But what happens if you’re a student and your particular circumstance results in you missing a lot of school? Say your family moves around because they don’t have the money to afford where they live. Someone is sick and needs a caregiver. Or any of a variety of other circumstances keeps you from going to class. 

Naturally, you would fall behind. And it would be harder to catch up.

But if you are early in your academic career, not showing up for math or English makes it harder to complete later grades. Dropout rates are higher for kids who miss a lot of school. And when kids drop out, their path to a brighter future is compromised. 

There’s a term for this — it’s called chronic absenteeism when, by educational standards, a student misses more than 10 percent of a school year, or about 18 school days. It’s one of the most telling indicators of whether a student is going to be successful and go on to college. And it tends to happen more in underserved communities where economic factors can derail educational pursuits.

“One of the emerging issues and priorities that jumped out from a data perspective is a growing and increasing percentage of students missing school, especially those who are chronically absent,” said Paul Luna, president and CEO of Helios Education Foundation, which works in Arizona and Florida with a focus on student completion of secondary education. “That absence from school becomes absence from learning, and absence of learning then starts to minimize the opportunity for those students to stay on an academic trajectory to ultimately be successful in high school and moving into some type of education beyond
high school.”

There are a couple of important things to keep in mind when talking about chronic absenteeism in Arizona. First, the COVID-19 pandemic had a massive effect on chronic absenteeism when schools were moved to online settings. And second, Arizona has one of the highest chronic absenteeism rates in the country. According to Read On Arizona, an educational nonprofit focused on improving early literacy, one in three Arizona students fell under this category in 2022, and some estimates are as high as 46 percent. 

Dr. Paul Perrault, senior vice president of community impact and learning for Helios, said that chronic absenteeism has eaten away at some of the gains made in K-8 education, particularly in minority populations, as student attendance grew worse after schools reopened post-pandemic.

“Kids need to be in school to learn how to write well and read well and do mathematics problems with a teacher there,” he said. “We thought those numbers would get better as students get more used to going back to school, but in fact, recent data has shown the chronic absenteeism problem has gotten worse, particularly in Arizona.

Fortunately, a concerted effort to counter the increase in chronic absenteeism is underway in the form of a partnership between Helios, Valley of the Sun United Way, Attendance Works, Read On Arizona and several other groups that have created a task force on the subject.

They are working to identify and combat the sources of chronic absenteeism, with the goal of raising awareness of the issue and putting guard rails in place to keep attendance more consistent.
Some areas they are working on include educating parents and students about the importance of attendance, working with school districts to identify at-risk students earlier and provide them with support services, and training teachers and educators to identify the problems created by chronic absenteeism.

“If we come together as a community, we can go further and deeper and the message can be stronger,” said Dawn Gerundo, director of education and children for Valley of the Sun United Way. “We work with districts side by side to identify what’s working, what’s not working, what has been tried before, what are you going to try that’s different. Ultimately, the end game is that each of the school districts develop a year-round attendance plan.” 

The work being done is in its early stages, and at the end of the day, success will be measured by attendance data. The real effect will be harder to measure, yet incredibly important — real success will be keeping kids on track to a brighter future. Lori Masseur, director of early learning for Read On Arizona, said school attendance directly impacts student achievement. 

“All of us have to come together and work in concert and in tandem to support students,” she said. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck approach to addressing attendance, and we really want to do it from an engagement perspective, really elevating to families the importance of why their children should be in school on a consistent and regular basis.” 

To learn more, visit helios.org.  

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That’s where Street Medicine Phoenix is coming in to help those experiencing homelessness. The Zuckerman College of Public Health coordinates the program, which brings together students and faculty from University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, Mayo Clinic, Midwestern University and Creighton University.

It’s described as “a student-driven interprofessional healthcare and social justice team” that goes out directly to the streets to provide medical care and support services to individuals experiencing homelessness where they are — in shelters, encampments or on the street. 

There are dozens of similar programs across the country, each with its specific focus, whether universities, nonprofits or religious entities drive those. However, in Phoenix, it was started in 2017 by two medical students, Jeffery Hanna and Justin Zein. 

Today it is overseen by Catherine Miller, health education & promotion professional and Street Medicine Phoenix program lead, who helps coordinate several hundred volunteer aspiring medical professionals, supervised by doctors from the partner institutions, who are part of the effort.

“There’s a lot of teaching involved,” Miller said. “The medical students are clamoring to get experience, and this is basically their first real clinical experience as medical students, besides some experiences they get in medical school. This is real life, and as far away from a textbook as you could get. The stuff that we see is pretty intense.”

Intense is one way of putting it. Picture providing medical care to a population that not only lacks proper shelter, but lives in the Arizona heat, on streets where even the most minor injury can turn into a major problem. And a population of individuals who often suffer from mental health issues that may prevent them from making clear and rational decisions about their health.

What’s more, Street Medicine Phoenix is facing a problem — the City of Phoenix was ordered by the courts to clear “The Zone,” the large homeless encampment in downtown Phoenix where hundreds of people lived. The presence of The Zone made it easier to host events to provide care to the homeless population, so the program’s leadership has to reevaluate the best ways to reach patients moving forward. The next steps are a work in progress.

But Dr. Robert Fauer, medical director for Street Medicine Phoenix, said that upwards of two-thirds of the medical students in University of Arizona’s programs are doing some sort of volunteer work, which can be an invaluable experience for them professionally.

“Besides the empathy and compassion they learn, they also are getting their most challenging social patients right off the get-go,” he said. “I suspect going forward, when they see patients in the hospital and they’re in their clinical rotations, having this experience is probably very helpful for them to understand the needs of the people they are treating.”

The scope of the program is comprehensive. Along with a gamut of medical services, additional screenings such as mental health, vision and even veterinary screenings for patients with pets are part of the overall effort, with coordination between other social service agencies that can assist with community resources.

Additionally, Fauer said that during the COVID pandemic, Street Medicine Phoenix took an active role in getting the homeless population vaccinated. That effort was redoubled during the mpox outbreak last year.

One of the volunteers is Ashwathy Goutham, part of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix class of 2026. Goutham said the Street Medicine Phoenix experience has been rewarding both personally and professionally. Goutham is an aspiring emergency room doctor interested in serving a broad spectrum of populations, so Street Medicine Phoenix has been right up her alley.

“It’s made me question my own biases against people and why I have them, and I think volunteering has really been able to break those down for me,” she said. “Also, as a medical student, I think the best way to learn about medicine is to talk to people. I think it’s going to help me become a better doctor.” 

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His day job is director of advertising for Sanderson Ford and Sanderson Lincoln, one of the Valley’s most prominent automobile dealership companies. But he’s also the founder and “grandfather” of a holiday tradition in the Valley called Operation Santa Claus.

It started when Sirstins was working in the radio industry and decided to use his platform to start a holiday giving drive. That first year, Sirstins’ efforts helped raise $68,000 for St. Mary’s Food Bank and the Child Crisis Center in Glendale. Sirstins made a career change in 2000, joining the Sanderson team. But he didn’t want to leave the momentum from Operation Santa Claus behind. 

“When I came here, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just team up with a partner,’ and ABC15 is our main partner here,” he said. “It’s their main holiday event and they’ve been with us for all 22 years — so it’s actually Operation Santa Claus Presented by ABC15.”

The annual partnership between ABC15 Arizona and Sanderson Ford have been going strong for 23 years, collecting food, toys, children’s clothes and donations for Arizona charities at drop-off locations around the Valley. For donors, there’s a bit of an incentive as well. 

Donors who contribute $5 or more are entered into a drawing to be one of 15 finalists to win a new vehicle. Sanderson Ford and Lincoln will randomly select one donor to win a new Ford F-150 crew truck or Lincoln Corsair, and all 15 finalists will receive a $100 Visa gift card.

One hundred percent of the contributions stay in Arizona, this year benefiting five local charities: St. Mary’s Food Bank, Chicanos Por La Causa, Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center, Military Assistance Mission and Special Olympics Arizona. 

Anita Helt, vice president and general manager of ABC15, said the campaign is an integral part of the company’s culture. 

“Operation Santa Claus checks every box of our station’s core values,” she said. “Our team looks forward to Operation Santa Claus all year. It is a true station initiative in which every member of the ABC15 team is involved with the project in some way. I can’t think of a better way to build your team than getting out into the community and helping our neighbors in need.”

Operation Santa Claus includes a number of events leading up to the car giveaway that also help fund and secure donations for the charities involved. For instance, new this year is “Stuff the Sleigh” on Nov. 18, when volunteers will collect donations at all Valley Walmart stores from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. A full listing of events can be found at givetotheclaus.com.

The impact of Operation Santa Claus is substantial — it’s one of Arizona’s largest holiday charitable drives. Sirstins said it had started to hit the million-dollar mark before the pandemic slowed contributions for a couple of years, but in 2022, the campaign hit $1 million once again.

Helt said that in the past 22 years, Operation Santa Claus has helped provide more than 1.7 million meals for hungry families in Arizona and more than 1 million toys for Arizona children and families.

“You can’t put a dollar amount on the awareness raised for the nonprofits and the additional volunteers they received because of it,” Helt said.

Plus, Sirstins said the campaign is a great way to get into the holiday spirit.

“There’s a great deal of need in our community, and it seems like the need gets bigger every year,” he said. “Who doesn’t want to help a kid at Christmastime and see how you can make families and their kids happy?”

For more information, visit givetotheclaus.com.

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It’s been said that the best things come in twos. Here’s a great example of that. 

Phoenix is fortunate to have a couple of great performing arts organizations that bring traditional and classical musical genres to children — the Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestras and Ballet Arizona’s School of Ballet Arizona. But it wasn’t until a chance meeting in 2019 that the two ended up performing together.

^{Maria Simonetti & Matthew Casper}

It started when Maria Simonetti, school director of School of Ballet Arizona, and Matthew Casper, artistic and general director of Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestras, ran into each other by chance at a Phoenix Symphony rehearsal, for which Casper was a conductor. 

“It was kind of a miracle in that he was traveling and was not supposed to conduct that day,” Simonetti said. “But he ran this rehearsal, and I thought he was a good conductor. I Googled him and saw that he was also running a youth orchestra. I thought maybe we could do something together.”

Simonetti then went to a Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestras performance a couple of months later. She was so impressed she sent an email to Casper about collaborating.

“I conducted a little ballet prior to this, just some performances of ‘The Nutcracker,’ but to conduct ballet was very enticing for me personally,” Casper said. “But also, the idea of actually bringing together both arts groups was really interesting to me and something that I had never heard of before. I thought this would be a great experience for all of our kids who are involved in this.”

They started planning for joint performances, which in particular for the young symphony musicians would present a new set of challenges. 

“For the musicians, some of them would never go see a ballet ordinarily, but now they’re going to be involved in the production of a ballet and playing for ballet,” Casper said. “That means learning, in terms of how to react to the dancers, to what’s happening on stage and what support we need to give the dancers. It was a really exciting opportunity for them to learn.”

Casper said that from the standpoint of the orchestra musicians, they learn how physically demanding ballet can be, and the effect their performance and tempo can have on how the dancers perform. For the dancers, thanks to this partnership, they are getting an up-close-and-personal look at how a symphony orchestra performs, something they might only get if they became professionals. 

Everything was coming together perfectly for a joint performance when, of course, COVID hit.

“We were faced with the question of do we keep going forward with this or do we just kind of scrap it?” Casper said. “Luckily, both of our organizations kept going through the pandemic, and we kept our rehearsals going in very small groups. Maria was the same with some virtual and some in-person, so we were able to keep the momentum.”

The two organizations rehearsed outside on basketball courts and other spaces, and were finally able to do their first joint shows — a run of sold-out performances of ‘Swan Lake’ — outside at the Desert Botanical Garden in 2021. Those were followed by performances in 2022 of ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ this time indoors at Madison Center for the Arts.

This year, the organizations will collaborate on performances in November and May. The November performances will likely be smaller and spotlight the string sections of the orchestra, but the May performance — which will be announced soon — will have a larger footprint. 

The big winners in the partnership are, of course, the kids who perform.

“They love it,” Simonetti said. “One girl who graduated said it’s been the best experience for her to dance to live music because when she was little, she studied music and then stopped because she couldn’t do both. So having the collaboration for her was amazing. And I think for some of the musicians, there’s no way they would have been aware of what ballet was about if it wasn’t for this. Now they’re asking me, ‘What are we doing next year?’”

Both Casper and Simonetti said the partnership between the School of Ballet Arizona and the Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestras is rare — and the only one of this size and scale they are aware of. Parents and audiences have come away from the performances beyond impressed. 

“The funny thing about the very first time we did this is that I think a lot of people came to it sort of expecting a high school band concert with some dancing,” Simonetti said. “But this hopefully showcases the dedication that the staff and boards of these two organizations have in getting these really talented kids out there and making them better at what they do.”

To learn more, go to balletaz.org and pysorchestras.org.

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But some core values transcend generations, even if they’re reflected in different ways. Philanthropy is a great example. It’s not that older people want to be philanthropic and younger people don’t — they just approach philanthropy differently. 

So we decided to chat with some of the more successful and established groups that promote philanthropy for young professionals and see how they’re preparing the next generation of philanthropists for the future. 

Bottom line — it’s not always about the money. It’s about rolling up their sleeves and experiencing the benefits of giving back first-hand, while forming relationships that carry well into the future. 

“I would say what we’re seeing in the next generation is this focus on actual time given back to charities,” said Dan Fischer, vice president of marketing for The Saguaros. “Yes, we are a fundraising organization, and yes, our goal is to always break records, but we are seeing that the actual time impact is becoming more and more important for members and less emphasis on the fundraising.”

The Saguaros, formerly the Scottsdale Active 20-30 Club, is a men’s nonprofit that supports Saguaro’s Children’s Charities, which has donated millions of dollars to local nonprofits serving children. Now in its 35th year, The Saguaros pride themselves on “hosting larger-than-life fundraising events that combine five-star service and top-tier fun while raising funds to help local children in need.”

The group consists of 50 active professionals at any given time, many of whom are getting involved in the community for the first time.

“They have seen in their careers and made it far enough and grown the corporate ladder, and they’re saying, ‘I need to do something more that helps the community grow. I can’t just live, work and be social,’” Fischer said. “It’s, ‘Let’s be more impactful,’ and how can they help, whether it’s financially or with their time and volunteering. That’s really where we’re seeing — a lot more people wanting to leave a longer legacy for themselves.”

Junior League of Phoenix is a women’s leadership development organization focused on community impact with more than 800 members and a 90-year history in the Valley — and an evolving focus on empowering women and girls — but their leadership says the most recent class of applicants was heavily comprised of women in their 20s and 30s. 

“It’s interesting, because we’re definitely seeing the younger generation right now,” said Ashley Bunch, board executive vice president of Junior League of Phoenix. “I would say we’re seeing a lot of college graduates and up to probably their mid-30s in the majority of our provisional class this year.”

Incoming Junior League members are focused on getting their hands dirty, literally in some cases — particularly at the organization’s popular Rummage Sale event, which is a required volunteer experience for all members. 

“I think the pandemic really made people think about what’s important to them,” Bunch said. “We are an organization where we’re actually doing the work and we’re actually in the community. I think that’s very appealing in that you get to see the work that you’re doing and you get to work with people to see a project move from one phase to another. So it’s very tactile; you’re a part of it, and you actually get to see it and feel like you’re making a difference.”

That sentiment was echoed by Ashley Ford, past president of Valley of the Sun Active 20-30 Club and current president of its fundraising arm, Valley Kids Foundation. The group consists of 75 women ages 21 to 39 whose events raise funds for about 10-15 nonprofits assisting children Valleywide. Over the past three decades, the organization has raised more than $2.45 million for local nonprofits. 

“Every year, we host mixers for interested women to attend interviews to join the club. The last few years, we have continued to have larger turnouts than the last,” Ford said. “Young professionals are often intimidated by ‘how’ to make a difference. Many want to give back to their communities but don’t know where to start, where they will see their efforts make an impact or are intimidated by volunteer requirements and commitments.”

Ford said the opportunity to do impactful work is a big draw to the organization’s members. 

“Young professionals want to do hands-on work to see the impact they are making,” she said. “Raising money is great, but actually getting to work in-person with the nonprofit you are supporting makes such a larger and lasting impact.”

These young professional groups often lead to future philanthropic involvement. For example, Fischer said that many members of The Saguaros go on to join organizations such as the Scottsdale Charros or The Thunderbirds. Bunch said that many Junior League of Phoenix members go on to serve with organizations such as the Board of Visitors or Valley of the Sun United Way. 

Ford said this next generation will continue to focus on the social aspects of community involvement as well. 

“I believe this next generation of philanthropist will continue to value the social and fun aspects of giving back while seeking out ways to get involved to meet new friends and connections,” she said. 

To learn more, go to saguaros.com, jlp.org and vos2030.com

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The tech sector is exploding, thanks to an influx of investment by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Intel and others. Our healthcare industry is expanding to meet the needs of a growing — and aging — population. Phoenix is becoming a hub for new-economy industries such as cybersecurity. Opportunities abound for young people plotting their career paths forward.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple for those in minority communities, especially women. Due to a variety of factors, lower-income Black and Latina women often don’t have the same exposure to new industries as males or white people in general. The result is that they may miss out on high-wage jobs, even in a booming economy.

That lack of exposure and opportunity is part of the reason Black and Latina women make less than their white male counterparts — for every dollar a white male makes, a Black woman makes 64 cents. Latina women make 53 cents in comparison.

So when Valley of the Sun United Way invested funding to help address the wage gap, it convened a broad team of agencies to do something about it.

The result is the Pathways to Economic Opportunity program, a collaboration between Valley of the Sun United Way, ElevateEdAZ, Chicanos Por La Causa, Center for the Future of Arizona, Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation, YWCA Metropolitan Phoenix, Southwest Human Development, Pipeline AZ and school districts across the Valley.

The goal: improve professional skills and expand exposure to new careers by providing externships, internships and apprenticeships to young Black and Latina women.

“We’re really trying to get more individuals into high-wage, high-demand pathways,” said Jennifer Mellor, chief innovation officer for the Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation. “As an example, if we look at manufacturing, there are very few women in the sector. We are trying to get more women to go into pathways into those opportunities, and we’re trying to bring in some successful women from the industry to talk about those careers as an encouragement to young women.”

The program launched in the fall of 2022 and goes beyond just providing externships and internships to ensuring participants have support for their education and life needs. They can get gas cards if needed, equipment or uniforms they may need for work, or childcare to help support their families. Students also get college and career preparation, including résumé work and counseling on job skills. 

“Some are students, some are mothers who may be returning to the workforce,” Mellor said. “Some of those projects have been really cool, assessing differing threats, and have been very rewarding. A number of those externs have been able to get internships or full-time job opportunities as a result.”

For example, six externs participated in the IT and cybersecurity externship. During this two-week externship, students had an opportunity to hear from a variety of different employers, see the different opportunities in IT and cybersecurity, work on a project with other externs and present that project at their final convening.

“There is an exposure gap when it comes to students understanding what they want to do in the future,” said Kaycie Quinonez, district director of ElevateEdAZ, who serves as program manager for the initiative. “We’re ensuring students have access to resources and meaningful work experiences that allow them to get exposure while they are still in high school so they can explore careers that they maybe didn’t know existed before or are nontraditional.”

Externships are paid, so students don’t have to choose between new work opportunities and jobs that may help support their families. 

Quinonez said one of the biggest things she’s seen from students is the increased knowledge of the field they are interested in — as well as the development of soft skills that are so important in careers. “Sometimes students find out they aren’t into the fields they are going into, which is important to learn as well, but they still get skills and career capabilities out of it,” she said.  

As the program expands, the partner agencies have a simple request — they need more businesses to take part and offer externship and internship opportunities, as well as mentoring and training. Interested companies can learn more on the ElevateEdAZ website. 

Despite the initiative’s newness, the future is bright, thanks to the collaboration between the agencies making Pathways to Economic Opportunity a reality. 

“I think there’s a real passion and commitment for this type of work,” Quinonez said, “and getting our Black and Latina young women interested in these opportunities and making that impact on the trajectory of their future.”

To learn more, go to vsuw.org/pathways

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Tracy Baynes’ original education was in oceanography. So how did she end up starting an education nonprofit in Arizona? 

Baynes came to Arizona to work at BioSphere 2 a couple of decades ago and was moonlighting doing semester-at-sea programs for students, as well as instructing for the National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS, for short. Her story is an example of how sometimes, a new path that you weren’t anticipating presents.

Baynes loved the work with NOLS and other programs she was involved with that allowed youth to not just experience the outdoors but to experience it in challenging ways that helped develop their character. These programs would do wonders for increasing the students’ confidence and preparing them for real-world challenges while broadening their horizons.

But she noticed something missing from the work.

“I found that, gosh, I’m only seeing a subset of students, and typically that subset is wealthy and awfully white,” she said. “I started thinking, ‘Where is everybody else?’ And then, I got into looking at educational statistics and saw this huge educational achievement gap between low-income and high-income kids. You know when you see those statistics that it’s not about ability alone.” 

That’s when the light bulb went off. She’d seen what the transformational programs she had led through NOLS could do to help students grow. What if those programs were available to Arizona kids from lower-income environments? How could those students benefit from the kind of confidence these programs create?

Baynes spent a year researching how she could apply these programs to help students increase their confidence and then do something much more specific — make their way to college. She focused on first-generation college students with the goal of helping them achieve the skills they need for the future. 

That’s how her nonprofit STEP — an acronym for Student Expedition Program — started in 2005. Baynes was the founder and has been president & CEO ever since, leading an organization whose goal is to not only expose students to new experiences, but to channel their energy into pursuing a college degree. 

Baynes said she realized early on that she didn’t need to reinvent the wheel when it came to the expeditions themselves — NOLS operated expeditions in an ideal way with excellent results. When it came time to pick where Arizona students would spend their time, Baynes decided Alaska was an ideal location — because it’s an almost opposite experience from Arizona. 

“If I could put them on the moon, I would have, but how could I get them to a place that is as foreign as possible from Arizona?” she said. “We picked Alaska, for sea kayaking.” 

Since then, STEP has sent more than 400 students to Alaska for these expeditions to help students experience something they might never otherwise encounter. 

As STEP grew, they settled into a model where they would send three cohorts of 12 on expeditions each summer, creating a transformative impact on the students’ confidence. But again, Baynes noticed another piece of the puzzle that could be added. 

She realized that the students she was meeting were not getting the information they needed to apply to college, so she decided to make that part of the mission.  

“I said, ‘I have gotta start working with these students in a larger capacity,’” she said. “I’ve gotta jump in the deep end of the pool and start doing a multi-year college prep program.”

Today, the mission of STEP is to educate and empower low-income Arizona students to enroll in and become first-generation graduates from college. The goal is to “provide the focused guidance needed to successfully prepare for and apply to top colleges, secure scholarships to make college affordable, navigate the transition from high school to college and advocate for themselves in college and life.”

As a result, not every student involved with STEP goes on an expedition — several hundred students each year are involved in STEP’s college efforts but do not travel — and the ones who do receive a lot more than a trip. The 36 high school seniors from Arizona schools venture into the Alaskan wilderness for three weeks and are dropped off on a beach with kayaks to find their way, without their phones and other comforts of home. They learn how to read maps and navigate rivers by working together and trusting their instincts and hard work.

“It’s different — it’s cold, it’s wet and it challenges them in different ways,” said Lynn Petzold, senior account manager and senior faculty at NOLS, who helps lead the STEP trips to Alaska. “The essence of the expedition is students being exposed to something different, struggling through it a little bit, having successes, having failures, leaning on each other for support and developing friendships and community. The experience of going on something very unknown becomes a platform for them to reflect on.”

^{Letura Kpea}

Letura Kpea is one of those students. The 17 year old is currently a senior at Buckeye High School who has dreamed since middle school of attending college. She is waiting to hear back from Vanderbilt University to see if she has gained early admission. 

Kpea said that STEP’s help has been invaluable in her application process, but the expedition is something she will remember for years to come. 

“Honestly, when they say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it truly was,” she said. “Initially, the trip is supposed to prepare you for your transition to college, and that was my goal, to show my parents that I would be able to thrive independently and go to college and do fine. I can say after the expedition that I am truly ready to do that.”

The adventure taught more than navigation skills. “They taught us some of the basics that you’ll need to learn in college, like cooking, how to room with others and how to get along with the people around you so that you are successful,” Kpea said. 

Baynes said one goal she tells students STEP has is to not have the students need the organization in the long run.

“We are launching students to be the leaders and the voices of tomorrow, and we’re also creating generational change in families and communities,” she said. “With a little bit of investment right now; we’re not making it so they are dependent on us, we’re making it so they can take it from there. And the ripple effects of that are infinite.”

To learn more, go to stepexpedition.org.

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Many people think that people who are experiencing homelessness are always experiencing homelessness, or close to it. But nothing could be further from the truth, especially when the economic factors of the past few years come into play.

While rising property values are great for home and property owners, that upward pressure has raised rental housing rates — dramatically. And the Phoenix metro area has seen some of the sharpest increases in the country.

The result is a slow-moving disaster unfolding for a family that may have never struggled to pay for housing before. A family that may have been spending $1,000 per month on rent three years ago may be spending more like $1,600 now. And they probably didn’t start out making a ton of money, and probably didn’t have a commensurate increase in salary.

Nowadays, a significant part of the increase in homelessness is affecting people it never affected before — children and families that were once housing-secure. And those families need to stay together, for many and obvious reasons, especially for the children involved.

It’s not an entirely new problem, but it’s worse now than perhaps ever before. That’s where an organization like Family Promise of Greater Phoenix comes in.

Family Promise actually started quite some time ago, in New York in 1986. The idea behind it was that instead of trying to shelter people in emergency situations in large, expensive shelters, church congregations would extend their own hospitality and work to provide more than just shelter to families in crisis. Yes, they would provide shelter, but they would also provide a support network that would help parents get jobs and children stay engaged in school and even ensure that pets get to stay with the families that love them.

The idea went national, and organizations were formed on the local level in cities across the country, including here in Phoenix. Ted Taylor, CEO of Family Promise of Greater Phoenix, said a few community leaders from Phoenix went on a field trip to Indiana to see how it worked, and brought the concept here in 1998.

“The first families were welcomed in the spring of 2000, and since then, we’ve grown tremendously,” he said. “This year, we served our 1,650th family… we believe the family must be kept intact, and by the way, including the pets.”

The approach was as important as the delivery, especially as time went on. Taylor calls it a “love immersion” program that helps families rebuild their sense of community. Family Promise of Greater Phoenix has five day centers that serve families during the day, and then the families go to congregations at night — a total of 48 congregations throughout the metro area.

Taylor said that approximately 80 percent of families they encounter have never experienced homelessness before. So getting them back into work and school is important, but families are also helped with healthcare and other critical needs.

“The way people think about us is that we are rigorous,” Taylor said. “We’re only a 60-day program, with average family stays of about 43 days. Our average family is employed within 14 days of arrival.

After they go to work, Family Promise does something really unique. “We teach pro forma cash flow,” Taylor said. “We teach families how to manage cash 15 weeks ahead of now. It is a rigorous program that helps families identify how to graduate from Family Promise sustainably.”

Here’s where it gets interesting, and where some potential long-term solutions start to surface. Over the years, Family Promise realized that every family is unique and the answers to their problems need to be created on a case-by-case basis.

This need really came to light as the pandemic started to affect income and homelessness. Taylor said they realized prevention is the key, just as it is with healthcare. Preventing a patient from becoming sick costs less than treating a sick patient. The same holds with keeping families housed.

After all, bills and income are fungible — a family may run out of rent money because a car breaks down, a health issue arises, or they have to buy groceries. Taylor said the cost of hosting a family for the 43-day period Family Promise averages is $5,000.

“We learned in 2020 and 2021 that, when we began doing prevention work because of COVID, the average cost of preventing families from needing shelter is $1,500 a family,” he said. “So we have discovered this new world of prevention, and we are partnering with many different organizations —including landlords at apartment complexes that have gotten to know us. We don’t deliver checks to clients; we deliver checks to landlords or providers who need those payments.”

So, Family Promise teams up with behavioral health agencies, domestic violence shelters and other agencies that can deal with “high-challenge families,” in Taylor’s words, to address the most unique and difficult cases.

All of this is critical, but it doesn’t address the core issue many families are dealing with right now — access to affordable housing.

“We have a funnel that is being squeezed off at the back end of homelessness,” Taylor said. “When the moratorium occurred for rental evictions, it froze the system. Families we serve couldn’t move into affordable housing because no one was moving out.”

That’s when creativity really came in. If there was no supply of affordable housing, Family Promise of Greater Phoenix decided to try to create their own. They realized that many of the congregations they were working with had small plots of land that could be utilized to create new opportunities for affordable housing. In partnership with BHHS Legacy Foundation, they devised a new idea.

Think micro-rental communities. As it is being executed, small units of affordable housing are built from shipping containers at half the cost of what it would take to build conventional affordable housing. The first will be on a one-third-acre parcel in Glendale, but they are looking for other congregational sites around the Valley with the proper zoning.

BHHS Legacy Foundation provided the seed grant for the first property — a six-unit property that is in the final stages of approval with the city — and Taylor said this will be “disruptive” to the affordable housing market.

“We’re going to create the ability to go on smaller properties — at a church or on smaller parcels that a normal developer wouldn’t touch — at a very low cost of entry,” Taylor said. If these kinds of projects start popping up all over the Valley, then even small, incremental measures can make a big difference. And through a creative, individualized approach to helping families overcome homelessness, real change can become a reality.

“We are showing we can fix big problems in our society by focusing on community,” Taylor said.

For more information, visit familypromiseaz.org

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There’s an old saying that if you give someone a fish, they will eat for a day. But if you teach someone to fish, they’ll eat for the rest of their lives.

That philosophy is somewhat unofficially at the core of how Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust works. They’d probably describe it more as a focus on sustainability, but you get the picture. Piper Trust is known for being particularly hands-on for a funding entity — most major philanthropic trusts will give money, then get a report back on its impact. But Piper Trust has always looked beyond that.

“They’ve done so much for us on all aspects,” said Jackie Hammond, the producing artistic director of Musical Theatre of Anthem, which does a variety of performances and classes in theater and dance for ages 3 to adult. “They’re not just like, ‘Here’s money.’ They say, ‘How can we help you thrive?’ They see what we’re doing and appreciate it.”

Hammond should know. Her organization is a part of a new Piper Trust initiative called Arts & Culture Forward, which aims to increase support for smaller community arts organizations; larger arts organizations will also be part of the initiative. 

Piper Trust had previously focused on support for the larger arts and culture organizations in Maricopa County because of their impact on the Valley’s overall quality of life. But over the past few years — particularly during the pandemic — Piper Trust shifted its focus to include smaller groups as well, particularly ones that reach underserved populations and focus on community engagement. 

“This came about during COVID, when we stopped doing our regular work,” said Ellen Solowey, senior program manager for Piper Trust. “We paused our usual grantmaking process as the Trustees and Trust felt we had to act swiftly and get grants out to the nonprofit community. After two years of that, the sense was that we’re not going to do any more COVID emergency grantmaking. However, COVID isn’t done, especially with the arts sector. It experienced the largest drops in demand, revenue and staffing of any part of the nonprofit sphere. It was a huge shock to arts and culture.”

The difference in approach for Arts & Culture Forward may seem a little bit inside baseball, but it’s vital. In most grant-giving situations, funders are giving money for specific programs or services. But with Arts & Culture Forward, Piper Trust is giving general operating funds for a three-year period to organizations it has vetted and trusts. That may not sound like a big deal, but in the nonprofit world, it’s seismic. Solowey went so far as to call grants like this “the holy grail of funding.”

“We can put the fiscal support they are providing where we need it most, which for us is developing infrastructure and really making sure that our programs are meeting the wants and needs of our community,” said Regina Nixon, the executive director of the Phoenix Conservatory of Music, a 23-year-old nonprofit that provides music education programs and performance opportunities for children and adults. “For us, that also means looking at the future — I’m actually a Piper Fellow, and we’re looking at how to grow a post-pandemic staff and have the workforce of today.” 

Arts & Culture Forward places a new focus around what Solowey cited as organizations that focus on unfamiliar art forms, ethnic voices or in farther geographic areas from the central city, as well as ones that center their missions on specific populations, low-income households, people of color, differently abled people, and of course youth.

The smaller organizations are defined as having less than $1 million in their annual operating budget, and right now, of the 47 arts organizations that Piper Trust funds, 21 of those are in that smaller category — a number that has doubled in the past decade.

“It really comes down to trust, and trust-based philanthropy,” Solowey said. “Sometimes giving can be uneven — we have all the resources in the funder’s seat, and as a result, the relationship is unbalanced. Trust-based giving puts the nonprofit in the driver’s seat. All these organizations are ones we have known for at least a decade, and we feel quite comfortable with them deploying resources as they see fit.”

For Dr. Lawrence Bell, the executive director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society — which celebrates the history and heritage of the Jewish community in the Valley through exhibits and programming at a historic building in downtown Phoenix — the program is about building a better future for the arts in the Valley.

“Phoenix is lucky to have them. We do not have a lot of philanthropic foundations of the size and capacity of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust,” Bell said. “You see their name everywhere, but I’m not sure the community is always aware of the great work they do …. They prop up a part of the community that doesn’t always get attention in terms of arts and culture.”

To learn more, visit pipertrust.org. 

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He originally was going to give away shirts with the Paper Clouds Apparel logo — free advertising, after all — but that idea evolved. He decided to go on the company’s social media feeds and ask people to send “letters of hope,” any words of encouragement he could give individuals experiencing homelessness. Within a couple of weeks, he had hundreds of letters.

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