Community Partnership Of The Ozark Inc

Community partnership of the ozarks' (cpo) community and neighborhood development division (cndd) builds resilient children, healthy families, and strong neighborhoods through collaboration, engagement, and partnerships that identify and facilitate community-based strategies to address the needs of children and families. Caring communities promotes student achievement through mentoring, afterschool club support, skill building groups, social/emotional learning opportunities and education, crisis intervention, and case management with families. The initiative provides support to neighborhood associations and neighborhood cleanups, facilitates the springfield tool library, helps to address chronic nuisance properties, and facilitates neighborhood training and education. Caring communities provides mentoring through programs including bulldog basketball academy, mentor sgf, after school clubs, one-on one mentoring, brother 2 brother (saab), and sisters 2 sisters. Bulldog basketball academy is a mentoring program that prepares students for success in school, and life as an adult, while providing quality basketball training. In fy24 bulldog basketball academy served 247 students at 9 different locations. Through these partnerships, we offered 96 different engagement opportunities for students. Mentor sgf served 965 students by helping them build self-awareness, confidence, and resilience. After-school clubs served 554 students by providing them with extracurricular activities to give the students a safe, productive space to grow and connect after school. 138 students took part in small group and one-on-one mentoring to promote healthy habits and the building of a unique and impactful set of skills. Brother 2 brother and sisters 2 sisters, which are mentoring initiatives facilitated through student african american brotherhood (saab), impacted 136 students by equipping them with the skills and mindset necessary to find success throughout each next step in life. In total, 965 students were served through mentoring programs. Through our school-based social work program, we assisted students and families with crisis intervention and connection to resources. We received 1,133 referrals and served 8,521 individuals. Our team made 10,794 contacts with students and families. Funding from community foundation of the ozarks' let's get to work program supported workers and job seekers who face transportation barriers that affected their ability to get hired or maintain their current jobs. It was used to meet needs such as car repairs, licensing fees/taxes, car insurance, gas cards, car payments, bus passes and even car down payments. In fy24, we helped 20 clients/families (46 individuals). In partnership with united way, we facilitated a grant that provided direct financial assistance for individuals to assist with past due rent, utilities, child care, and car reports. In a little over two months, we assisted 128 families (480 individuals).our neighborhood clean-up program experienced another successful year. 170 tons of trash was taken to the landfill and 17 tons of scrap metal was recycled, 93 waste and 33 yard waste dumpsters were filled, and 1,301 households were served. Additionally, with grant funding from the ozarks headwaters recycling and materials management district, we offered free recycling of 723 tvs and 418 computers. Our neighborhood clean ups were supported by 208 volunteers who gave 994 hours of their time. The springfield tool library gained 43 new members and processed 284 transactions providing tool rentals to help people maintain their homes and work on projects. Nourish the ozarks empowers farmers and enriches communities by distributing free, locally grown food to communities in need across 17 counties in southern missouri. The counties that we serve are some of the most food insecure counties across the state. We served 21,882 people through 464 different distributions across 59 unique locations. We purchased food from 74 farms providing over 50,000 pounds of fresh local produce, 2,699 pounds of meat, 895 dozen eggs, and 155 jars of preserves to individuals in need. The greater springfield area crime stoppers program encourages members of the community to assist local law enforcement agencies in the fight against crime by overcoming the two key elements that inhibit community involvement: fear and apathy. The program is designed to develop information used to solve felony crimes. Cash rewards of up to $1,000 are available for tips that directly lead to a felony arrest or seizure of a felony amount of drugs. This year, there were 1,215 tips received, 1,116 tip follow-ups were made, and $2,000 was paid out to tipsters who provided valuable information leading to felony arrests/charges filed. The community mentoring and supportive services program is a partnership with the division of youth services that provides individual and group mentoring while supporting family engagement. There were 12 youth who received one-on-one mentoring services, 60 referrals were made to 17 different community resources, and 69 afterschool activities were facilitated at excel resource center. This program also conducted 9 family nights and 2 holiday luncheons with a total of 286 people in attendance. Our making sense of money (msom) financial literacy program served 234 individuals through the basic budgeting, and 43 participants received a $100 savings goal match. Through the msom program, participants engaged in classes, financial literacy planning, and panel discussions with finance experts in the community. Free volunteer income tax assistance (vita) clinics were offered as part of the across the life span (atls) and we care coalitions. 85 irs-certified volunteers prepared 5,992 federal tax returns last year, returning over $5.5 million in total refunds. There were 10 vita clinic locations in springfield and joplin. We partnered with the springfield dream center to host tax-a-palooza, which served 125 people and brought in over $125,000 in refunds in one day.

Cpo's prevention and youth support division works in 21 counties in southwest missouri assisting communities in building prevention coalitions and implementing multiple state of missouri prevention contracts and local, state, and federal grants. Highlights include coordinating a regional substance use and suicide prevention leadership conference for more than 90 coalition and community leaders and collecting 223 vape devices from vape drop boxes installed in school buildings of the springfield and willard school districts. We provided technical assistance and training to help coalitions in taney and webster counties successfully implement the first year of their 5-year federal substance use prevention grants. We collaborated with coalitions to implement 25 medication take back events where 3,664 pounds of medications were collected for proper disposal. We distributed 4,484 medications disposal bags and 933 lock boxes to community members. We visited all 1,247 tobacco retailers across 21 counties to provide resources to prevent tobacco sales to persons under age 21 and coordinated 131 compliance checks resulting in 94.6% pass rate in the region.through our suicide prevention initiatives funded by the missouri foundation for health and the federal substance abuse & mental health services administration, our media campaigns resulted in 4,647,858 impressions, and we distributed 1,408 home safety kits to community members that include a medication/handgun lock box, firearm cable lock, medication destruction packets, a 988 promotional magnet, and literature on suicide and opioid misuse and overdose prevention. We continued a partnership with the ozarks area crisis intervention team to provide cit training to 90 first responders, and we provided 31 mental health first aid trainings to 393 adults and 2 qpr suicide prevention trainings to 36 adults. We supported almost 2,000 10th grade students in receiving teen mental health first aid training and 4,357 6th-12th graders in receiving the signs of suicide training to increase their mental health literacy, decrease stigma, and identify and assist a person experiencing a mental health challenge or crisis, including thoughts of suicide. We assisted the missouri suicide prevention network and missouri department of mental health in developing a suicide prevention coalition registration process for missouri coalitions, co-facilitated the missouri suicide prevention coalition academy, and assisted in drafting the 2024-2028 missouri suicide prevention plan that was then approved by the governor of missouri. We continued as a founding member of the missouri collaborative on firearm research executive committee, comprised of 3 community-based organizations and two research institutions, to develop a statewide collaborative to shift firearm injury and death research to be community led by those impacted by firearm injury and death.

The o'reilly center for hope (och) welcomed over 9,800 unique visitors and made over 45,500 referrals, connecting guests to critical community services. The establishment of the och helps to fulfill cpo's organizational mission to ensure residents have access to the support and services needed to obtain safe, decent, affordable, and accessible housing and to achieve financial stability. The och provides residents of our tri-county region with direct access to multiple agencies; a one-stop direct service center co-locating cpo's anchor programs one door and the springfield community land trust (sclt) along with aarp, burrell behavioral health, catholic charities of southern missouri, missouri division of social services, habitat for humanity, and missouri state university's nursing program.the sclt is a local leader in creating safe, decent, affordable homeownership opportunities in springfield. Through new development and renovation of springfield's aging housing stock, the sclt can offer homes to qualifying households that meet fannie mae income and credit thresholds. Households can purchase a home with $1,000 down and mortgages typically lower than fair market rent rates. Further, each new home incorporates universal design principles. The sclt has sold 22 homes to low- and moderate-income households. Affordable rentals are also available through this program. The sclt has 27 rental units that are offered to low and moderate-income households. Using the same principles of affordable housing, the sclt purchases aging housing stock, renovates to ensure energy efficiency, safety, and accessibility, and provides the units to income qualifying households. As a 'community convener,' we contract with the city of springfield to oversee the local continuum of care (dba as the ozarks alliance to end homelessness - oaeh). The oaeh governs policies and programming funded through the us department of housing and urban development (hud) including continuum of care (coc) federal initiative. Funding through hud coc totals over $1 million dollars and supports direct service agencies including catholic charities of southern missouri, department of mental health, kcv, harmony house, the kitchen inc., and the institute for community alliances.the oaeh conducts a specialized study of youth aged 13-24 who are homeless as defined by the department of education (more broadly defined than the department of housing and urban development). This study incorporates point in time data for youth, a survey, and information from the area public school systems. Cpo formally launched the hud mandated coordinated entry system in february 2017 through our one door program. The one door program now holds the homeless by-name-list, which is a prioritized listing of all households that are experiencing homelessness. Twice each month, one door facilitates case conferencing with all federally funded programs to identify and refer households for all available units. One door and its 6 'front door' entities conduct all assessments for those who are homeless or at risk. In 2023-2024, one door staff completed more than 1,100 intake assessments, encompassing 2,179 people. Through this coordinated entry system, we connected 626 households to supportive housing services.cpo and the oaeh coordinate the crisis cold weather shelter program each winter to expand the number of overnight emergency shelter beds for adults in our community. Shelters are independently operated, but all follow parameters set forth by the city of springfield's declaration of economic and housing calamity to ensure health and safety of volunteers/guests as well as best practices established through cpo's oaeh to ensure consistency of service across all sites. During the 2023-2024 season, crisis cold weather shelters were open 52 nights, providing 10,187 bed nights (includes duplicated numbers served). There were an average of 183 people sheltered per night with a peak in services in january where an average of 227 people were sheltered each night. Over 400 community volunteers helped ensure that people were sheltered during the coldest nights november through march. Our partner, grace united methodist church, hosted the meal and pick up site for crisis cold weather. Meals were offered on 150 days with 25,000 meals served.