HISTORY
Since 1985 the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, BCAC, has been promoting policies and programs to ensure that all Bridgeport’s children are healthy, safe and getting a solid education.
Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition was founded in 1985 by a small group of community leaders in Bridgeport. These visionaries saw the importance of bringing our community together to identify critical children’s issues and seek policy and program changes to address these needs.
Staff and Board at Family Services Woodfield, today called FSW, provided the guiding vision and a home for BCAC for 18 years.
During the 1990’s BCAC grew from a coalition of six member organizations to nearly seventy! Organizations came not only from Bridgeport but from the surrounding suburbs. BCAC expanded its funding, staff, and ability to work on the critical children’s issues brought by our community.
By 2002, BCAC’s Steering Committee believed it was time to become a separate 501(c)(3) organization with its own identity and started plans for separation from FSW. BCAC was incorporated in March 2003.
BCAC achieved some amazing results in its first two decades. When we celebrated our 20th Anniversary in 2005 we were a much larger and stronger coalition with dozens and dozens of accomplishments and achievements that have improved the lives of Bridgeport’s children.
Since 2005 progress has multiplied. (2007 Annual Report, 2006 Annual Report)
Today BCAC has grown from 30 members in its first year to a coalition of 80+ member organizations from Bridgeport and the surrounding suburbs.
BCAC’s governing body of a dozen Steering Committee members has expanded to become a Board of Directors of more than 35 community leaders and parents who bring a diversity of expertise, experience and perspective to BCAC. More than 350 people are active with BCAC each year.
Today, even more than at its founding, the children of Bridgeport need BCAC’s voice. BCAC continues to speak and advocate for our youngest citizens who cannot speak for themselves.