WESTCARE OHIO INC
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Mission Statement
WestCare Ohio/East End Community Services mission is to build a prosperous, caring and healthy community that nurtures disadvantaged children and their families toward success. We help break the cycle of generational poverty
About This Cause
WestCare Ohio Inc., dba East End Community Services (WCOH/EE) was established in 1997 in Dayton Ohio with the mission “to listen to and work with the people of inner East Dayton to build a prosperous, healthy and caring community that nurtures children toward success.” WCOH/EE develops and executes comprehensive community development initiatives with children, adults and families, and the community as a whole, that helps remove barriers to academic achievement, physical health, social and emotional wellness, financial self-sufficiency, and builds community cohesion. A subsidiary of WestCare Foundation, WCOH's primary focus is on improving disadvantaged children's academic performance, and developing positive social/emotional skills to achieve educational proficiency, dream dreams and make goals for their future, and graduate from high school with plans for post-secondary education/training. Our goal for our kids is that they have the foundation to earn a living wage as adults, and the ability to nurture their own future families toward success - thus breaking the cycle of generational poverty. Our programs support our neighborhood children and youth through the "educational pipeline" from kindergarten through high school graduation with evidence-based, two-generation focused academic enrichment, social-emotional learning, and holistic wellness programs that help families establish nurturing learning environments for their students. Programs include Parent University; Miracle Makers summer and afterschool programs for children kindergarten through 6th grade; Architects for Justice (a middle school afterschool program at DPS Wright Brothers), neighborhood school centers/family coaching and wrap around family support services through our Family Resource Coordinator at Ruskin; job readiness, training and job search supports; forklift training, and community-based food access initiatives. East End also offers a Youth Development program for middle and high school students that focuses on helping youth meet academic requirements for graduation while helping them build positive social skills and emotional maturity. Standardized test scores conducted at Ruskin School demonstrate that our Miracle Makers afterschool and summer programs definitely help to close the academic gap, and kids grow faster academically than students who do not attend our afterschool and summer programs. We also support about 100 senior citizens annually with services that help them live independently, and with the opportunity to build social connections with each other. We also prepare unemployed persons each year for employment through job searches, work readiness training, hands-on forklift training, help with resumes and uploading job applications. East Dayton remains the epicenter of the drug epidemic in Montgomery County where we are located. Several years ago we became involved in linking persons to treatment and most recently we became state certified to offer substance abuse prevention programming for children living with addiction (Camp Mariposa), and programming for families needing to heal after the trauma of a family member’s addiction (Creating Lasting Family Connections). We support the Dayton Police Department with its addiction outreach program (GROW), and we manage six Certified Peer Supporters to work with persons struggling with addiction to help them access drug treatment and/or achieve long term recovery. A three year low-income housing tax credit housing and community development initiative that began in 2010 removed about 120 blighted properties from the Twin Towers neighborhood and replaced them with 84 new, single-family homes that continue to be fully occupied and well managed under 15 year lease-purchase options. East End continuously seeks out community needs and tries to fill them in partnership with other non-profits serving the community. Most recently East End Community Services worked closely with our Community Action Partnership agency, and helped to launch "Miami Valley Meals' which is a coalition of non-profits that is responsible for providing precooked/frozen meals to families and households that are struggling with food insecurity as a result of the Covid pandemic and economic downturn. Food is provided by our local Food Bank, using donations that might otherwise go to waste. A team of professional chefs turns this food into healthy and delicious meals that is then distributed throughout Dayton. East End has a team of four people delivering food to hundreds of people in East Dayton, and our partners are doing the same in other parts of town, thanks to the Cares Act and Miami Valley Community Action Partnership (CAP). All of East End Community Services are person-centered, integrated with others, evidence based, and high quality. In 2020 we estimate that we served 6500-7000 individual persons, each with multiple services. At this writing we are serving about 800 persons a week. East End has 52 employees; 27 are full time. We earn most of our income from government contracts to provide specific services for children, youth, adults and families (which never pays all the bills), and we welcome private and corporate contributions. As a subsidiary of the WestCare Foundation, our official governing board is a national one, but we have a ‘community advisory committee’ (CAC) made up of 21 local community leaders. Our local CAC chair is currently a Federal appeals court magistrate, the Honorable Michael Merz.