shifted BBF’s focus away from sports and toward comprehensive youth development programming. The energy-efficient building is fully accessible to people with disabilities.
The BBF Center offers a safe haven to the youth and families of North Lawndale. Students are transported directly from school to the center, where high-density glass, security cameras, and dedicated staff ensure their safety and proper engagement. In addition, BBF’s beautiful courtyard provides a safe, peaceful outdoor location for children that can be enjoyed irrespective of any external neighborhood crisis.
