Friendship House of Christian Service

Friendship House of Christian Service was started by a coalition of downtown Billings churches in 1957 to provide essential services to the impoverished and under-resourced children and families living on Billings south side. Over the years, the mission of Friendship House has remained constant: Reflecting the Love of Jesus Christ to foster renewal, stability and transformation in the lives of children and families in South Billings. Our overarching goal is to break the cycle of generational poverty through education, investment and access to essential services. We seek to provide holistic community development and build leaders through serving at-risk and low-income children and families. Because our goal requires tremendous buy-in from our enrollees, we strive to develop long lasting friendship with children and families we serve through compassion, care and accountability. By offering services for ages 4-104 since 1957, we truly have become the foundation that allows our clients to grow into successful leaders. The five core programs we use to achieve this goal include our: Preschool- for 4-5 year old children, Youth-Afterschool/Summer Enrichment Programs for K-6th grade students, Teen- Programming for 13-19 year olds including open gym and Cafe', Parent/Caregiver/Adult Support Programming- educational classes, and Counseling- for all age levels, individuals and families. Because of the tremendous support of our donors, grantors, contractors and endowment, we have found tremendous success in working to increase school readiness by 100% in Preschoolers, K-6th grade student academic test scores have increased 17%, student social growth has improved 10%, student emotional growth increased 13%, parental support classes have educated over 300 this year, access to food resources has grown by 10%, neighborhood teen social and emotional support rose by 100% and we provided over 1,000 hours of counseling this year. We are not a franchise of a national organization; rather we are a homegrown Billings, Montana community response to meeting our communitys deepest needs. We have a local board of directors from the various sectors of the Billings community and maintain local control of our work. We do not proselytize, rather we share Gods love through acts of service that earn us the right to invest in lives challenged by poverty and brokenness. While we are a part of several local, statewide, nationwide and worldwide affinity groups that support and encourage our work to the under-resourced, we are independent and can serve where our community has the most immediate need. We have the support of more than 75 businesses and 40 churches and more than 25 partner agencies that encourage our work with contributions, volunteers and donations. We are truly making great strides in developing our community, building leaders and are meeting and exceeding our goals.