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To Our Donors and Friends
Richard L. Jones, PhD
President and CEO
Bringing up a family...that's what Metropolitan Family Services is all about -- providing and connecting families with the services they need to create safe and nuturing homes and strong communities. As we look toward the future, our strategic goals continue to focus on building support for the vital services we provide to families and raising the visibility of Metropolitan Family Services as one of the leading human services agencies in the Chicago area. We have an outstanding leadership team and exceptional staff dedicated to our mission. I'm also grateful to have a stellar and committed board of directors who help guide and support our efforts. At Metropolitan, we continue to build our community orientation -- growing our services to respond to the needs of the communities we serve. There is a tremendous need for child welfare and youth and child development services and we are taking steps to offer a greater depth of programs in these areas. Our 21st Century Learning program is a very exciting example of that growth. We continue to further develop our partnership with Chicago Public Schools by serving nine communities with our Out-of-School-Time and Teen Reach programs. We're seeing some magnificent outcomes and improvements in reading and math scores among youth in these programs. On the other end of the age spectrum, there also is a need to increase our services among the growing senior population. We have extraordinary expertise and achieve outstanding results in this service area as well -- helping seniors remain active in their communities, providing support services to grandparents raising grandchildren and assisting seniors and caregivers to manage the many challenges of aging. When we examine the unmet needs of the community, we continually seek additional resources to expand our counseling and mental health services. Our response to Hurricane Katrina victims is a good example of that need. Working as part of a coalition organized and funded by United Way, we are providing case mangement and a continuum of services to many families who lost everything in the devastation of the hurricane and were evacuated to the Chicago area. We continue to explore ways to direct our services around cultural sensitivies and emerging issues as a result of the growing immigrant population in many communities. Bringing up a family in a new country, without the traditional family supports and in the face of language and cultural differences can be especially challenging and isolating. As we take a strategic look at how we can increase our impact on families and communities, we will seek opportunities to work in partnership with other organizations on issues like substance abuse, another growing concern in the community. We also feel it is important to identify additional geographic areas that are in need of services like ours, but have few quality service providers. There are tremendous needs in the city and some areas, like the West side, for example, are sorely underserved. Thanks to the efforts of everyone in our organization, we are intently focused on expanding our capacity to serve as many people as possible. Through our "Leading Excellence in Agency Programs and Serivces" (LEAPS) initiative, we're creating an efficient service delivery system that makes good use of all private and public funding and ensures 85 cents of every dollar we receive goes directly toward serving clients. As a human services agency, we rely on both public and private support. With public budgets for human services continuing to tighten, we must raise our visibility among the corporate and private sectors to expand our fundraising capacity and increase the number of supporters of Metropolitan Family Services. Through the years, we have been blessed with many wonderfully generous donors. However, the needs of families and the need for funding continue to grow. We've set an aggressive, yet I believe an achievable, goal to raise $4 million by fiscal 2007. There are many reasons to support Metropolitan Family Services. We are highly respected as a service provider in the community. We take a leadership role identifying, understanding and addressing emerging and growing needs of families: children do bettter in school, youth pursue higher ambitions, and families and individuals change dysfunctional behavior and become more productive. Please join us in the vital mission of strengthening the families of metropolitan Chicago.
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