United Way

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United Way of Kern County has developed a lot of knowledge about our community in recent years.

We know about challenges in education: whether it’s about how to prepare our children for school, help teach them to read, prepare them for the workforce, or send more of them on to college.

We’ve learned about challenges to financial stability: families mired in multi-generational poverty; others who have fallen on hard times; some who are homeless; others who work as hard as they can every day yet struggle to make ends meet. Most recently, we’ve been learning about hunger and the daily challenge it is for one in four people in Kern County to feed themselves and their children.

Yes, we have indeed learned a lot about our community’s needs around Education, Income and Health. We’re applying what we’ve learned to guide our work, and our investment of donor dollars.

And now we have come to realize that there is so much more we need to understand.

You see, it’s not enough to understand needs. Numbers and statistics are important, of course. But what really changes communities — what really improves community conditions and improves lives — is when people come together around their shared aspirations. Not just around needs, but around their aspirations.

This is the work of United Way of Kern County today. We are in our community, listening in a very intentional way, to people’s aspirations. We are committed to facilitating a different kind of community conversation.

We are creating ways for people to come together, to listen to one another, set and achieve goals, and then build on those successes. We need to know where we want to go, and our direction must be rooted in our shared aspirations.

By bringing people together in this way, we can create a greater sense of trust and build meaningful relationships and confidence. We can tell a different story about ourselves.

Our story…the narrative in so many of our communities… is that productive change is beyond our reach; that we are powerless to achieve real change. In places like the Kern River Valley; Greenfield; here in Bakersfield; and in Eastern Kern…people are telling us they feel powerless.

This narrative drives our mindset; our attitudes, and actions. We must generate a new narrative. And that starts by reclaiming some basic shared values… like compassion, openness, humility, and concern for the common good. These are the values we hold as we embark on this new kind of work.

Our work is to engage people in ways that make a real difference; to marshal resources to help them effect change; and build momentum to tackle the next issue and the next. It is clear that we must work together to take these steps.

Della D. Hodson  
President

2014 Audited Financials

2013-14 Annual Report

2013014 Tax Returns (redacted)

A Portrait of California
California Human Development Report 2014-15
Read about why this is important here.

 

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Our Focus

Early Childhood Literacy

Financial Stability

Health

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We are all part of this community and together we can make it succeed. At United Way of Kern County we believe that UNITED we can make change happen... one day at a time.