Four winning organizations representing a range of social causes were awarded $25,000 each Monday night during a "Shark Tank"-style pitch competition put on by United Way of the Plains.
Eight organizations competed within four focus areas: health, financial stability, basic needs and education.
The first-time event, called Impact on the Plains, aimed to help fund bold solutions for local community issues.
"We appreciate their creativity and innovation in developing new programs to ensure that no one is left behind and that everyone in our region achieves their full potential," said Pete Najera, United Way of the Plains president and CEO, in a statement. "This was a unique opportunity for each of them to share their emerging initiatives with the audience and each other. Ultimately, we hope to see more adaptation and collaboration among these game changers. We support their innovative work and commend them for their dedication to helping others.”
For 10 minutes, the competitors made their case to a panel of judges, made of 12 community leaders including Wayne Bell of the Small Business Administration, Shelly Prichard of the Wichita Community Foundation, and Alicia Thompson of Wichita Public Schools.
In the area of health, Breakthrough Episcopal Social Services walked away Monday with one of the $25,0000 prizes for its effort to provide psychiatric care for mentally ill adults living in extreme poverty.
Lead for Kansas was the winner in financial stability for the work of addressing talent retention and attraction by bringing back home-grown leaders to work in the region. The funding will support a campaign called Hustle and Heart, designed to mobilize resources to engage the next generation of leaders.
The winning pitch in the basic needs category was StepStone, which works to increase financial stability for survivors of domestic violence.
The Center for Educational Technologies to Assist Refugee Learners at Wichita State University earned the $25,000 prize in the education category. The team of researchers is working to make education more accessible to refugee children through an interactive, game-based learning platform for K-12 students.
Mythili Menon is director of CETARL and the lead investigator on the project. She says Project Education for All is in the development stage, with the goal of having a prototype ready at the beginning of the spring semester.
Menon said the award money from Monday's event will go back to refugee families and local school teachers who are going to help the researchers design the curriculum modules, as well as design certain aspects of the game.
"We believe that if we are going to find a solution for them, it has to be a solution by the refugees, for the refugees," she said.
Menon says there are roughly 3,000 refugee families living in Wichita, many of them from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that has been plagued by violent conflict for decades.
Developed by game designers at WSU, the platform will give users control of a virtual world that they are familiar with. So for children from Congo, for example, they will see the savannah.
"It gives them that feeling of safety because many of these children suffer from PTSD, they supper from trauma, they suffer from mental-health issues because they have fled their home country, they've fled persecution, they fled war," Menon said. "We want to show them that gaming is going to give them solace.... It's going to help them engage better in academic material, as well as learn through transformational training."
Menon said opportunities in Wichita like the Impact on the Plains event help give startups and entrepreneurs not only critical funding, but the exposure they need to take their ideas to the next level.
"I am extremely thankful to United Way for organizing this opportunity, as well as giving us a platform and the visibility that comes along with it, because they have a huge donor base," Menon said. "Just getting the product out to people in Wichita and letting them know that there's something like this. We have a scalable product."
The remaining four participants didn't walk away empty handed Monday; United Way of the Plains awarded a $5,000 investment to recognize the other programs that competed:
- Derby Citizens Recreation Association, which provides 550 second-grade students with training to reduce childhood drowning accidents
- Exploration Place for its program providing Title I students with science field trips
- Youth Core Ministries of Augusta, which provides a 20-week class and up to five years of support after graduation for those living in poverty in Augusta
- Wichita Park Foundation for a community garden called "El Jardín de los Sueños en Evergreen," or the Garden of Dreams at Evergreen
"This new way of making an immediate investment in critical areas of need was a first for Wichita," said Abel Frederic, who is vice president of community impact for United Way of the Plains. "We believe it will foster more creativity in developing innovative ways to solve our local challenges. We want to encourage more ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking when it comes to helping our community achieve its potential.”
