Las Vegas Sands will donate $ 300,000 to help tackle young people’s homelessness, an announcement said Thursday.
Sands Cares, the resort casino’s charitable arm, is commemorating the Nevada partnership marking Homeless Youth’s 20th anniversary this year with continued collaborative funding, a press release said. The company and the nonprofit have partnered on initiatives to address youth homelessness, including a summit on the issue and a strategic plan for the region.
Sands’ donation will help NPHY strengthen its services and pursue long-term solutions, the group said. The aim is to treat the homelessness of young people “rarely, briefly, once and fairly,” according to the press release.
Thursday’s donation isn’t Sands’ first donation to NPHY. Since prioritizing youth homelessness in 2015, Sands Cares has donated more than $ 1.7 million to NPHY, according to the press release.
Ron Reese, Sands senior vice president of global communications and corporate affairs, said the initiative was one of the “most effective” Sands Cares has undertaken.
“We are determined to tackle the homelessness of young people in the Las Vegas Valley and NPHY has been our strategic and valued partner in leading this charge,” Reese said in a statement. “Our continued investments are representative of the tremendous results NPHY has achieved for our community’s vulnerable youth and its leadership in developing long-term solutions to address the problem.”
The 2021 donation will help complete NPHY’s home expansion campaign to offset rising property costs, an obstacle in the nonprofit’s plan to build a transitional residential facility, according to the press release.
The rest is earmarked for the production of the Southern Nevada Youth Homeless Summit; Expansion of NPHY’s nightly staffing model for Safe Place, Emergency Shelters and Transitional Housing programs; and infrastructure support for critical operational areas such as grant management, finance and facility management.
Arash Ghafoori, executive director of NPHY, said Sands Cares’ long-term support has helped move the organization forward. Las Vegas Sands partnered with NPHY to host an annual Southern Nevada Homelessness Summit and has helped promote the Southern Nevada Youth Ending Movement, an initiative to end the homelessness of young people in the area.
“Without Sands, we would not have been able to establish the movement and the summit – but Sands’ commitment as a catalyst for expanding our offerings goes much deeper than these most visible programs,” said Ghafoori. “Sands helped us build our back-end infrastructure to sustain the program expansion – a critical component of successful nonprofit management that is often overlooked. The company has been a real partner in the fight against homelessness among young people in southern Nevada, not only as a donor, but also as an investor and thinker in our work to advance this devastating problem in our community. “
The review journal is owned by the family of Dr. Miriam Adelson, the majority shareholder of Las Vegas Sands Corp.
McKenna Ross is a corps member of Report for America, a national utility that places journalists in local newsrooms. Contact them at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on Twitter.
