Grantee Spotlight: Q&A with Urban Light
Urban Light Community Development Corporation (CDC), located on Muncie’s southside, is dedicated to holistic, place-based community development. Ball Brothers Foundation first began supporting Urban Light CDC in 2018 with a small Rapid Grant to help the organization develop a strategic plan. From there, additional Rapid Grants supported Urban Light CDC’s efforts over several years to expand fundraising efforts and to develop marketing materials with a new logo, website, and more. Over the past three years, BBF has supported the organization through general operating funding. This year, Urban Light CDC’s Joy Rediger is one of BBF’s Fellows.
Learn more about Urban Light CDC in this new Q&A:
Joy Rediger, Urban Light CDC Executive Director
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Community Development Corporations (known as CDCs) are local, non-profit organizations that work to revitalize and improve communities, typically within areas that have experienced years of disinvestment. CDCs are rooted in neighborhoods and involve residents in their planning and implementation efforts. Often CDCs focus on addressing various community needs, such as affordable housing, economic development, and social services.
Urban Light Community Development traces its beginnings to a grassroots movement that started in the fall of 2002, when a group of young families moved into the Muncie southside neighborhoods. These often-marginalized neighborhoods were subject to years of disinvestment which resulted in blighted housing, neighbors affected by the drug epidemic, and a lost sense of community. Multiple independently-run organizations were birthed out of this movement, including Urban Light Community Development Corporation which was incorporated in 2010.
Our mission is to partner with our neighbors as we collectively seek to develop a healthy, thriving community. Within defined neighborhood contexts, Urban Light Community Development holds to the strategy that holistic, multi-faceted community development produces sustainable change. Urban Light Community Development carries out this mission within our 3-focus areas: The Lighthouse Recovery Home for women, Housing Revitalization, and Neighborhood Engagement.
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We love our neighbors! Our focus neighborhoods include the Industry and South Central neighborhoods on the southside of Muncie. Urban Light CDC has been a partner with the South Central neighborhood since our organization began in 2010. Our partnership with Industry neighborhood began more recently in 2019. Of course, the history and the residents’ dreams, gifts and talents are what make these two neighborhoods so special. The South Central neighborhood has seen a shift in stability over the last 20 years. In the early 2000s, this neighborhood’s housing stock was largely rentals, and the neighborhood had a high turnover of residents. But in the last 20 years, the development of stable, affordable housing has allowed the neighborhood to stabilize, resulting in neighbors becoming more engaged and in the overall beautification and upkeep of the neighborhood. South Central Neighborhood has become a fully engaged neighborhood within the City of Muncie. The Industry neighborhood has a long history of leadership and deep entrepreneurial spirit that is alive and well still today! Urban Light CDC has found the residents of Industry as strong partners in the pursuit of neighborhood revitalization through “sense of community activities” and housing rehabilitation. Neighbors have been ready to engage and use their natural gifts and talents to benefit the community!
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Building a sense of community in partnership neighbors always starts with listening. All of the “activities” Urban Light Community Development is engaged in within both of these neighborhoods were first developed through the sincere listening of neighbors’ dreams and concerns. Urban Light CDC then helps create the “spaces” or “activities” for these dreams to come true or concerns addressed.
In the South Central Neighborhood, Urban Light CDC’s main sense of community work is done through the South Central Community Garden. ULCDC partners with neighbors who lead and participate in the garden team. This team coordinates the planting and care of the garden each year, and they also plan resident engagement activities such as an annual Easter Egg Hunt and year-end garden cookout.
In the Industry Neighborhood, ULCDC partners with neighbors in multiple ways. The JLG Industry Mowing Program provides neighbors with an annual stipend to mow the large number of vacant lots in the neighborhood. Next, the Industry Gateway team helps care for the Industry welcome sign property on the corner of Madison and Willard streets. And ULCDC hosts monthly Industry Neighborhood Cookouts with the help of many, many neighbors. These cookouts are held monthly from April through September of each year and provide a space for neighbors to connect with each other and community resources.
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The Lighthouse opened its doors in the Fall of 2014 and is one of the few residential recovery homes for women in East Central, Indiana. We are proud to have recently celebrated the program’s 10 year anniversary! Through the State of Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), The Lighthouse is a certified Level Two recovery residence. This certification is completed every two years and was most recently completed in the Fall of 2024.
The physical residence of The Lighthouse is located in the Muncie South Central neighborhood, the neighborhood just south of downtown. We serve all women of Delaware County who are seeking recovery in a residential setting. We will also serve women of East Central Indiana but give preference to those from Delaware County. The Lighthouse program typically serves 10 to 15 women per year with an average of 4 graduations per year. On average residents complete the program within 10 months, but the program time is flexible and unique for each resident. Most of the graduates are in full-time employment, have experienced some level of reunification with their families, and are often engaged in the community.
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Urban Light CDC is proud to collaborate with multiple community partners to be the administrative and fiscal agent for a new program: Muncie Youth Alliance. Muncie Youth Alliance reaches disconnected youth using mentors, trained in the credible messenger model, who share similar life experiences to provide mentorship to these hard-to-reach youth. The program works to see improvement in four areas:
Increase youth engagement with school and other programs and services
Increase in prosocial behavior
Increase positive youth engagement with parents/caregivers
Reduction in delinquency, law enforcement engagement, and court involvement
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At Urban Light CDC we love seeing the restoration of all things – including vacant, blighted homes! Our organization typically renovates one house per year as either a new homeownership opportunity for a local resident or by renovating the home as an affordable rental unit. We are big believers of mixed-income housing development – meaning we believe housing revitalization within a neighborhood should include both opportunities for affordable rentals and homeownership opportunities for neighbors with various levels of income.
Since 2011, ULCDC’s renovations in the South Central neighborhood have resulted in five new homeownership opportunities, seven affordable rental units, and The Lighthouse Recovery home. Now, in 2025, we’ve started our first renovation project in the Industry neighborhood which will be completed as a new homeownership opportunity. We’re committed to housing revitalization in the Industry for at least the next decade.
We work closely with the Muncie Land Bank for the acquisition of property and many of the other housing nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity and Pathstone. It’s important for all of us housing partners to be communicating about our projects so we can have the most collaborative impact in the neighborhood.
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There are so many stories I could share! There are so many women who have found recovery at The Lighthouse and now living healthy, stable lives. Homeowners who are now established in their neighborhood living in affordable, stable homes. And so many neighbors taking on leadership roles within our Neighborhood Engagement programming. But I’ll share about Cara. There are so many things I love about Cara’s story! Cara came to the Lighthouse in January 2018 and stayed in the program for 16 months before she graduated in May of 2019. The Lighthouse was Cara’s 11th attempt at a recovery program. Cara says that there were many recovery tools she learned at The Lighthouse and many areas where she found healing, but ultimately, she believes the difference at The Lighthouse is that she was truly loved in authentic, trusting relationships. Cara found a safe place to work through the healing she so desperately desired. Now seven years into recovery, Cara is married, works full-time, loves caring for her family, and is a homeowner. We are so proud to have a part in Cara’s amazing life and story!
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There are so many hopes and dreams! Organizationally, I’m excited for ULCDC to continue growing in our capacity by hiring more programming and administrative staff in the next five years. There’s plenty of work to be done and we will need more staff to help put this into practice!
In partnership with the Industry Neighborhood, I’m so excited to see the hopes and dreams of the residents come to fruition and for their concerns to be addressed collaboratively. We have already witnessed so many residents take on leadership roles in each program area. I can’t wait to see that continue to grow!
