Community Impact

 Improving lives by mobilizing communities to create sustained changes in community conditions.

 Community problem-solving activities share these key characteristics:

•   The issues addressed are of broad community interest-no one organization, acting alone, can solve them.
•   The impact of these issues is community-wide, not confined to any one organization’s operations, programs, or relations with other organizations.
• A range of community leaders in both the public and private sectors participates in community problem solving. 
• Participants in community problem solving seek responses that are inclusive, timely and flexible.

United Way of Kosciusko County is working to advance the common good by focusing on education, income, and health. These are the building blocks for a good life – a quality education that leads to a stable job, enough income to support a family through retirement and good health.  

Our Vision Councils meet each year to review the funding requests for area programs. From this year forward, programs requesting funds are asked to select which new United Way focus area they fit into and how they might help us to accomplish our set goals: to raise our county’s graduation rate and create more economically self sufficient individuals and families.

Kosciusko County’s high school graduation rate currently sits at 72%. After careful deliberation among topic experts, community, and local leadership members, United Way has developed a plan to raise this statistic. Our strategy to achieve this will be to fund programs that deal with school readiness and early academic achievement. When children enter school more prepared and have mastered appropriate literacy skills by grade three, they are more likely to succeed throughout school. An additional benefit is that successful students generally have fewer behavioral issues.

There are numerous families and individuals who struggle to make ends meet but especially so with the current economic struggles. United Way of Kosciusko County would like to increase the number of working families and individuals that are economically self-sufficient. This goal will be achieved by funding programs that make a difference in employability, family management, or family stabilization. When individuals have the tools and skills necessary to get a stable job and learn how to manage their budget, they are better prepared to be financially independent.

That’s what it means to LIVE UNITED.