The Lawrence Arts Center's easels have been heavily used for over twenty years and desperately need replacing. During class sessions, multiple drawing and painting classes utilize the easels daily, meaning hundreds of artists need these easels every week. These easels are integral to classes such as Beginning Drawing, Canvas Painting, Teen Life Drawing, Abstraction, Louis Copt's Open Studio, Fundamentals of Oil Painting and many more. We estimate these easels have been used more than 85,000 times over the 20 years the Arts Center has owned them. Even when classes aren't in session, the easels are in constant use throughout the building for workshops, events, and many other ways. Several existing easels are unusable due to continuous wear and tear and are beyond repair. Your support will allow the Arts Center to purchase 14 new easels, providing students, artists and the entire community access to necessary materials for the future!
LRM is excited to announce our next production in partnership with the Lied Center of Kansas. Beginning with the motherland of Africa, "Freedom Has A Voice: Dance Narratives" will demonstrate the beauty, passion and power of dance as an artistic expression. Reflecting on the past, present, and future, dance gives voice to every emotion and empowers all to embrace the spirit of freedom in Juneteenth! This event is free and open to the public! All donations will cover the production cost for this production and continued LRM Theatre productions. LRM Theatre has a specific mission and purpose to increase Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) representation in local theatre by providing culturally-centered programming.
The Ballard Center is embarking on a campaign to upgrade the playground space for our 2-year-old students. We will be replacing backyard play gear with permanent outdoor play structures intended for an active preschool environment. This investment will offer years of safe play and build students' physical and social skills. Playgrounds are very expensive – Ballard is planning to secure a total of $50,000 from multiple funding sources. Our goal for the DCCF Mid-year Grant is to raise $15,000.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to drastically impact the way that the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence delivers youth programs and services, requiring us to pivot quickly to respond to the constantly changing needs of our members and their families. Unrestricted gifts afford us the opportunity to be nimble and adapt quickly to address our members' needs. Serving 3,000 youth annually across our 13 elementary programs and our teen program for 6th-12th graders requires a tremendous amount of financial resources. Your investment helps our members reach their full potential and discover their great futures by achieving priority outcomes in the areas of academic success, healthy lifestyles and good character and citizenship. Investing in their great futures is an investment in our community's great future! Thank you for being a champion for Lawrence youth! Please take a few minutes to watch a short video to learn more about our 5-year strategic plan. It features some of our very own Club kids!
Douglas County CASA recently closed on a new building that will double our work and training space. Renovations are now underway in preparation for our move later this year. This expanded space means that CASA is poised to advocate for more children on our waiting list who have experienced abuse and neglect. We would love to create a special room in our new home just for CASA kids and their volunteer advocates to spend quality time together and for supervised visits between CASA kids and their families. This project will require an investment of $25,000, which will cover renovation costs including paint and carpeting as well as the purchase of furniture, equipment, and supplies to make the room as welcoming as possible for CASA kids aged 0-18. Can you help make this dream kids room a reality?
Don't Make Them Wait! Positive Bright Start values our giving community for helping the families of Douglas County get the support they deserve. Did you know that preschoolers are expelled three times more than their K-12 counterparts? Did you know that more than 36% of children aged 0-5 have experienced significant trauma and have had one or more adverse childhood experiences? Positive Bright Start offers services to support children and families through the early childhood years including therapeutic services for young children, supporting local home childcare providers with a nutrition program, and administering tuition scholarships for low-income families. In addition, we collaborate with Lawrence Douglas County Housing Authority and DCCCA to provide early education and care for children 3 months - 5 years with 4 classrooms in 2 locations. Most children served by Positive Bright Start are at-risk children who have already experienced trauma in their young lives, and many live in households with low income. We have a waiting list for all these programs. The Positive Bright Start Preschool program utilizes the Positive Behavior Supports models that focuses on social-emotional learning in an environment that builds relationships between teachers and students with small group settings and low student/teacher ratios. This fosters a positive learning environment where students know the classroom expectations and respond to positive reinforcement of socially accepted behavior. This model requires that we hire, train, and compensate a high-quality staff to teach and practice social emotional intelligence for Douglas County's most vulnerable students. We ask for your help in raising $50,000 to fund staff training and teacher salaries so that our students will have a successful educational experience and tuition can be kept at a suitable level for our low-income families. Don't make them wait!
Using Citizen Science, the Kansas Land Trust (KLT) can engage with new audiences, provide increased responsible public access to land that is projected by KLT, and become more efficient in their monitoring and stewardship of protected lands. KLT can achieve these goals with the purchase of specialty technology tools.
The Kansas Land Trust (KLT) works to conserve and protect land using conservation easements. These tools are important to ensuring we do not lose the last of our remaining prairie and ecologically significant landscapes. How KLT communicates about conservation easements to landowners is equally important to ensure that a positive and healthy relationship is established between our organization and individuals from the beginning. This funding will support KLT to create and distribute a primer for landowners who are interested in land conservation.
Douglas County currently does not have any emergency care for animals, with the closest animal emergency care center located in Overland Park. Lawrence Humane Society often receives animals in a state of emergency, whether cats and dogs hit by cars, a dog with pneumonia or heat stroke, a cat with lung trauma rescued from a fire, an animal in congestive heart failure, or other such time-sensitive crises. Your donation will help Lawrence Humane purchase an oxygen kennel - a critical tool for saving the lives of animals in medical crises. An oxygen kennel provides relief to animals in distress so that they can breathe easier while their bodies recover, often times making the difference between life and death. Currently, Douglas County residents and Lawrence Humane staff have to drive critically ill or injured animals to Overland Park to receive oxygenation, but in many emergency situations, oxygen supplementation is necessary right away and the 45 minute drive to Overland Park is more stress on the animals' bodies than they can handle. By purchasing an oxygen kennel, not only will Lawrence Humane be able to better serve the pets and people of Douglas County, but we will also be able to save the tens of thousands of dollars that we otherwise spend annually at the emergency veterinary clinic in Overland Park. Your gift will ensure that Douglas County animals don't needlessly suffer and will be able to get emergency, life-saving care in our own community in a timely fashion!
Access to affordable health care saves lives. People who are medically insured are significantly less likely to die from conditions manageable by medical intervention, compared to those without health insurance. This disparity exists because 60% of those who are medically uninsured have postponed receiving health care due to cost. At Heartland Community Health Center, we believe no one should have to choose between their health and feeding their family or paying rent. We strive to ensure that all people in Douglas County have access to the care they need, at a cost they can afford. In 2022, Heartland provided care to 2,624 uninsured residents, 809 of which were children. Access to care is critical to the health of the entire community, including primary care, pediatrics, dental, behavioral & mental health, Spanish Language Medical Interpretation, and in-house pharmacy and food pantry. Patients who are under 100% of federal poverty level receive high-quality health care for just $25 per visit, which is $246.77 less than the actual cost of services. Mental health services are available to these patients for $10 per visit. The Compassionate Care Fund helps Heartland provide potentially life-saving health care completely free-of-charge for families who are experiencing hardship or low income. Douglas County, KS has nearly 10,000 medically uninsured individuals and that number will rise over the next 12 months as the end of the pandemic era Medicaid renewals come to an end. Douglas County, KS saw a nearly 30% growth in Medicaid enrollment since the start of the pandemic. As of June of 2022, 14,112 Douglas County Residents were enrolled in Medicaid. KHI estimates 47.6% of the enrollment growth is at risk of disenrollment over the next 12 months. As the demand for services increases in tandem with the rise in uninsured patients, supporting the Compassionate Care fund is vital in ensuring Douglas County can maintain access for our community's most vulnerable population.
One in five children in our community has untreated tooth decay. Dental cavities are the most common chronic disease in children despite being preventable. Families in our community face barriers to routine dental care every day. Barriers include cost of care, transportation barriers, and non-flexible jobs that may prompt them to go without addressing their dental problems for extended periods of time. Heartland Community Health Center's Healthy Futures program eases this burden for children in the community. Healthy Futures provides free diagnostic, preventative and operative dental services to children at schools in Douglas County and across Kansas. Students with poor oral health average 2.2 absentee days per school year for dental problems and experience higher rates of poor school performance due to dental pain. For children who have seen a dentist in the past 6 months, the chances of missing school drops by 70%. In 2022, Heartland piloted the expansion of the program to include wellness exams, immunizations, and physicals at local Head Start program sites. This pilot program brought to light the demand for expanded community outreach with Early Childhood organizations to increase access to developmental screenings, wellness exams and childhood vaccinations. Last year, Heartland served over 800 uninsured children with comprehensive dental and pediatric primary care services and that number will continue to rise with the end of COVID-era Medicaid renewals ending. By supporting the Healthy Futures program, you are giving Heartland the resources needed to expand the program to provide more comprehensive care. You not only bring a smile to a child's face, you improve their quality of life for years to come.
Rising prices of lumber products in recent years have caused the average price of a new single-family home to increase by more than $14,000. Lawrence Habitat's goal of building affordable housing in partnership with low-income families is deeply impacted when building costs substantially rise, while family incomes remain the same, ultimately causing a funding deficit. Your investment will alleviate the deficit and act as a catalyst in our mission of building a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Lawrence Habitat depends on the success of the Habitat ReStore to build and repair affordable housing. All items at the ReStore are donated by the local community, diverting reusable household items and building materials from area landfills. In order for the Habitat ReStore to continue picking up community donations every Tuesday and Friday, the Lawrence Habitat ReStore is need of a new box truck. Box trucks are expensive -- Lawrence Habitat is planning to secure a total of $75,000 from multiple funding sources.
The accumulative cost for gas for the Senior Resource Center for Douglas County's seven (7) Senior Wheels ADA-compliant vans is a big chunk of SRC's annual budget, especially the past year. Although gas prices have leveled off, it is still expensive. SRC estimates fuel expenses will be about $20,000 in 2023. You can help make sure SRC's riders get where they need to go with a contribution towards SRC's annual fuel funds. This allows SRC to keep our per-ride fares affordable for riders, which is especially important for those who need multiple medical trips each week for critical, life-sustaining care.
Help the Senior Resource Center for Douglas County communicate with our senior community! For $1,000 each month, SRC has a flat-rate contract website manager + graphic designer who handles all of SRC's print and digital media, including the excellent monthly newsletter, Better Senior Living (which is distributed to over 6,000 seniors each month). This greatly discounted flat rate service still adds up each year to $12,000. Help SRC ensure area seniors know all about the programs and services important to them by contributing towards this expense.
Goal: To ensure the metrics used to measure the effectiveness of the three components of our programs: artmaking, employment skills training, and social service supports - are complementary, comprehensive, and aligned with our mission, and that we are able to effectively communicate data insights to stakeholders. Van Go is engaging in a comprehensive review of our program evaluation practices to ensure that we are fully meeting the needs of current and future constituents. Thanks to a generous grant from the Beach Family Foundation, we contracted with the K.U. Center for Public Partnerships and Research (CPPR) for phase I of this project. Our goals are to streamline data collection and determine if there are additional metrics to consider to help us maximize the impact of our programming. Phase I: Data Audit, late 2022 - June 2023 Over the past several months, CPPR conducted a data audit that examined the frequency, methodology, and implementation of all evaluation practices at Van Go. This independent audit yielded helpful and actionable insights. Phase II Design and Implementation, Fall 2023-2024. Guided by the data audit, Van Go will design and implement a concise and targeted assessment plan.
