See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Ella's Kids

The feature below is brought to you by Ella's Kids, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. 
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To learn more about Ella's Kids, please visit their website page: here.

Partnerships and empowerment with Ella's Kids

For more than 17 years, Ella’s Kids, Inc. has embraced Washington-area families in transitional housing with the love and support they need to nurture and sustain strong children. Inspired by the commitment of her parents, who played a critical role in the Washington community for over 50 years, Ella Strother founded Ella’s Kids to provide support to her community. Ella is a professional Certified Physician Assistant who has cared for inmates within the Washington DC metro area since 1998. 

A lean nonprofit, Ella’s Kids collaborates with a network of local organizations—including Gifts For the Homeless, Cataada House, Center for Empowerment and Employment Training, Family Healing Headquarters Community Service, Susie C. Owens Empowerment Center, Ada Velasquez Community Food Bank, and MJ Holding Inc, a distributor of gaming, sports and entertainment supplies, to source clothing and school supplies, identify children and families in need, and streamline the delivery of basic necessities.

Empowerment, which is central to Ella’s mission, is reinforced through courses in basic education, character development, life skills, computer skills, and career discovery to help women build both confidence and capacity on the path to stability, permanent housing, and employment opportunities.

Ella’s Kids also draws upon decades of experience -- and a network of contacts -- to help women navigate the maze of licensed professionals available to them, including for HIV Education and testing, ex-offender support groups, drug, and alcohol addiction prevention support groups, court-approved relapse prevention, anger management, and conflict resolution.

The organization’s work is typified by hands-on, responsive, and direct support of families in shelters–and an abiding commitment to ensure that no one is left behind. Ella is a pillar of efficiency and a powerful connector. As Anthony Banks, a board member of Ella’s Kids, told the Washington Post, “every dime is accounted for.”

Ella’s Kids’ Backpack for Kids Drive, the initiative for which we are seeking funding, is about reducing pressure on teachers, creating a profound impact on students and their learning experiences, and providing Pre-K - 12th-grade students, as well as some challenged first-year college students, with the tools they need to succeed.

The program’s objective is to ensure that children in need are prepared for the school year with the supplies they need on day one. The target audience for this program is underserved children in transitional housing in Washington DC, and we mainly concentrate on children and youth living in shelters or halfway houses (which house youth who were recently incarcerated and are preparing to return to school). 

Ella’s Kids is an entirely grant-funded and volunteer-driven nonprofit. During the calendar year 2018, we delivered goods to more than 1,200 women, families, and children within the Washington metro area. One Hundred percent of our funding is applied to the benefit of our community. We have no paid personnel, no rent, no office space. Storage space is donated by affiliates.

The problem we are addressing is profound. With more than 76 percent of the estimated 87,000 students within Washington DC, public and charter schools enrolled in the free and reduced meal program, many parents are unable to provide basic school supplies for their children.

Per-student funding for public education has dropped in recent years, and research suggests that a majority of public school students are living in poverty. Teachers, as a result, have resorted to spending money out of their own pockets.  According to a recent study, ten percent of teachers spend $1,000 or more. But equity gaps persist in low-income communities. And, even with teachers’ generous help, DC teachers report that many students still attend school without the basic supplies needed to learn.

Although affluent schools are often able to fund school supply purchases with support from parents or PTAs, a high concentration of students from low-income families within a given district means that communities and families with the greatest need are often the least equipped to provide supplies for their students.

In order to ensure that our work is both efficient and responsive, Ella's Kids partners with local organizations working directly with families and schools to understand communities’ specific needs, and ensure fast, efficient distribution.

For example, the needs of high school boys differ from girls. And the needs of older children vary widely from their younger peers. We also talk to parents and teachers at the schools we serve to make sure we are providing supplies that will be used in class. We make sure our backpacks are not one-size-fits-all.  Local partners and ground truth ensure that we are providing grade-appropriate supplies that get used, make an impact--and last.

Unlike larger, national nonprofits that operate with high overhead to dispense large-scale, undifferentiated solutions, our volunteer network is able to quickly offer highly-targeted solutions to individual schools, classrooms, and even students with relatively little input. We know the communities we serve, we know how to identify where the need is greatest, and our work is entirely direct action. And we know that there is more work to do.

As a small, lean nonprofit, our overhead costs are non-existent. That means that every dollar we receive goes directly to DC kids who need help. Supporting our efficient infrastructure for distributing services directly to kids in need is an uncommonly direct way to advance the goal of improving the conditions of women and children in DC.

Ella’s Kids would use a combination of qualitative and quantitative strategies to measure, quantify, and report on the outcomes that stem from See Beautiful's investment. We evaluate our impact based on the number of backpacks we hand out, the number of children we serve, the size of our annual events, and the number of volunteers who work with us. From a qualitative standpoint, we solicit feedback from partners to ensure that we provide the most helpful, timely supplies possible to local children.

Most importantly, we evaluate our outcomes through the stories of the families we serve. Five are outlined below. These individuals and families have been provided many of the following in our outreach: winter clothing, school supplies, emergency groceries, baby supplies when needed, referrals to addiction prevention programs, job training referrals, mentoring, connections to activities for youth, holiday gifts, Thanksgiving food baskets, assistance with transportation for job interviews, and furniture.

• Rose is a former cocaine addict of many years who could not read, and a mother of two boys. She was sent by the courts to a live-in drug program. Rose has been clean and sober for fourteen years and has an Associates Degree in Culinary Arts, with one son in college and one son completing high school. Rose has had her own apartment and has been employed in the Court System as a chef! Rose now gives back through Ella’s Kids by helping moms in shelters get into programs that will assist them in their search for self-improvement and stability.
• DeAndre, a shelter kid, and product of a cocaine-addicted mom, could not read at the age of 15. His mom took the challenge offered by Ella’s kids and became clean and sober in 9 months and a model parent at the Community of Hope shelter.  DeAndre’s mom has been clean and sober for at least 10 years, has two jobs, a new car, a new husband and keeps a very clean and orderly apartment. DeAndre was referred to a special school where he now reads well, graduated with his high school diploma, and is currently employed and married with his own apartment. DeAndre is an avid volunteer at Ella’s Kids Inc.
• Ms. BB, an 11-year-old child born to a drug-addicted mom whose family is assisted by Ella’s Kids is an A student and an enthusiastic volunteer who helped to pack our backpacks energetically.
• Ms. EB has tremendously decreased her drug usage and all the children are performing well in school. The grandmother of this family is the stabilizing force for all of her grandchildren from daughters of mental illness and drug abuse. Two daughters are now full-time employed and all have received ongoing assistance from Ella’s Kids with their children and their needs for support to survive. 
• Ms. Boyd is a great grandmother raising her seven students in DC with assistance from one daughter who is employed as a Security Guard and uses no drugs or alcohol. Ms. Boyd is very active in their lives, and all the children are performing very well in their grade levels, as she keeps them focused. One of her great-grandsons is very well known in the news as a sports phenomena in high school with many college scholarships offered already!