The Fox 4 Love Fund for Children was started over 35 years ago. The mission is to fulfill the unmet needs of children in the Kansas City community. This involves partnering with case managers around the metro, to identify children who are in need. The program fulfills everything from school supplies, beds, clothing, shoes all the way up to specialty medical items, and learning camps. The LoveFund can be considered as picking up where one organization’s mission ends, the Love Fund begins, seeking to fill in those gaps and make sure that no child goes without in Kansas City.
The Fox 4 Love Fund for Children has a Sweet Dreams Program. Every week, two to three requests for beds from case managers around the metro. Often, children are sleeping on the floor, on sofas, sharing a bed with either siblings or parents. Some families just found permanent housing or in between housing so the partnership fulfills new bed requests for children in our community.
Every month the goal is to provide 10 to 15 beds to the LoveFund. Case managers and families can redeem the vouchers at The Furniture Mall, and immediately they go home with a brand new bed, box spring and a new set of sheets.
So with every case, the Fox 4 Love Fund for Children follows up with case managers after they’ve received a charitable gift. Following up with children that received a mattress from the Sweet Dreams Program, we’ve found their health is improving, so they're sleeping better they're paying attention in school and not falling asleep. It also improves self-esteem, so it's really important to have a brand new bed, a bed of of their own. Those formative years can be really important. Being able to give a child a safe warm place to sleep at night is really important to our community.
Allyson Summers, Director of the The Fox 4 Love Fund for Children says, “partnering with The Furniture Mall is an important partnership for us, because we receive so many requests for new beds every year. The really exciting thing is that they're getting new beds. We're the only ones in the community being able to offer new beds and that's thanks to The Furniture Mall. They go home that day and that night they can sleep in their brand new bed, so it's just so important to our program and to the Love Fund and the children of Kansas City. So we're so grateful for this partnership with The Furniture Mall”