ForKids, a nonprofit serving families and individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty throughout 14 cities and counties in Southeastern Virginia has been awarded a $45,000 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s World Hunger Big Dream grant.
The nonprofit will use the grant to develop a campaign to tell authentic stories of families caught in the cycle of poverty and the challenges they face that prevent them from breaking that cycle, often for many generations. The campaign will also include local and national poverty data to educate the public. The goal of the campaign is to put a face to those living in poverty and change deeply embedded, negative stereotypes of the poor that stand in the way of community solutions.
ForKids has a longstanding relationship with Faith Lutheran Church in Suffolk. Juanita Dowdy, a member of Faith Lutheran for 15+ years, has worked at ForKids since 2001, where she currently holds the role of CoC Program Manager.
The close relationship between the Lutheran Church and ForKids is further evidenced by the church’s generous donations of clothing, school supplies and snacks to ForKids, as well as grants to provide meals for students in their Education Program and emergency shelter for families. ForKids is the recipient of a portion of the proceeds from Faith Lutheran’s annual Pumpkin Patch fundraiser and their thrift store, Good Mojo, which distributes household goods and clothing to ForKids families moving from its shelter into housing hosts volunteers from Junior High Servant Event.
Last year, the ForKids Housing Crisis Hotline received 55,000 calls for housing assistance. Their Housing Program served 428 families and 921 children. Their Education Program provided after-school remedial tutoring to 423 children. 94% of those children were promoted to the next grade. Despite those promising results, ForKids believes that homelessness cannot end with services alone. Their 33 years of experience working closely with families living in poverty leads them to believe that it will take community awareness and the commitment of neighbors to tackle the root causes of homelessness and poverty: affordable housing, sustained employment, equity in education, and other issues that trap families in poverty.
The team at ForKids is grateful for the opportunity the ELCA World Hunger Big Game grant gives them to begin the hard work of changing long-held negative perceptions of the poor and working alongside communities in making the systemic changes necessary to break the cycle of poverty.
