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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 $385,000 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!

Help Launch Springfield Friends
Partnering with Friends of the Children greatly enhances our ability to ensure that all students even those facing uncommon challenges are receiving the quality of support they need to succeed in our 1

Together, We Can Bring Generational Change to Springfield:

The Friends Model

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According to the Harvard Business Association of Oregon - every $1 invested in Friends of the Children saves the community $26.

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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

Friends of the Children Lane County operates its program, services and activities in compliance with federal nondiscrimination laws. No person shall, on the basis of race, color, national origin (including limited English proficiency), disability, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any of our programs.