Our Community's Goals
We believe in Lebanon County’s potential to be a thriving community, a community where every person has access to resources they need to succeed. Through a focus on collaboration between organizations and citizens of the county, we will make a measurable impact on long-term, systemic issues within our communities. Through our 2017 Needs Assessment, along with conversations held with our neighbors throughout the county, United Way has established the following goals:
Literacy Lebanon – Raising Readers | Goal: To have 90% of third grade children reading at grade level by the end of the 2025 school year.
Developing Youth for Tomorrow | Goal: To have 100% of youth in our communities connected to work or school by 2025.
Empowering Adults & Families | Goal: To move 7,000 adults to self-sufficiency by 2025.
Safety Net Services
Collective Impact Partner Programs
United Way is committed to delivering on these goals by supporting programs and initiatives that are collaborating and sharing resources to achieve measurable results and lasting change.
Be The One Parenting Program
- Lead Organization: Lebanon Family Health Services
- Additional Participating Organizations: Domestic Violence Intervention, Lebanon County Children and Youth Services, and the family court system
This parenting course is designed to assist families dealing with trauma by identifying the impact of the trauma, how to overcome it with social supports, and to foster emotional health and build the parent/child relationship. This four-week program helps to create emotionally safe and secure home environments so that children and families in our community are equipped to break the cycles of intergenerational abuse and trauma, and as a result, have a much better chance at succeeding and thriving in school and as members of our communities.
Crisis & Healing Response to Survivors of Sexual Violence
- Lead Organization: Sexual Assault Resource & Counseling Center (SARCC)
This 24-hour confidential, trauma-informed healing and advocacy service continuum is available to all Lebanon County residents impacted by sexual violence and is working to further enhance their services to better meet the current needs of adults and children within our communities.
Critical Help for Critical Moments (CHCM)
- Lead Organization: MidPenn Legal Services
As the only provider of free civil legal services in Lebanon County, CHCM legal advocates work to stabilize the living situation of county residents who are in need legal help to preserve their housing and protect themselves from domestic violence. The work of CHCM is to help residents struggling with poverty and abuse to assert their legal rights for protection from domestic violence and sexual assault as well as prevention of homelessness.
Domestic Violence Intervention of Lebanon County Emergency Shelter
- Lead Organization: Domestic Violence Intervention of Lebanon County, Inc.
The shelter provides a safe space for victims of domestic violence and their children offering trauma-informed care in order empower them to become self-sufficient and regain a life free from violence. Services include a 24-hour crisis hotline and first response team, emergency shelter, residential and non-residential counseling, legal and systems advocacy, and public education programs.
Early Intervention Program
- Lead Organization: Developmental and Disability Services of Lebanon Valley (DDS)
Early Intervention therapists and teachers offer parents and caregivers much needed support by providing necessary building blocks early in life for a child with a disability or developmental delay that can assist them in achieving greater success upon entering kindergarten. The program provides positive reinforcement and education for parents and caregivers to serve as teachers and motivators for their children. Services include home based teacher who specializes in the child's social, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional needs; physical and occupational therapy to assist in development of motor skills; and speech and language therapy.
Freer Family Community Youth Center
- Lead Organization: Lebanon Valley Family YMCA
The Freer Family Community Youth Center provides a safe environment for middle and high school youth after school dismissal each day during the academic year and during the summer break.
FRESH Start Emergency Shelter and Resource Center
- Lead Organization: Lebanon County Christian Ministries
- Additional Participating Organizations: Community Action Partnership, Jubilee Ministries, Lebanon Valley College, Lebanon Valley YMCA, Lebanon County MH/ID/EI, Support Connections of Lebanon County, Lebanon Rescue Mission, PROBE, and various churches throughout the county
FRESH Start provides help with the basic, immediate needs of homeless families and individuals while also educating and empowering them to be able to confidently provide for themselves. By navigating the various challenges that led to homelessness, guests are able to move forward through work readiness programs, GED courses, parenting classes, cooking classes, and financial literacy classes, among other services, to ensure that they are empowered to find stability in their lives and are prepared to face life's challenges with a new and positive attitude.
Lebanon County Employment Collaborative
- Lead Organization: Quest, Inc.
- Additional Participating Organizations: DDS
This collaborative program offers support services for anyone in Lebanon County age 16+ with disabilities to find and sustain gainful community-based employment to improv their quality of life. The program offers one-on-one employment support inclusive of case management, job development, job placement, and educational programming performed by professionally accredited, trained staff.
Living Beyond Illness
- Lead Organization: Compeer of Lebanon County
By providing and ensuring access to a combination of clinical and community-based behavioral health and support services, this program’s goal is to keep adults living in Lebanon County well and enable them to be a contributing member within the community. Monthly facilitated clinical and peer support groups create a space where individuals can come together to share their stories, experiences, and lives in a way that helps reduce isolation and loneliness and helps to ensure mental stability and self-sufficiency for Lebanon County residents who are living with mental illness.
Myerstown Community Library Raising A Reader Initiative
- Lead Organization: Myerstown Community Library
- Additional Participating Organizations: Jackson Elementary School
The Myerstown Community Library is implementing a nationally established family engagement and literacy program, "Raising a Reader," to make a measurable increase in early childhood literacy skills in Jackson Elementary kindergarteners. Before school begins, parents and caregivers receive book-sharing training by a certified librarian. Students receive a bag filled with a selection of books provided by the library. Each week, students exchange their bag for a new selection of books. The program encourages children and their families to establish literacy routines, which are invaluable to the school readiness and academic success. In addition, the program helps teachers and library staff build stronger engagement with and inclusion of families in the educational success of their children.
Palmyra Education & Health Collaborative
- Lead Organization: Phoenix Youth Center
- Additional Participating Organizations: Palmyra Public Library, Caring Cupboard, Palmyra Area School District, Palmyra Church of the Brethren, Palm Lutheran Church, Palmyra - a Caring Community, Penn State Health, Lebanon Family Health Services
This collaboration seeks to break the barriers for children ages three through eighth grade to improve academic performance, ensure equal access to educational opportunities, and increase family security. Palmyra Public Library will provide Little Explorers Early Learning Outreach classes to children ages three -five including literacy, STEM, motor skills development, and social interaction skills as well as free lunch provided by The Caring Cupboard. In addition to providing nutritional food for the children, The Caring Cupboard serves as a community navigator for families in need to provide information and direct them to support services that can help their situation. Phoenix Youth Center offers afterschool homework help and informational workshops from children grades three through eight including guidance from staff and volunteers as well as a healthy snack for students who finish their work. The Center also works with students during the summer months with free, one-to-one tutoring to help prevent the summer slide.
Pipelines and Pathways to Success
- Lead Organization: The Literacy Council of Lancaster-Lebanon
- Additional Participating Organizations: PROBE, Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit Community Education, Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 Head Start
This collaboration focuses on members of our community who are struggling with self-sufficiency through a variety of services offered to support, empower, and create opportunities for them based upon their own unique situations. Services include family literacy for those with children under four; financial literacy; job networking/placement; career awareness, exploration and development; digital literacy; adult education services; parent education; and more.
STEAM Day Camp
- Lead Organization: Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania
STEAM Day Camp is a summer program that engages girls in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math activities to encourage their interest in these key career fields. While the camp is open to all girls ages five through ten in Lebanon County, the Girl Scouts actively reach out to families with low-income backgrounds to ensure they have access to educational opportunities that they may not otherwise have had.
Summer Learning Program
- Lead Organization: Lebanon County Library System
- Additional Participating Organizations: Annville, Lebanon, Matthews, Myerstown, Palmyra, and Richland Libraries
The summer learning program available throughout Lebanon County engages children and families in interactive, literacy-based activities to foster a lifelong love of reading in children from birth-ten years old. This program aims to reduce the “summer slide” children experience when school is out of session. By connecting youth to positive literacy experiences outside of school walls, children develop an appreciation for reading that helps lead to academic success and a love of reading and learning that extends beyond their education.
Volunteers in Medicine Walk-in Clinic
- Lead Organization: Volunteers in Medicine
Volunteers in Medicine's Walk-in Clinic provides no cost medical treatment on a first-come, first-seen basis to treat injuries and illness for low-income and uninsured Lebanon County individuals and families.
Community Schools: A United Way Led County-wide Initiative
We recognize that building closer relationships with schools throughout Lebanon County and supporting our students is critical in ensuring we reach our goals, and more importantly, children and families can reach their full potential. The first two schools, Northwest Elementary School and Lebanon Middle School, began during the 2019-2020 academic year. .We will continue to engage with all school districts in the county and build relationships and partnerships that provide health and social services, youth development, and community engagement services.
Want more information about our transition into Collective Impact and the related funding effective July 1, 2019? Click here to read our FAQs.
Questions? Contact Brooke Smith, CEO