NKCAC serves as community resource to empower individuals and families

For individuals like James who face adverse conditions in life but still prevail, the Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission serves as a resource — and has been for the past 47 years.
 
James, like many 16-year-olds, had made a decision that he later regretted, and he ended up in jail as a result. So he enrolled in the nonprofit’s YouthBuild program, which services young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 by assisting them with education and career-based goals and preparations.
 
“We were able to help him get his GED and get job skills for him, and now he is working in the food service industry, where before he couldn’t keep a job for more than a few weeks at a time and was couch-surfing,” says Florence Tandy, NKCAC’s executive director. “He credits YouthBuild with making that transformation, but I credit him for being ready for that transformation, because he’s just the neatest young man you’ll ever meet and he’s going to go far once he gets behind his convictions.”
 
According to Tandy, the nonprofit sees about 10,000 families in a year’s time, which translates to about 25,000 individuals.
 
Whether it’s through the organization’s early childhood education, financial assistance or career preparation services, the mission is to help “hard-working families realize and reinvest in their future.”
 
“We have neighborhood centers in each of our eight counties to provide crisis assistance for families who find themselves struggling to pay all their bills,” Tandy says, “and we have a former client of one of those centers who applied for a job when we had an opening and who had struggled with drug addiction in the past but was clean and sober when she came to us.
 
“So we gave her a temporary position during our busiest season, and that temporary position turned into a permanent position and now she’s a manager of that center and has just shown remarkable promise and resiliency and dedication to her clients and her staff that she now supervises. I don’t know if there’s too many businesses or organizations that would have given her a chance, but we did.” 

Do Good: 

•    NKCAC is looking for AmeriCorps members to join its team. The nonprofit is currently accepting applications.

•    Contact NKCAC if you're interested in employing its clients who go through career readiness preparations.

•    If you're interested in mentoring a student in the YouthBuild program, volunteer.