May 17, 2023
Friends - Lane County Launches Campaign for Springfield Expansion
Established in July 2020 to help eradicate cycles of multigenerational disadvantages, Friends of the Children – Lane County was able to establish a quick foothold in Eugene, Bethel and Cottage Grove. By pairing our community’s most vulnerable children with professional adult mentors, we’ve already we’ve seen the strength of these families shine through with significant gains in family stability, social/emotional growth and significant gains in literacy development in the children we’re serving. Now, with your help, we have the unique opportunity to extend services to underserved children and families living in Springfield.
Friends of the Children is looking to raise $382,000 to extend its services into Springfield. This amount represents the key personnel and activity costs to provide multifaceted supports to a new group of Springfield families for a 2-year period, directly supporting roughly 80 people with multifaceted supports.
Our trauma-informed, long-term mentoring model is now being sought after by communities and systems around the country and the world. They recognize that children who've experienced a lot of adversity need the more specialized and long-term support, the kind that 1:1 caring relationships provide. You can be a critical part of ensuring we can provide these services in Springfield - your financial support makes a big difference!
Together, We Can Bring Generational Change to Springfield:
- 48.3% of Springfield households earn less than the basic cost of living for Lane County, including, 83% of households led by single mothers
- 447 youth in the Springfield School District experienced homelessness during for the 2021-2022 school year
- 38% of Springfield K-2 students do not meet regular attendance benchmarks – students cannot learn when they are not in class
- 45% of Oregon's children will never obtain state’s literacy threshold
The Friends Model
- Professional 1:1 intensive support to youth and families for 12 years with dramatic proven outcomes
- Each child gets 3-4 hours of strategic mentoring every week throughout their entire childhoo
- Intensive early intervention is extremely cost effective (for every $1 invested, the community saves $26)
- Social/emotional development and literacy skill building enables success in schools and relationships
- Consistent 1:1 support provided to caregivers helps mitigate crisis, build skills and resilience.
According to the Harvard Business Association of Oregon - every $1 invested in Friends of the Children saves the community $26.
Professional Mentor, Perry Washington, and his Friend on the Willamette bike path.
- Sustained long-term support fundamentally changes the opportunities for a child to succeed and breaks multigenerational cycles of disadvantage for good.
- Building students/families capacity to effectively navigate schools: 100% of students exceeded 80% school attendance last year and advanced to the next grade, and 83% of caregivers attended parent/teacher conferences last year.
- 80% of our youth require extraordinary assistance and 36% initially ranked in the bottom 10% of literacy comprehension in the nation. Half of our kids have moved out of that bottom ranking and 20% of them no longer require any additional literacy interventions to reach grade level proficiency.
- 97% of children will avoid parenting in their teens
- 93% will go on to postsecondary education, join the workforce or enlist
- 93% of children will avoid entanglement with the Juvenile Justice system