By Jessica Tonyan, Project Engineer with Nexus 5 Group
Nexus 5 Group prides our self on following our 5 core values. One of our core values is Community Impact. This is one that we wanted to focus more on in 2020 even before the pandemic, but now it's even more needed.
For the 2020 holiday season we decided to partner with Operation Breakthrough.
Operation Breakthrough is a childcare center that serves over 650 children from ages 6 weeks to 14 years old. They not only provide childcare, but the families are provided a variety of programs designed to promote healthy family relationships.
A few of the programs include early childhood education, before and after school care, occupational and physical therapy provided on-site, dental clinics, health care clinics, speech and language therapy provided on-site, family nurturing programs to help parents, emergency aid, on-site food and clothing pantry, WIC classes available on-site and adult therapy.
The families that receive these services all live below the federal poverty level.
In fact, eighty percent of the families live on less than $12,000 annually. One out of five children they serve is homeless, living in battered women’s or homeless shelters or transitional living, and sixty five percent of those children have experienced trauma or witnessed incidents of violence by age five.
Every holiday season, Operation Breakthrough does a Christmas program and helps provide toys and household items to families in need through two programs: Adopt-A-Family and the Holiday Store.
This year over 900 families were “adopted” by other families or businesses in the Kansas City area with their Adopt-A-Family program. Their Holiday Store served an additional 800 families. They ended up serving over 3,500 children for the 2020 Holiday Season.
Getting Involved
Nexus 5 wanted to be part of this, and we wanted our whole team to get involved! We decided to do two things with this Christmas program. First, we decided to adopt a family that consisted of five children and a single mother. Our whole team donated money and Nexus 5 matched that donation. We ended up with $1,720 to spend on our family!
All the children received a new coat, hat, gloves, underwear, socks, an outfit, full stockings, bedding, and several gifts. Mom received skin care products, an air fryer/instant pot combo, a $100 Wal-Mart gift card and $60 for Christmas dinner.
Second, our entire office spent half of a day volunteering setting up the Holiday Store and taking donations.
Our passion and mission are to Serve Well at home, at work and within our community. This is an extraordinary example of serving our community well. It was a great team building experience and we will definitely be doing this again next year.