Monroe County United Ministries

To operate at the quality and with the outcomes and impact it does, compass early learning center costs the agency about $23,800 per week after the ccdf and on my way pre-k reimbursements and sliding scale fees (average of $63 per child per week) have been paid. After fee reimbursements, the average funding gap for the true cost of care for one child is $3,410 per year, which is made up with fundraising. We provide meals (daily breakfast, lunch, and snack), flu shots (plus shots for parents, if they wish), parent resources and workshops, staffing, and a lifetime of long-term benefits for enrolled families. Our fee scale and fundraising model helps us to keep compass accessible at no or low cost to parents who would otherwise have to choose between quality and affordability, potentially jeopardizing the rest of their children's lives socially, academically, and economically.we have made more deliberate programmatic changes designed to further dignify clients in the ssc including lowering barriers to access basic needs assistance and the addition of online ordering and delivery services for our food pantry. Combined with the pandemic, the expanded program offerings have drastically increased the demand for mcum's services. With 24% of all families living in poverty, Monroe County has the highest poverty rate in Indiana. This represents 34,191 people in our community who struggle daily to make ends meet. Mcum's self-sufficiency center provided relief to more than 4,000 such families in 2018 an increase of about 3,000 since our last allocations cycle. Mcum's services are exhaustive, intervention- and prevention-focused, and client-driven; clients may request access to any number of these critical resources during their meetings with their coach, encouraging them to determine (with as much guidance as they choose) the blend of resources that best addresses their circumstances. Meeting clients where they are and not where we determine they should be cultivates empowerment, confidence, and growth: these are core tenants of mcum's self-sufficiency center. For a family of three, basic needs assistance for one year costs an average of $228 for a family of three and the provision of services to your path clients costs $3,705. Our agency's growth (in both of our programs) since our last allocations application is a testament to the quality of the services we offer, but also exposes the sobering reality that too many families in our community are in distress, and too few agencies are empowering them to achieve self-sufficiency.

Emergency food, clothing and limited financial aid - emergency services.mcum provided financial assistance, directly from grant funding, to 79 households consisting of 187 total individuals. As both of our programs are largely grant-funded, all clients of mcum and compass early learning center could likely be considered grant recipients. Therefore, mcum also provided care to 120 total children (with 104 total enrolling parents/guardians), self-sufficiency coaching through our your path program for 7 families, including managing 11 individual development accounts, and food for 10,495 individuals in 2021.