The newest board member at Lighthouse Youth & Family Services is also a foster parent.

The 10th Annual Difference Makers Community Honoree and Difference Maker is Lighthouse Youth & Family Services.

Lighthouse Youth & Family Services is proud to announce the successful conclusion of its “A Place to Call Home” fundraising campaign. Lighthouse has raised $24.9 million dollars, 100% of its goal for the campaign supporting the construction and operation of the new Lighthouse Sheakley Center for Youth at 2314 Iowa Avenue.

Fifth grade students give the gift of reading to children in Lighthouse's care.

According to Lighthouse Youth Center Director Renee Hagan, Swartz's kindness won her fans among the young men, one of whom recently commented: "she is one of the nicest persons I have ever met."

By expanding its capacity, Lighthouse can help three times as many young people get into independent housing.

The Sheakley Center for Youth is an all-in-one facility. There is a day shelter on the first floor, an overnight shelter with individual dorms and efficiency apartments for independent living. Clients will move through toward independence as they move through their case plan. The building is an attempt to give people ages 18-24 a home-like environment with the support they need to make changes in their life.

Young adults who enter the shelter at the new Sheakley Center for Youth will be greeted by a wall of living plants designed by Tyler Wolf of Urban Blooms: “If plants can grow on the wall, what possibilities are there for their own lives.”

Nearly 40 percent of the area’s homeless are under the age of 25, and the number is growing. Lighthouse Youth & Family Services, the only local agency focused on serving homeless youth, is leading the effort to end youth homelessness in Cincinnati by 2020. Today, we’re proud to announce that construction of the building at the center of this effort, the new Lighthouse Sheakley Center for Youth, is complete.