Winner Update: Kids FIRST

So as a reminder, Kids FIRST is the children’s advocacy center for the County. So we are serving  over 700 kids in lane County who are victims of or witnesses to a violent crime each year. So those kiddos that we’re serving, our kids who’ve experienced sexual abuse, um, physical abuse or have witnessed domestic violence or another violent crime. And so we were the very lucky and grateful recipients of your gifts last time, which was $11,300. That was to support the critical renovations and upgrades, ADA code required upgrades to our new facility that we are working on right now. Those upgrades are actually almost complete and we’re going to be moving into that new facility in the next month or so. Yeah, it’s so exciting. I think with capital support it’s a little bit different, um, a building sometimes people don’t understand when you’re already in a building what that means. So for perspective, since I saw you last a few months ago, we served 180 kids. So what that means is that we can typically see about three kids a day. Each assessment takes a couple hours. What that means is just because you’re a parent, for example, in your kiddo discloses to you that they were sexually abused five years ago, maybe that offender lives out of state so you know that they’re safe. That doesn’t mean that you want us like wonder and have questions about what’s gonna happen next, or how you can best help support your child or how you can help them heal. You don’t want to have to wait for seven to 10 days for those services. And so in this new facility that’s over 9,000 square feet, we’re going to be able to serve two families at once confidentially, and that’s going to make a huge impact on the kiddos and families that we serve. So it’s so much more for us than just a building and it’s so much more for our community. So thank you so much for supporting that.