San Mar Family & Community Services is pleased to announce that the Nora Roberts Foundation has awarded a $1,000,000 lead gift for their newest initiative to provide full-service housing for transition-age youth. Through this program, San Mar will address the unique needs of youth aging out of systems of care, preventing homelessness and further hardship. Housing services will initially focus on young women ages 18-24, catalyzing their life readiness by teaching various critical skills necessary for success with a safety net of support over a flexible timeline of two years.
Through a strategic planning process and several years of exploring how to best respond to community needs with the assets at their disposal as an organization, San Mar identified a gap in services to address the special needs of youth aging out of systems of care. Research on the high-risk category known as disconnected youth, defined as teenagers and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school, shows that the rate of disconnected youth in Washington County is 50% greater than the rest of the State of Maryland.
Launching this unique and much-needed program in Washington County requires a significant capital investment to repurpose the large office building originally designed as an orphanage into fifteen high-quality apartments. In addition, other campus buildings need updates to accommodate programmatic uses such as case management, mental health services, and various supports.
The Nora Roberts Foundation, whose mission includes creating a beautiful, equitable, and safe world, quickly understood what this project could do for our community. After several months of collaboration on the concept, the foundation board agreed to award the $1M grant to help the vision become reality.
San Mar CEO Keith Fanjoy commented, “This investment from the Nora Roberts Foundation is a humbling statement to our leadership team that when you focus on doing the right things, the right way, like-minded community members will be drawn to joining in the opportunity to make a big impact. Our values-centered, unconditional care approach to operations is a daily effort that often happens on the margins where few see the sacrifices required by our amazing staff, as well as the tremendous progress those we serve demonstrate. This signature gift shines a bright light on the amazing team at San Mar, and the vision for a future where young adults exiting systems of care have the best possible chance to not only succeed but thrive.”
Today’s announcement of the lead gift for Full-Service Housing for Transition Age Youth from the Nora Roberts Foundation formally launches the capital campaign for San Mar’s multi-million dollar capital renovation of its Boonsboro campus. Over the last several months, San Mar leadership have been diligently pursuing a variety of Federal, State, and local philanthropic partnerships and grants to collaborate on this critical need, including a recent commitment of $75,000 from the Jone L. Bowman Family Foundation. The San Mar Board of Managers and the Development team are working in concert to offer meaningful investment opportunities to the public to support innovative solutions for vulnerable young people in need. For more information about how you can support this critical need, contact San Mar Director of Development Elisa Mabina at 301-733-9067 x 250 or [email protected]