The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) was established by a group of community leaders and local Priests in 1984. Modeled on the Saul Alinsky style of community organizing, we sought to build grass-roots leadership within Chicago's Hispanic neighborhoods to organize for power and address local issues such as prevalent street violence and overcrowding in schools.
UNO challenged everyday residents to get involved and contribute to the advancement of our community. We brought a no-nonsense approach to public action and leadership training, partnering with parishes in working-class neighborhoods like South Chicago, Little Village and Back of the Yards.
While UNO's scope and audience has expanded over time, our mission has remained the same. For two decades, we have been challenging Hispanics to play active roles in the development of a vital American community.
UNO has carried this mission into an array of major campaigns and initiatives, ranging from Chicago's school reform movement in the 1980's, to our naturalization drive – which has serviced over 65,000 new American citizens since the 1990's – to the establishment of the UNO Charter School Network in 2004.
Because we understand the vision and aspirations of our community, we have continuously positioned ourselves at the forefront of cutting-edge issues, and delivered real results through a combination of neighborhood base-building and pragmatic power politics.
