Winner Update: YouthGo

I wanna tell you about what your gift did for us. It gave us permission. It gave us the opportunity to pursue a dream that we had been thinking about for our organization for a couple of years. As I mentioned when I talked, when I was here last time. One of the things that we try to do is provide basic needs so that we can support our kids. One of the ways we do that is through serving them snacks and meals every day.

We have a kitchen at Youth Go, but it is not set up to serve dinner for 15-30 kids a night. We’ve been through multiple refrigerators and ranges in the last 13 years and we have been talking for years about doing a remodel for our kitchen. And we knew it would be a big undertaking, and we know it would cost a significant amount of money. And in our mind, we knew grants that we usually applied for, for programming and services might need to be utilized for the kitchen.

So the gift from the Impact Club, gave us that confidence and that security that if we pursued this project, that our programming and our services and our kids wouldn’t feel any different. We would continue to be able to do everything that we do for them. Give rides home, provide those meals, give them positive adult role models.

So construction starts on July 16, because of your gift to support our programs and our kids, we’re able to enhance and improve our organization. We are going to have wait no, we have a regular size refrigerator and when you cook for 15-30 a night, five days a week and you buy your groceries on Monday, pretty cramped. So we will have two refrigerators, two freezers, we’re going to have two dishwashers, which for those of you who are passionate about the environment, we’re going to be able to eliminate most of the paper and plastic disposable products that we currently use. So yay.

So come end of September, October I will definitely share information with Kevin. We will do some sort of event and invite the community in to see our new kitchen and you all are a huge part of making that possible and allowing us to continue to serve our kids how they need to be served. So thank you very much.