How Are the Children? | by Nancy Mitchell

Two years ago, one of our Kansas City superintendents addressed a community gathering by saying, “Kasserian Ingera?” He explained that this is the greeting of the Masai community in Kenya. He explained that when one Masai greets another they ask, “How are the children?” The values of Masai culture reflect that their first concern is the next generation. The reply they seek is, “All the children are well.” They do not believe their society is doing well if all of the children are not doing well.

So, I ask that question of you, “How are the children in our cities doing?” I believe the answer is that some of the children are doing well but many are not. Close to one out of five children in Kansas City lives in poverty. While navigating the challenges of food and home insecurity, increasing trauma in and out of the home, fractured families, children are trying to learn and prepare for their future. By the time they reach 6th grade, middle class kids have likely spent 6,000 more hours learning than kids born into poverty. See more – 6000 Hour Learning Gap.   Hope quickly diminishes and dreams are discarded.

Developing sustainable solutions for families in poverty is critical, not only for the survival of our communities but it is imperative as kingdom people to address injustice with revelation. As we struggle with the complexity of doing good works that bring real help to people in poverty – the children of the next generation are losing hope. This cannot continue. Children need hope and opportunity today for a better future.

The combination of increasing needs within the public schools and shrinking resources created a unique opportunity.  What we needed was an organization that could mobilize and equip an army of volunteers from the community to love the schools in tangible ways! The church stood as the most obvious volunteer force in the community and then there were businesses and civic groups, many of them motivated by their faith, who were also looking for ways to make a difference.  These groups didn’t need a pre-packaged program, they needed some structure and training and then permission to innovate.  We made the decision to function as a backbone organization instead of as a program provider and it has made all the difference in the world!  Our goal is to build sustainable community partnerships based on one simple, but powerful question, “How can we help?”

By becoming a catalyst for collaboration and serving as a true backbone organization we have been able to build trust with schools, churches and business all wanting to serve the children in their communities.  We have mobilized, trained and deployed over 200 churches, 80 businesses and 70 civic organizations into more than 200 schools across 8 school districts in the Kansas City region.  Those partnerships have, on their own, invested more than $600,000 into projects and initiatives for those schools over the past 5 years.

After five years of observing change and measuring outputs I’m excited to announce that this year we are also embarking on a project to measure outcomes and long-term impact.  Tackling some kind of metrics on this work is not easy and we know we have a lot to learn along the way.  But I am convinced that when the church serves with a prayerful combination of humility, compassion and commitment to work side by side with one another and others in the community, God’s kingdom comes to earth. Those changes will be observable, measurable and give glory to God. Then when we are asked, “Kasserian Ingera?” we can respond with an honest heart, “All of the children are well.”

Hear Nancy Mitchell at this year’s SATtalks, October 24-26

Nancy Mitchell is the Executive Director for Caring for Kids. She graduated from Creighton University in Social Work and worked in community mental health. She always had a passion for children to grow up healthy and whole. She worked for the Olathe School District and later joined Indian Creek Community Church staff as the Executive Assistant to the Lead Pastor. For the past seven years, she served in the Citywide Prayer Movement working in operations and administration. Nancy was part of the original design team for Caring for Kids and previously served as Director of Operations.