LIVETransforming the way families experience homelessness.
Families experiencing homelessness often lack the resources needed to celebrate their children on their birthdays. We step in by transforming their environment and providing all-expenses-paid birthday parties for children and families facing homelessness in Los Angeles County.
What is the primary issue area that your application will impact?
Housing and Homelessness
In which areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
County of Los Angeles
In what stage of innovation is this project, program, or initiative?
Expand existing project, program, or initiative
What is your understanding of the issue that you are seeking to address?
When the organization started in 2013, less than 30 kids and their caregivers came to the first parties. Now between the five locations, more than 1,000 family members are attending monthly - a 20x increase. According to the Bassuk Center, families are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. As a result, homeless children have been called the "invisible face" of the housing crisis.
Describe the project, program, or initiative this grant will support to address the issue.
Worthy of Love steps in by transforming their environment and providing all-expenses-paid birthday parties for children and families facing homelessness in Los Angeles County. Utilizing the organization's expertise in event planning, Worthy of Love launched a new social enterprise initiative: Worthy of Love Productions (WoLP) to oversee WoL Birthday parties. WoLP will employ caregivers and teens experiencing homelessness, training them in highly marketable event production. In addition, WoLP will produce events for the civic community focusing on milestone celebrations like birthdays, wedding, and micro-events like corporate dinners and other social gatherings. Beyond outside events, the WoLP team will handle logistics for the monthly parties at all venues in Southern California.
Describe how Los Angeles County will be different if your work is successful.
As the homeless population continuously grows in Los Angeles, more and more shelters have asked us to host Worthy of Love events at different shelters around LA. At the moment we have to say no due to funding, but we hope that "no" won't be in our vocabulary much longer. As Worthy of Love Productions expands, we hope to hire individuals experiencing homelessness to join our team and to help them start their journey to get off the streets.
What evidence do you have that this project, program, or initiative is or will be successful, and how will you define and measure success?
Over the past 10 years we have successfully held 205+ family programs within different shelters in Los Angeles County. 24,047 family members have joined these events and over 2,550 volunteers have donated their time. More and more shelters ask us daily to provide them with birthday parties for their residents, and one of our goals is to not say no when shelters approach us.
Approximately how many people will be impacted by this project, program, or initiative?
Direct Impact: 3,750
Indirect Impact: 5,000