Imagine not having a place to call home or not feeling safe in your own home.  Imagine not knowing where your next meal will come from. Sadly, this is the reality for far too many youth and families in our community. Thankfully, Kansas City has Synergy Services to help when situations like these arise. I recently had the pleasure of learning about and touring an amazing resource for our community. Synergy Services envisions and actively works towards a world without family violence, abuse, or neglect. They began in 1970 as Synergy House, the only shelter for runaway and homeless youth in western Missouri. To be completely honest, they now provide so many services to our community that it is going to be hard to include them all in this blog. The guiding principle of Synergy Services is to take action to create a community free of family violence by providing Safety and Healing, Building Strength, and Effecting Change.

Synergy Services offers a full range of services. They have three emergency shelters, crisis hotlines, transitional housing, therapeutic services, advocacy, mentoring and violence prevention programs throughout Kansas City. I was able to take a tour of Synergy’s Youth Resiliency Center. From the passionate and energetic employees to the amazing space, this 10,000 square foot facility is truly a blessing to our community. It provides wraparound services in one location to help our youth heal from traumatic pasts. The center helps runaway, homeless, vulnerable residential and/or neighborhood youth recognize their own resiliency. The activities offered help build confidence and create positive connections to help youth become healthy, happy, self-sufficient adults. One story shared with me was of a child who kept watching a volunteer a room away as he was grilling for a party at the center. Finally, he walked over and said he had never seen anyone grill and was excited to learn how. These lessons are a daily occurrence at the Resiliency Center. Each day you can find kids taking art or exercise classes, using the recording studio (complete with instruments and the ability to create a recording of their music), and utilizing the computer lab, laundry facilities, gym, art studio, or teaching kitchen. There are even offices where youth and families can receive eye care, mental health services, and health services from healthcare providers from Children’s Mercy Hospital and Miles of Smiles dental services. As Claire Sundermeyer, Volunteer & Social Media Coordinator ,told me, “Synergy’s services are wraparound services. As this agency sees need in our community or gaps in services their team works around the clock to provide support to clients. Every program and service works together to effect change. From the Street Outreach Team working with homeless youth, to connecting children, teens or domestic violence survivors to the emergency shelters to providing long term housing and therapeutic services every staff member, community partner, donor and volunteer works together to lift up those that need it most, to make an impact, to change a life.”

I highly recommend taking a look at their website to learn, more in depth, about all the services they provide; and if interested, seeing how you can get involved. Synergy Services is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization and depends on donations and partnerships within the community to continue providing their services.

https://www.synergyservices.org

One way they create awareness and fundraise is through their Kindest Kansas Citian event. The following post will highlight this yearly event, and a special Kansas Citian in the running for Kindest Kansas Citian 2021.