17 Apr Avenue of Life Receives $25,000 Grant from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City

Avenue of Life recently received a grant for $25,000 from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City to support their Impact Wednesday event.   Impact Wednesday is a collaboration between numerous community organizations created to alleviate homelessness for youth and their families in the Kansas City, Kansas Public School district.

Avenue of Life’s Equipping Center serves refugees, low-income families, and people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds experiencing unemployment, underemployment, and homelessness. The majority of clients are families who access the Center through Impact Wednesday.  The urban core of Kansas City, Kansas has many risk factors, including poverty, homelessness, obesity and diabetes, low birth weight, and higher than average high school drop-out rates. It is in the urban core that the Equipping Center provides its services.

The Center’s Impact Wednesday program specifically targets families residing in the Kansas City Kansas Public School District and identified as homeless under the McKinney-Vento Act. The McKinney-Vento Program is a comprehensive federal homeless assistance act that requires educational authorities to coordinate with housing authorities and services. At this time, approximately 1,400 students qualify under this act. Because our families are prescreened by the McKinney-Vento liaison at the school district before coming to us, one hundred percent of those we serve are at risk for homelessness.