HONOREES Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield

NJCDC Founder & CEO For the past 28 years, New Jersey Community Development Corporation (NJCDC) has worked to change the landscape in the City of Paterson. We focus our work on a 95-block area we call the Great Falls Neighborhood, with the majestic Great Falls at its center. Our bold vision is that all 8,000 children living or going to school in our neighborhood will graduate from high school ready for college and a career.

We’re thankful that this year we were able to continue in-person programming, services, and events, allowing us to connect with our community and supporters in meaningful ways. And though this year has been a challenging one, our work hasn’t stopped—instead, our work has grown as the need for our programs and services has increased. We’ve never been busier.

At present, we are nearing completion on a 56-unit apartment building developed in partnership with St. Joseph’s Health. In April, we cut the ribbon on the new Lou Costello Park, funded by the City of Paterson after a resident-led design process that we facilitated. We resumed our Ivy League Tour, where our students visited Brown and Harvard, as well as MIT, and our annual trip to Washington D.C., where students spoke on the steps of the Capitol with Senator Bob Menendez.

After more than a year of intensive consultations and meetings with local residents, we created, and the state recently approved, a new ten-year plan that outlines our goals and objectives to improve the neighborhood surrounding Paterson’s Great Falls. We broke ground on an expansion project at our Great Falls Youth Center to accommodate more young people, and we’re about to open a Financial Empowerment Center to help local residents succeed.

While we have accomplished a great deal over these 28 years, there is much more work to be done. The transformational change we are pursuing will take more time, but because of committed partners like you, change is happening each and every day. We draw inspiration from your support—and plan to do more, to help more, and to achieve more in the years ahead.

We salute Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield for their “ steadfast support of our work to create opportunities to ” transform lives for Paterson children and families.

Bob Guarasci NJCDC Founder & CEO

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ), the state’s leading health solutions company provides a wide array of medical, dental, vision, and prescription insurance products and services. Horizon BCBSNJ is leading the transformation of health care in New Jersey by working with doctors and hospitals to deliver innovative, patient-centered programs that reward the quality, not quantity, of care patients receive. Horizon BCBSNJ is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association serving approximately 3.8 million members.

Since 1932, Horizon BCBSNJ has offered quality health insurance products and services to New Jersey families and businesses. It empowers its members to achieve their best health and is New Jersey’s health solutions leader driving innovations that improve health care quality, affordability, and member experience in the markets they serve.

Horizon BCBSNJ is a longstanding supporter of NJCDC. Horizon has played a leading role in NJCDC’s health fairs for Paterson children and families, sponsored (and helped launch) our mindfulness and stressmanagement programs, and supported the creation of our Great Falls Youth Center—which serves hundreds of teens daily—and Park Corner Plaza mixed-use building through the state’s Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit (NRTC) program. NJCDC is grateful to have Horizon BCBSNJ as a committed partner in building a better and brighter Paterson.